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The Court of Appeals of Santiago ratified a fine of 20 UTM (little more than 1 million pesos) against the station Chilean National Television (TVN) for not broadcasting the legal minimum of cultural content in January of this year.
It was a unanimous ruling in which the sanction previously filed by the National Television Council (CNTV) was reviewed, which was appealed by TVN, represented by the lawyer Hernán Triviño Oyarzún.
The ruling indicates that the state channel requested “that the sanction be annulled and consequently the discharges of its client be accepted or, in subsidy, that it be replaced by the reprimand”, a lesser degree in accordance with the Law 18,838 created by the CNTV.
The case was settled by the Fifth room of the appeal court, made up of the ministers Mireya López, Alejandro Rivera and Juan Enrique Olivares.
Specifically, the television regulatory body argued that the minimum legal time required by law was not broadcast “during high hearing hours, in the first, second, third and fifth weeks of January 2020. The above, given that the minutes reported by the concessionaire -in the referred period- includes programs that do not meet regulatory requirements to be considered cultural and / or they were broadcast outside the established hours, which were between 6.30 pm and 00:00 am ”.
“It is possible to note that the respondent CNTV complied with the provisions of Law 18.838, mandatory that contains the sanctions and proportionality criteria applied in this case ”, the magistrates indicated in the opinion.
They added that “according to the law, the specific legal prescription regarding the proportionality applied for this type of infraction, and the recidivism or repetition of the same infraction were taken into account, being that neither in the administrative procedure nor in the present claim, the concessionaire manages to disprove the reproaches made by the CNTV ”.
For the members of the Court of Appeals, the regulatory body, in its sanction, explained in a “reasoned and sufficient manner the charges made, the circumstances that led to the reproach and the justification of the entity for the pecuniary sanction filed.”
So, they considered that the fine of 1 million pesos is not “disproportionate according to the facts that motivate it and the previous behavior of the television channel.”
How many hours should they issue?
The Law that creates the National Television Council establishes that the body is in charge of ensuring that concessionaires (or television channels, in this case) must broadcast at least four hours of cultural programs a week. “Two of these four hours must be broadcast at high audience times set by the Council,” he says.
According to the norm, a cultural program is understood as “those that refer to the values that emanate from the multicultural identities existing in the country, as well as those related to the civic formation of people, those destined to the strengthening of identities national, regional or local, such as traditional festivals or celebrations and those destined to promote universal heritage and, in particular, national heritage ”.
For those signals that do not comply, the CNTV may issue sanctions ranging from a warning to the expiration of the concession, stopping the transmissions.
The fine is the second sanction. The 20 UTM that TVN must pay correspond to the minimum amount established by law.
The defense of TVN
From TVN and exclusively to BioBioChile, they said that “we regret this ruling, but we will comply with it despite disagreeing with the criteria used by the CNTV, which did not consider emblematic programs such as the Huaso de Olmué Festival OR The Kings of the Sea among many others, which we believe fit the description of culture made by the Council ”.
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