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AGENDA
2000:
Will Attempts to Introduce License Fees
and to Reform Licensing Policy Fail Again?
Broadcasting regulations during 1998 in Lithuania was
interesting, but unproductive.
At the end of 1997, Parliament created a Commission to
reform the legal provisions regulating Mass Media.
Three new pieces of legislation are introduced.
This legislation addresses four different areas: the
introduction of license fees to finance Lithuanian
National TV and Radio (“LNTVR”), a public
broadcaster; the reformation of licensing procedures in
the area of private broadcasting by giving more power to
Radio and Television Commission; stricter control over
sexual and violent content in television programs; and
the introduction of European production quotas and
restrictions on the amount of advertising in accordance
with EU directives 89/552/EEC and 97/36/EC and the
Television Without Frontiers Convention.
The Commission decided to begin with the introduction of
license fees since, according to Law on National
Television and Radio, its implementation was
overdue. Thus, the members of the Commission split
into three groups. The first group, which was
comprised of representatives of LNTVR, their supporters,
and politicians, believed that legislation regarding
license fees should not be given priority. The
representatives of LNTVR were not confident that license
fees could be collected successfully. They also
believed that the introduction of license fees would
eliminate advertising revenues and, thus, the loss of an
independent source of income. The politicians in
the group feared that, by introducing license fees and
eliminating budget subsidies, they would lose their only
means to influence the public broadcaster.
The second group, which represented the private
broadcasting sector, agreed to introduce EU rules
restricting advertising (to no more than fifteen per cent
per broadcast time per day, no interruptions during the
airing of movies, a ban on tobacco and alcohol
advertisements, and an introduction of the right to
reply, etc.) on the condition that the public broadcaster
would be gradually prohibited from carrying
advertisements, which would result in an increase of
advertising Litas in the private sector.
The third group believed that the greatest priority in
mass media was the restriction or prohibition of programs
containing explicit sexual and violent subject
matter. This group consisted of conservative-minded
members of parliament. This group stopped attending
meetings once they found that their concern was not the
top priority. Shortly thereafter, Parliament
created a Special Commission to propose legislation
regulating violent and erotic content in the press,
television, radio, cinema and video.
In the meantime, the Commission prepared two drafts
regarding license fees and regulation of private
broadcasters that conforms to the EU documents.
According to calculations made by the Commission, the
introduction of license fees was possible. Two
methods of fee collection were proposed. The first
proposal adds the cost of the license fees to electricity
bills, which would increase the cost of 1 KWh by four to
fourteen per cent (depending on who was billed for the
fees: all electricity consumers, including
enterprises, or only natural persons). The second
proposal collects the fees in the same manner as taxes on
utilities are collected. This proposal means that
the new tax would have to be introduced and, therefore,
was rejected since it would be politically difficult
(politicians were arguing that new tax would result in
public demonstrations, while LNTVR officials were arguing
that nobody would pay).
For unknown reasons, the idea of collecting license fees
together with the electricity fees was never presented to
Seimas plenary session and, thus, the resolution
suggesting that Seimas confirm the proposal was ignored.
The second group, representing the private sector
terminated their support of the amendments to the
introduction of EU regulation on European quotas and
advertising restrictions after realizing that legislation
on license fees and the subsequent elimination of
advertising on public channels would not materialize.
With Spring 1998 presidential elections looming, nobody
wanted to irritate private television and radio
stations. By the time the elections were over, the
reshuffling and swearing in of the new government
officials was completed, and the summer holidays came to
an end, the news had arrived that Lithuania was not going
to be included into the first group of EU
candidates. Everybody lost interest in upgrading
broadcasting legislation up to EU standards.
Hopefully, in the year 2000, Lithuania will have another
chance to join the first wave of European Union candidate
countries.
The license fees issue was also postponed. There
were many internal reasons, but one very significant
external reason was the economic crisis in Russia.
Due to this crisis, the state budget did not collect the
anticipated amount of revenue and was forced to cut
subsidies to many organizations, including LNTVR.
There was a genuine fear that changing the means and ways
of financing (especially if anything goes wrong) might
damage the public broadcaster even further. It soon
became obvious that, with Lithuanian economy struggling
not to be hurt by the crisis in the East, there were no
politicians who were ready to introduce a new tax.
Therefore, by the end of 1998, the only issue that
survived on the legislative agenda was sex and violence.
One may say that these are exciting issues and should be
kept on the agenda. Unfortunately, the first draft
of legislation presented by the Special Commission on the
legislation regulating the sexual and violent content of
the press, television, radio, cinema and video did not
evoke a warm response. The majority of the Special
Commission consisted of members delegated by
organizations fighting “contemporary”
liberalism and willing to impose stricter moral and
conservative family values.
The draft legislation presented by the Special Commission
recommended a State inspection, having control over the
dissemination of television and radio programs. The
recommendation granted the State inspection the right to
determine what content was harmful to society and what
was not. The decisions were to be made according to
the criteria listed in the bill, which reflected the
preferences and understanding of decency and morality of
the members of the Special Commission.
Mass media representatives interpreted the legislation
drafted by the Special Commission as a bad joke.
Thus, anyone familiar with the workings and interaction
of politics and media in Lithuania and who has a
political calendar in front of them (local elections in
1999, parliamentary elections in 2000) might predict that
this draft legislation will be forgotten quite soon.
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