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New Law to Change Greece's Media Landscape


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Tomorrow is the big day. There have been attempts by practically all the bidders (even the newcomers) to stop the auction due to some inconsistencies with the process, but it is still planned to go ahead tomorrow morning.

The latest development is that EPSILON TV has been cut from the approved bidder shortlist just a day before the auction, due to the channel not meeting the specified criteria. Whatever channel does not win a license tomorrow, will be forced to go off air within 90 days. Since both MEGA and now EPSILON are not part of the process, it looks like they will cease to broadcast this fall if the process goes as planned.

I am wondering if any of these channels will try their hand at being a subscriber driver channel on NOVA/OTE. There is also the possibilities that they will shift their efforts to Cyprus, where television licenses are only 200,000 Euro if i recall and are not limited. Alpha TV launched Alpha TV Cyprus earlier this year, many saying it was a backup channel in case they do not get a license in Greece.

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The first license has apparently been awarded. Speculations and rumors say that it has been won by (Alter Ego) Marinakis. According tot rules of the bidding process no information is going to be released until the whole process is completed, so once again we are witnessing the bourdello that the Greek society is.

I don't think any of the channels will close. Some of the losers will probably be absorbed by the license winners. For example if Savvidis wins one of the license, he will need the technical means and employees to start broadcasting. The easiest way is to acquire an existing broadcaster. MEGA comes to mind.

The losers also have the options to apply for a regional license later on

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It is interesting how the bidding shook out:

  • SKAI - 43.6 Million Euro over 56 rounds
  • Vladimiros Ioannis Kalogritsas - 52.6 Million Euro over 78 rounds
  • ANT1 - 75.9 million Euro over 99 rounds
  • Alter Ego (Marinakis) 73.9 million Euro over 117 rounds

If any of the 4 above winners do not pass an "asset and wealth inspection", then one of the 4 runner ups will replace them. (Ivan Savvidis (61.5 million euros), Alpha TV (61 million euros), the Cypriot-based venture (18 million euros) and Star Channel (13 million euros)).

There is also a pending court case about the process, as well as promises by opposing political parties to add more licenses or reverse the whole process. If everything remains as planned though, it means ALPHA, STAR, MEGA and EPSILON remain without nationwide licenses and are at danger of ceasing to broadcast within 90 days.

It will be interesting to see if the two new players that won licenses try to make a deal with one of the channels. There is also the satellite pay TV option, as well as one of the future more restrictive television licenses that are rumored to be offered (themed content, regional, etc.) though it would change their whole financial dynamics if they went any of those routes and might not be beneficial. These high bidding amounts are also expected to cut into the operating budgets of the channels, with cuts expected......

http://www.tovima.gr/en/article/?aid=825539

http://www.tvnea.com/2016/09/blog-post_45.html

Edited by Grk101
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^^ SKAI is not very friendly toward SYRIZA to begin with, and they certainly are not holding back even after winning a license. I wouldn't be surprised if they find a reason to discredit SKAI's bid at this rate.

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Rumors have already began to fly about what Marinakis plans for his new channel. Of course the plans include broadcasting rights for ALL Olympiakos games.

http://www.tvnea.com/2016/09/blog-post_60.html

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Also here are the maximum bids by round. Each horizontal line of data represents a round.

dr3typ.png

Edited by Grk101
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We knew MEGA was not going to be part of the bidding process, and reports before the auction had stated STAR wasn't planning to bid above 10-15 million. The biggest surprise is ALPHA not winning a license, as the are arguably, one of the top channels in Greece currently. (Just this past week they top the Nielsen ratings, even with re-runs.) ALPHA's top bid was 61 million Euro, and the channel reports that any higher bid would not have been economically viable to them. It will be interesting to see what happens with them, all the big name talent has vowed to stand by the channel.

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Also here is another great excerpt to sum up this process from the WSJ:

..........

If Greece’s government seems keen to bury the country’s precrisis sins in a story of statistical malfeasance, it is determined to elevate the regulation of the national broadcasting sector into a purge of the “triangle of corruption” linking politicians, media barons and bankers.

