Member of Romania’s National Audiovisual Council proposes must-carry change

Valentin Jucan, a member of Romania’s National Audiovisual Council (CNA), has recently proposed the partial elimination of must-carry for cable operators. “I propose the partial elimination of must carry, given the changes on the media market. I think we should think very serious if this must-carry concept should still exist. The digitization is to be implemented and I think must-carry should be limited to the public television TVR, and public local and regional TV services,” said Valentin Jucan, quoted by local news agency Mediafax. Moreover, when asked if taking stations out of must-carry would trigger an increase in subscription fees, Jucan said he did not think this would happen. Subscriptions to cable TV services were up 6.4 percent to 3.8 million in 2012, according to the data provided by Romania’s communications authority ANCOM. The number of cable subscriptions in digital format increased by 40 percent to 1.24 million subscribers. Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com