Broadcasting Coordination Council fines “Sun Communications”

The Broadcasting Coordination Council (CCA) sanctioned on Tuesday, March 20 the cable operator “Sun Communications” with a fine of MDL 6,000, as it did not respect a previous decision of CCA to exclude TV “Boets” from the list of broadcasted channels. On February 22, the Council decided to ban the retransmission of the Russian “The Fighter” (“Boets”) TV channel. This decision was published on March 9 and “Sun Communications” seized the retransmission not earlier than on March 14, so CCA members considered this fact a violation of the decision. Iolanta Mura, the legal representative of “Sun Communications” said that the decision was published on March 9, which was a holiday, so it could be examined only on March 12. Subsequently, “Sun Communications” announced the respective channel and the company stopped the retransmission of the channel. On the other hand, CCA members say that the operator should have informed the channel immediately after the decision was approved, in order to abide by it when published. Chairman of CCA Corneliu Mihalache proposed that the operator would be given the minimum fine stipulated by the Audiovisual Code – MDL 2 thousand but the majority of CCA members voted for the maximum allowed fine of MDL 6 thousand. Mura told Info-Prim Neo that it will recommend the leadership of the company to sue the decision of the regulatory authority, considering it exaggerated. CCA could have applied a public warning because the company complied with the decision of the Council after all, she said. Also today, CCA has publicly warned for violations “Maestro FM”, “Vanoles”, “Ecou” and “Hit FM” radios, as well as the TV station “TV-6 Balti”. Also the Council approved new broadcasting schedules for a series of radios, TV channels and cable operators.