It is true that there has been no public tender on broadcast licenses since the beginning of private television in Greece in 1989, and that TV networks have historically benefitted from cozy relationships with banks and political parties. Some media owners have used their influence to strengthen their other business interests, which often involved government contracts. And they could always rely on the help of politically controlled banks to keep funding their networks, even when they were making losses.

Syriza’s proposed remedy, however, only makes matters worse. In a move of questionable constitutionality, Nikos Pappas, the minister of state and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s closest confidant, has chosen to bypass the country’s electronic-media watchdog and has taken it upon himself to oversee the tender process.

Mr. Pappas is reducing the number of private-channel licenses to four, down from the existing seven. His original justification was that the country’s digital spectrum would otherwise be overloaded. After that argument was demolished, Mr. Pappas switched to blaming the collapsing advertising market for the reduction, claiming that there wasn’t enough advertising money to support more channels.

If that were true, presumably the market could have determined this for itself, and nonviable channels would have shut down in due course out of financial difficulty. Meanwhile, awarding more licenses would have brought more desperately needed revenue into the government’s coffers. But the thought doesn’t seem to have occurred to Mr. Pappas.

The minister also seems similarly unconcerned about the possibility of shutting down existing TV stations with hundreds of employees. Meanwhile, the prospective new station owners come with baggage of their own, be it serious legal entanglements or other businesses heavily dependent on government contracts, making a mockery of the claim that the auction was about combating corruption.

The EU took a forceful stand opposing the case against Mr. Georgiou. The restriction of freedom of expression involved in the attempt to reshape the TV landscape is a serious challenge to European values. European authorities, including the Court, if it comes to that, should treat it accordingly.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/syriza-strains-greeces-credibility-1473276200

Edited by Grk101
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  • 3 weeks later...

Looks like the focus now turns to Ivan Savvidis, as he was the next highest bid in the last round. Savvidis has already publicly accepted the license, and asked for a few days to submit the money. The other three parties have submited their first payments for their licenses. Savvidis also publicly made a public offer to Alpha and Star for a potential alliance.

http://greece.greekreporter.com/2016/09/26/government-friendly-tv-license-applicant-disqualifies-for-failing-to-pay-tender-tranche/

http://www.ekathimerini.com/212319/article/ekathimerini/news/focus-shifts-to-savvidis-after-kalogritsas-gives-up-tv-license

 

Of course one could argue that the attention should be turning to Alpha instead, who was the next highest bidder (after Marinakis, but he already has a license) from the 2nd round that Kalogritsas won his license from.

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Word is that Marinakis has already booked the television talent for his new channel, and is going big. The channel will be broadcasting out of the older MEGA studios. Rumor also is that he plans to buy the MEGA video library if it goes to bankruptcy auction.

Meanwhile at MEGA.......

This is based solely on classics from their video library at this point, while the other channels have started premiering their original content.

Edited by Grk101
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Savvidis today paid the first of three down payments for the 4th TV license in the form of 20.5 million Euro. So far his attempt get a cooperation with either Alpha or Star have failed. Not only that, those two channels have started a mudslinging campaign against Savvidis. Reports out of Thessaloniki is that he will build a TV network from scratch and will most likely be based out of Thessaloniki.

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  • 4 weeks later...

He might not be able to do it though, since the courts ruled that the license bidding process was unconstitutional. Back to square one. All the broadcasters will continue to broadcast without license like they did all these years. 

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The law that awarded the 4 licenses was deemed unconstitutional by the courts because according to the constitution only E.S.R. (Ethniko Symvoulio Tileorasis) is responsible for awarding broadcast licenses for private radio and television stations. However since 2015 E.S.R. was temporarily disbanded by the Syriza government, and any moves to elect a new 9 member board was blocked by New Democracy. basically E.S.R. became a political tool by the two parties. While this was going on Syriza decided to run a bidding process for 4 national television licences. This happened few month ago, but now the courts decided this move was unconstitutional and now a new bidding process will have to take place under the auspices of E.S.R.

In the meantime it is rumored that until the new bidding process takes place there will be 6 national television stations operating with a temporary license. Allegedly they are the four that won the licenses in the bidding process (ANT1, Skai, Alter Ego, Dimera) as well as the two that did not win (Alpha and Star). They will need to pay around 7 million Euro in licensing fee to operate. Let's see if this will happen.

