The Academy highlights that the closure of Teledeporte would mean an impoverishment of the television offering in Spain

Reactions from the TV Academy after learning that TVE intends to close Teledeporte and place its content on the La 2 grid.

The Academy of Television Sciences and Arts has expressed its serious concern regarding the news in which RTVE announces its intention to close Teledeporte and place its contents on the schedule of La 2 de TVE. In this way, the Corporation aims to reduce its deficit, a key condition imposed by the Government to receive a financial contribution.

This measure, in the opinion of the Academy, represents a cut in the public offering of sports and cultural content, giving rise to a hybrid channel, causing a serious loss for minority sports that, in accordance with RTVE's public service function, only found an exhibition window in Teledeporte and which have no place in other channels. For its part, La 2, the network that would host part of this programming, will also suffer a similar reduction in cultural expressions, since it is the only existing screen for its public dissemination.

The president of the Television Academy, Manuel Campo Vidal, has declared that "in reality, TVE has already closed its Cultural·es channel and merged it with La 2, which would now be the closure of a second thematic channel which, in addition, is difficult to combine with the current contents of La 2 and Teledeporte. This process represents an impoverishment of the television offering in Spain with the aggravating factor that there is no alternative on the programming grid."

Law 17/2006 on Public Radio Television requires that RTVE must “offer access to different genres of programming and institutional, social, cultural and sporting events, aimed at all sectors of the audience, paying attention to those topics of special public interest.”

With the disappearance of Teledeporte, RTVE's global DTT offering model that was launched in 2005 and included in this Law is doomed to its disappearance due to exclusive economic considerations that now require its change.

"Consequently, we are facing a limitation towards the future of DTT that is combined with the closure of the 9 private channels that took place on May 6 as a result of a controversial ruling," the Academy emphasizes.