According to LIGA.net, the encoding of Ukrainian TV channels from four media groups will be a subject of a difficult discussion at the National Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting. This was announced yesterday by Alexander Ilyashenko, a member of the industry regulator, during the TIM2017 conference.
"We have seven members of the National Council. There will be heated discussions," he emphasized.
As reported a week ago, the media groups Inter (Dmitry Firtash, Sergei Levochkin and Valery Horoshkovsky), StarLightMedia (Viktor Pinchuk), Ukraine (Rinat Akhmetov), and 1+1 (Igor Kolomoisky) are planning to encode a total of 23 TV channels on the satellite next year: Inter, NTN, K1, K2, MEGA, Pixel, Zoom, Enter-film, STB, ICTV, Novy, M1, M2, OCE, Ukraine, NLO TV, Indigo TV, 1+1, 2+2, TET, PLUSPLUS, UNIAN TV and Bigudi.
Satellite TV in Ukraine is received by 4.5 million households.
Confusion with licenses
Representatives of media groups during the discussion on the panel about pay TV emphasized several times: in order to encode the signal, they will not be able to make such a decision independently. They will still have to apply to the National Council for re-registration of licenses. After all, now they are issued for broadcasting in the open access.
Alexander Ilyashenko made a relevant joke here. He addressed the director of strategic development of the StarLightMedia group, Fedor Grechaninov, and said: “You are already violating the rules with ICTV and Novy. Your license states that the signal is encoded, but you are broadcasting in the open. The same applies to the channels of the Plus group: 1+1, 2+2, TET, Bigudi”.
As it turned out, there is complete confusion with licenses for TV channels. Some of them will not even need to be re-registered - they are somehow already registered for broadcasting in a closed format. In any case, it will be necessary to put the documents in order first. In a conversation with a journalist LIGA.net Ilyashenko takes an even tougher stance on encoding: “Until a consensus is reached - how many channels, from what date - there will be no encoding”.
Is it dangerous?
The main concern of the regulator's representatives is the country's information security. If Ukrainian channels on the satellite are no longer available in the open access, then citizens in the occupied areas of Donbas and Crimea will not be able to receive them.
Representatives of media groups have a different opinion here. According to Grechaninov, the country's information security also depends on the economic condition of TV channels. If it is bad, then information security suffers. Moreover, as he says, it is not even known how many people in the occupied areas actually watch our channels. “Unfortunately, this is a small percentage of people”, he suggests.
Moreover, the media groups do not include news information channels, such as the Fifth Channel, 112, Espresso, 24, and so on. They will most likely continue to inform citizens of Ukraine in the open.
As predicted by the financial and executive director of the "1+1 media" group, the director of the paid television direction of "1+1 media" Yaroslav Pakholchuk, the ideal date for encoding is May 2018. By this time, according to him, the company Romsat, with which an agreement has been reached on the supply of special satellite receivers, will have already brought the necessary number of set-top boxes to our market.
Recall that media groups expect that the cost of a Ukrainian package of paid entertainment television on the satellite for viewers will be about 50 UAH.
As for the rates for cable providers, television broadcasters yesterday announced that they are not going to raise their wholesale prices for content at the beginning of next year, until significant events occur in the market: the shutdown of analog broadcasting or the encoding of the satellite signal. So, the Inter channel package, calculated for each household for a cable operator, will cost 3 UAH in 2018, Plus - 1.5 UAH, StarLightMedia - 1.5 UAH. The Ukraine media group has not yet disclosed its prices.