A meeting of Greece’s broadcasting regulator, the National Council for Radio & Television (NCRTV) says that the nation can only support between four and six privately-owned commercial network TV channels.

The meeting with the regulator was attended by the recently restructured national public broadcaster (ERT), digital TV transmission system provider Digea, and the National Technical University of Athens representative Prof. Christos Kapsalis.

However, while not quite a firm decision, this conclusion of the meeting is in direct opposition to studies from the private sector which says the available spectrum can easily support between nine and 12 channels.

There’s also the long-outstanding matter of an auction for broadcasting licences. All those at the meeting, with the exception of Digea, said that the current technology does not permit more than six private channels to transmit in HD and SD modes simultaneously, given the need to make part of the spectrum available for telecommunications by 2020-2022, according to a report carried by Greekreporter.

Categories: Articles, Broadcast, Policy, Regulation