The National Broadcasting Council Has Not Dealt with the Renewal of the TVN Channels’ Licenses

By Michał Niedbalski, press.pl | 26 July 2023

During Tuesday’s meeting, the National Broadcasting Council did not address the issue of extending the licenses of the main TVN and other broadcaster’s stations. The issue was requested to be addressed by KRRiT member Professor Tadeusz Kowalski. The request was dismissed. The next meeting is not expected to take place until the second half of August.

Prof. Kowalski wanted Tuesday’s meeting to take up the issues of the reconcession of TVN SA’s three channels: TVN, TVN International and TVN Turbo.

“I expect the matter to be placed on the agenda for the meeting. TVN has already been waiting seven months for a decision. That’s enough time for consideration,” Prof. Tadeusz Kowalski told us in mid-July.

According to our information, however, his request was dismissed by the votes of the other members of the KRRiT, but without presenting him with a counterargument.

Prof. Kowalski was appointed to the National Council by the votes of the opposition senators. The other members (they are Maciej Swirski, Hanna Karp, Agnieszka Glapiak and Marzena Paczuska) were appointed by a Sejm dominated by Law and Justice (PiS) or President Andrzej Duda, who hails from that party.

At the end of April 2023, the National Council had already renewed the license for HGTV, another TVN channel from Warner Bros. Discovery. However, the National Broadcasting Council – in announcing its decision – conveyed that it is still working on analyzing the ownership structure of TVN, which as of April 8, 2022 is owned by US-based Warner Bros. Discovery. The regulator’s position on the matter was adopted with Prof. Tadeusz Kowalski voting against.

TVN SA applied to the KRRiT for an extension of its terrestrial TVN license (which expires on April 14, 2024) in late 2022. At the beginning of 2023, the broadcaster made identical requests for TVN International (has a license until February 10, 2024) and TVN Turbo (until February 12, 2024).

Recall that it took the National Council 19 months to extend the license for TVN 24 (the KRRiT took a decision on the matter four days before the expiration of the broadcasting rights), and more than a year for TVN Seven.

The Supreme Administrative Court ruled that there had been inaction on the part of the KRRiT in extending TVN 24’s license, but found that there had been no gross violation of the law.