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CZECH
REPUBLIC
I.
Media watchdog says TV Nova keen to resolve dispute.
All sides involved in the current disputes over private
TV channel Nova want to carry on with the broadcasts,
Josef Josefik, chairman of the Radio and Television
Council, said [on 27th April].
The council, which granted the CET 21 company a
broadcasting licence for TV Nova, controls the
implementation of the broadcasting legislation.
Josefik said that he was not worried by the ongoing
merger between the foreign media company SBS and the
company Central European Media Enterprises (CME),
majority owner of Nova’s operators, the Ceska
Nezavisla Televizni Spolecnost (Czech Independent
Television Company, CNTS). He said that he would
“at the moment rather welcome” the SBS entering
the Czech media market to boost competition.
“CME informed the council that it is interested in a
solution of its disputes (with private TV Nova’s
former CNTS executive Vladimir Zelezny) which would not
endanger Nova’s further broadcasts,” Josefik
said. . . .
CME said on [26th April] that it has turned to the
International Chamber of Commerce’s court in its
dispute with Zelezny, whom the CNTS’s general
meeting dismissed as its executive for exceeding his
powers [on 19th].
Zelezny, who has been director-general of TV Nova since
it was established in 1994, is also the director-general
and majority owner of the station’s licence holder,
CET 21.
An internal investigation has revealed that Zelezny
transferred all the rights for purchasing programmes from
CNTS to another company—AQS—without CNTS’s
consent, that he issued unlimited guarantees for
AQS’s obligations and informed the largest
international suppliers of television programmes that AQS
was replacing CNTS as the provider of programming
services to TV Nova.
CTK news agency, Prague, April 27,
1999
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