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The Metropolitan Court dismissed Klubrádió’s action in a lawsuit filed regarding ownership of the frequency. This means that due to the ruling, one of the last government-critical radios can only use its single frequency, Budapest FM 92.9 MHz, until Sunday, so it can continue to operate as Internet radio at most, at least for a while. for sure. Following the announcement of the verdict, Klubrádió’s CEO told 24.hu, if necessary, that the case would be taken to European Union courts. Richard Stock called the verdict a criminal and said he had been the victim of radio discrimination. However, he said the radio will provide services to students online without changes. As you said, they are competing in the new tender for their current frequency and are also considering bidding for the old 95.3 MHz frequency.
The Metropolitan Court has dismissed the Club Radio action, so it is certain that on Sunday the latest radio critical of the government will be silenced. What they say about the verdict.
We were surprised by the court’s decision. It is not necessarily that our action was dismissed, because it was on the cover, but rather that, sweeping our arguments, the court issued a verdict without substantive reasoning. We consider the decision to be infringing and will appeal against it.
How long are you willing to go for your truth?
As we have referred to various EU rules in court, which have also not been taken into account, if legal remedies in Hungary do not work, we plan to take the Klubrádió case to the Court of Justice of the European Union.
The court based its ruling on the fact that Klubrádió had not filed any appeals against his previous infractions, so they were final, so the two fines constituted grounds for denial when considering the request for an extension of the 92 frequency license, 9 MHz. Based on this, they have some responsibility for what happened.
I do not consider the word infringement appropriate, since the two cases in question concerned the late execution of two previous requests for information from Klubrádió. But when this happened, the legislation did not include a deadline for compliance. This was not enacted until 2019. That is, before, when Klubrádió fulfilled the obligation to provide data, it did not exceed the deadline, because it did not exist at that time. Furthermore, this request for information had a scope that was not required by any regulation, that is, a completely unilateral requirement of the Media Council, which was otherwise fulfilled by the radio, albeit stammering. And we are quite concerned that a service provider is subject to multiple penalties for a prior violation. Additionally, we are referring to similar violations by several other radio stations in the lawsuit, which also complied with late requests for data, but received an extension from the National Media and Communications Authority.
What do you infer from this?
On this basis, Club Radio appears to be the victim of severe discrimination. After all, if others were not penalized for the same offense, or even received an extension of their frequency right, Club Radio should not be disadvantaged in the same way.
What are they doing now?
There will be remedies available, but they can take months. From now on, the analogue broadcast of Club Radio will be silent on Sunday and you can only listen to the radio online.
To what extent will the transition to online radio only affect publishers, will there be layoffs, how will they prepare for the change?
We do not plan any changes. We also promised our students that the flow of the Klubrádió program will not change. So, starting on February 15, the same publishers will produce the same shows that are still running. Our plans include hosting a fundraiser around March 15th, and then it will be revealed if students will be supporting radio in the same way as before. If so, the structure of the program will not change in the future. The operation of the radio has not been dependent on the platform so far, since one of the most listened to online radio stations in the country is Klubrádió. So it’s not about switching to something, it’s about getting existing online broadcasts to get a much larger audience, hopefully. That is, no changes are needed, the radio has been maintained by the students until now. There is no weight loss plan.
How much reduction in the number of students do you expect?
We don’t estimate this, but our analog and online broadcasts have been listened to by around 200,000 people a day so far, of which our regular fans were roughly 8-10,000 people. If we can’t necessarily keep our student camp, but 100-150 thousand people still choose Club Radio, and that includes the majority of 8-10 thousand followers, then the operation of the radio will not change. Everything will depend on the students, so the power will not be able to silence the radio.
The tender for the 92.9 MHz frequency license that Klubrádió still uses, as well as the 95.3 MHz frequency previously used by radio, is still ongoing. What are they planning?
In the first, we remain the only applicant in the hat because two other applicants were excluded. This is because one of the applicants appealed the decision. We have a good chance of winning this, even if the appellant can still compete, because the quality of our application and the fact that Klubrádió is a functioning media company gives us an advantage. We are also considering bidding for the previously used 95.3 MHz frequency, but there are financial prerequisites for this. At the same time, we would like to expand the frequency right to 92.9 MHz.
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