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I don't think it has been decided, but I think it will be more than four. The new bidding process has not been declared yet, since the E.S.R. board has not been formed yet. This is a big political game between ND and Syriza right now. 

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On 10/31/2016 at 4:25 PM, Reaper said:

This is a complete circus - even by Greek standards.. So I suppose everyone who bid gets their money back and it all starts again.

haha... What money? They probably spent it already...:mailman-180457: {the check is in the mail, as they say...}

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  • 2 weeks later...

What a joke this whole process has been. The sad part is, the channels that had originally won licenses had already started to invest big in programing this year as a result. (Almost at per-crisis levels)

SKAI is still going through with their investment plans for this TV season. They just announced they are launching a 24 hour news channel "SKAI 24" on NOVA/OTE TV within a month, while they also have hopes to launch SKAI Satellite channel in North America and Australia. (Looks like their content deal with NGTV is over.)

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Quote

What a joke this whole process has been. The sad part is, the channels that had originally won licenses had already started to invest big in programing this year as a result. (Almost at per-crisis levels)

This TV license issue, like most things in Greece, has turned into one big debacle- are Greek politicians incapable of doing anything right or is the system so corrupted that it makes even good, positive attempts at change look bad?!  I think its anyone's guess where things go from here, the last thing I read was that the government was going to issue temporary licenses to all existing channels- is that still happening or are they going to attempt another  auction?!

 

Quote

SKAI is still going through with their investment plans for this TV season. They just announced they are launching a 24 hour news channel "SKAI 24" on NOVA/OTE TV within a month, while they also have hopes to launch SKAI Satellite channel in North America and Australia. (Looks like their content deal with NGTV is over.)

Interesting news, someone is actually going to launch an all-news channel in Greece, something that is long overdue IMO.  I think ERT should convert one of the Athens based channels to a news channel, although with the government being broke they most likely can't afford to a launch a news channel at this point.  That's probably a good thing anyway as with the political system in Greece it would just turn into a government mouthpiece instead of a serious news channel.

Skai parted ways with NGTV a while back, now I see why- they intend to launch their own international service.  I have read that they have been trying to form some sort of partnership with Alpha, to share programming, so far no deal has been reached.  It would be cool if the international channel devoted a part of its schedule to air a live block from their news channel that they will be launching.

Quote

Why not just give licences to those that want them? As long as they can show they have the programming and the financial means to do so let them have the licences?

That is what I said as well MCIBUS, of course logic doesn't work in a corrupted cesspool like Greece (or for that matter, any other country with rampant corruption, which these days seems to be most countries around the world :wink:).  I also don't understand what the deal was with the auction, normal practice would be to set a price for the license and say 'going forward anyone who wants to operate a TV channel in this country needs to have a license and the cost of the license is X amount'.  I can see why the government did this (collect as much money as possible) but why did the channel owners agree  to an auction where they could wind up (and eventually did) pay ridiculous amounts of money?!

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  • 3 months later...
  • 3 weeks later...

The Greek National Council for Radio and Television (ESR) is close to announcing a new licensing process. Supposedly the 9 member committee is having a hard time coming to agreement, but these are the three options on the table so far:

1. Delay license auction to sometime in the future, most likely until 2020 when Greece is expected to complete a series of frequency commitments it has.

2. Give out more than 4 licenses, but with low financial return.

3. Give out 5 or less licenses, as the market cannot support more.

http://www.tvnea.com/2017/04/blog-post_67.html

 

So basically option 1 is them being indecisive, option 2 is give them to anyone who wants one, option 3 is a rehash of the previous process, with 1 additional license available.... :gogreece:

Edited by Grk101
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  • 4 weeks later...
On 23/11/2016 at 6:10 AM, MCIBUS said:

Why not just give licences to those that want them? As long as they can show they have the programming and the financial means to do so let them have the licences?

They've already been broadcasting for 30 years without a license so why not? Because it makes too much sense and because Syriza are control freaks. They want to decide who gets the licenses so they can force the broadcaster to broadcast pro-Syriza content. If they don't the broadcaster looses their license. 

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