Federal Council defines new coverage areas for VHF radio and regional television stations

Bern, 04.07.2007 - The Federal Council has decided to divide Switzerland into 13 new coverage areas for partially fee-funded regional television stations. In addition, it has defined 34 coverage areas for private VHF radio stations. It is expected that the radio and TV licences will be put out to tender in early autumn 2007.

By its decision today, the Federal Council has laid the basis for the upcoming licensing procedure. The Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC) will be awarding a licence within each of the new coverage areas as part of a public tender procedure. Radio and television stations will require a licence only if they receive fee revenue or if they wish to use scarce frequencies under preferential conditions. In the other cases, transmission may begin after notification to the Federal Office of Communications. This is prescribed in the Law on Radio and Television (LRTV) which entered into force on 1 April 2007.

Regional television: new coverage areas

The new LRTV makes significantly more reception fee revenue available to support regional TV broadcasters – CHF 32 million annually, instead of the previous CHF 7 million. The intention is to enable a high-quality regional public service to be provided even in those regions where the economic potential is insufficient for private-sector finance. In order to ensure that the fee revenue is used as efficiently as possible, the Federal Council is limiting the number of subsidised TV broadcasters to 13 – one for each coverage area. The new coverage areas generally include several cantons, in order to create areas which are economically sound and culturally cohesive. Special mention should be made of the new Waadt-Freiburg coverage area in French-speaking Switzerland, which provides for a programming window for the canton of Freiburg, and the Arc Jurassien coverage area, which links the cantons of Neuenburg and Jura and the Bernese Jura. The canton of Valais constitutes a unitary coverage area in which the future licensee will be obliged to broadcast programmes in French and German.

In the case of the configuration of the Zurich-eastern Switzerland area, the Federal Council has decided to establish two coverage areas. One will include the cantons of Zurich, Schaffhausen and Thurgau. The corresponding broadcaster will receive a proportion of reception fees for the production of its own programming window for the cantons of Schaffhausen and Thurgau. In order to take into account the concerns of the cantons of eastern Switzerland, the future eastern Switzerland coverage area will concentrate on the cantons of St. Gallen, Appenzell (AR, AI) and on the Arbon and Bischofszell areas of eastern Thurgau.

VHF radio stations: modest evolution of existing coverage areas

The Federal Council has defined the VHF coverage areas with reference to the existing radio landscape as it has evolved over the last twenty years. The existing coverage areas are being adapted appropriately; only one new VHF radio station is envisaged. In large urban areas, the Federal Council wishes to promote competition by giving peripheral local radio stations access to the nearby centre.

In 23 of the 34 coverage areas, there will be an invitation to tender for licences with partial funding from reception fees. Nine of these licences are envisaged for complementary, non-profit oriented broadcasters. In future, some CHF 16 million will be available for private radio stations entitled to receive a proportion of reception fees, instead of the previous CHF 7 million. In the other eleven coverage areas, licences without support from reception fees will be put out to tender.

One of the essential innovations is the harmonisation of the coverage areas in the Lake Geneva area, the Zurich region and central Switzerland respectively. Four large new coverage areas of identical size will be established in the area between Geneva and Yverdon. Within the Zurich-Glarus conurbation, three commercial broadcasters with identical coverage areas will start transmitting. In central Switzerland too, the three broadcasters will in future overlap within a significant part of their coverage area. Mergers of previously separate coverage areas will take place in the cantons of the Grisons, St. Gallen and the Arc Jurassien. As the final major conurbation of German-speaking Switzerland, Winterthur gets a new coverage area for a complementary, non-profit oriented station.

The next steps: invitation to tender for licences, publication of the fee element and performance mandates

Now that the Federal Council has defined the contours of the regional broadcasting landscape in terms of media polity, DETEC will be preparing the invitation to tender for the corresponding licences. This is expected to take place in early autumn 2007. At that time, DETEC will also announce the amounts of the fee elements for the individual coverage areas and the specific content of the respective performance mandates. It is expected that the new licences will be awarded from the spring of 2008 onwards.

Public consultation on coverage areas
In October 2006, DETEC put out the draft definition of the television and VHF coverage areas for public consultation. By the end of January 2007, more than 140 comments had been submitted by radio and TV broadcasters, cantons, municipalities, political parties and other interested parties. A second consultation in April 2007 put up for discussion a new proposal for the disputed television coverage areas for the Zurich-north-eastern Switzerland-eastern Switzerland region. The results of the consultations have been incorporated in the Federal Council's decision.


Address for enquiries

Matthias Ramsauer, Deputy Director, Federal Office of Communications, tel. 032 327 55 10, matthias.ramsauer@bakom.admin.ch



Publisher

Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications
https://www.uvek.admin.ch/uvek/en/home.html

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