Sanctioned project that allows broadcasters to cede all their programming

President Jair Bolsonaro signed this Tuesday (12) a bill (PL) that allows a television or radio station to cede all its programming time to show independently produced programs. School subjects had been approved by the National Congress at the end of June.

Currently, a broadcaster can cede 25% of its programming. According to the text, which will now come into effect, this percentage becomes a limit for advertising. The project foresees that, even with total transfer of programming, it must have educational and cultural purposes.

The project also establishes that broadcasters will be held responsible for any irregularities in programming, in addition to prohibiting concessionaires and permissionaires from transferring, marketing and assigning the total or partial management of the execution of the broadcasting service, which is a public concession.

Many broadcasters already give part of their programming time, through space commercialization contracts, to independent content producers or to churches and, in practice, the new law benefits these common religious programs on radio and television stations. The assignment of space to churches has already been questioned by the Justice and a decision has even condemned two open TV stations to reduce the total period sold on their schedule to 25% of the daily time, including spaces sold to religious or non-profit entities. The project approved today puts an end to this limitation.

According to the rapporteur of the project in the Senate, Vanderlan Cardoso (PSD-GO), the text meets an old demand of the sector to discipline the practices of transfer, commercialization and assignment of programming time of radio and television stations for the broadcasting of programming. independent.