Broadcasting regulatory body refuses to oblige cable operators to retransmit programs of Moldova-based stations

The Broadcasting Coordination Council (CCA) rejected on Tuesday, February 6 with the majority of votes the draft decision aiming at obliging cable operators to include free of charge the programme services of public and private broadcasters under the jurisdiction of Moldova in their list of channels. Also, the draft stipulated that the broadcasters had to offer free of charge the right to retransmit their programmes. According to Valeriu Soltan, CCA member and one of the authors of the draft, such a decision is necessary in order to ensure free access to the programmes of the Moldova-based broadcasters. According to him, there are cases when broadcasters ask money from the service distributors for the right to retransmit programmes, the opposite situation being also quite frequent – the distributors refuse to include the local broadcasters in their list of channels. On the other hand, the opponents of the draft decision justified their choice by the fact that the relationship between broadcasters and service distributors is a relationship between two economic agents, thus the regulatory body can not oblige them to act in a certain way. 3 members of the CCA, including the chairman of the Council Corneliu Mihalache, voted in favour of the aforementioned draft, while 6 voted against it.