NMHH Media Council: HUF 186.3 million granted for the overhead costs of community media service providers
At its weekly session, the Media Council of the National Media and Infocommunications Authority decided to provide HUF 186.3 million worth of grants to thirty community television and radio stations under the so-called overheads tender of the Hungarian Media Patronage Programme. The Media Council also approved the study on the sponsorship practices of television stations with the widest population coverage, which revealed that the percentage of sponsored content in relation to transmission time was less than 2 per cent in the case of all television channels.
Support for community media service providers
In the first round of the call for tender announced in 2018 under the Hungarian Media Patronage Programme for providing support to community media service providers for financing their overhead and operation costs, the Media Council awarded a total of HUF 186.3 million worth of funds to 30 television and radio stations. The beneficiaries included Füzesabonyi Városi Televízió, Rábaközi Televízió based in Csorna, Tatai Televízió, Szentgál Televízió, Irány Tv based in Ládbesenyő, Régió Plusz Televízió of Pest County, Kiskőrös Televízió, Csurgói Városi Televízió, Soltvadkerti Tv, TiszapART Televízió of Szeged, Körös Televízió of Békés County, Karcag Televízió, Városi Tv Mohács, Somogy Tv, Trió Tv Dunántúl of Sárvár, Hegyvidék Televízió of Budapest, Bonum Tv and Apostol Tv. The radio stations that have been awarded grants include Alpha Rádió and Táska Rádió of Székesfehérvár, Csillagpont Rádió of Miskolc, Sárrét FM of Püspökladány, Balaton Rádió based in Siófok, Mária Rádió, Magyar Katolikus Rádió with two frequencies, and Európa Rádió, which submitted tenders for four frequencies: in Miskolc, Debrecen, Nyíregyháza, and Kisújszállás.
Study on television programme sponsorship
The Media Council approved the latest study on the sponsorship practices of television stations with the widest population coverage. Thanks to NMHH’s regular data collection activity, the sponsorship practices of media service providers can be easily traced and the regulatory inspection of the observance of the legislation on the presentation of sponsorship messages has also become more efficient. The national commercial television channels with the widest population coverage (RTL Klub, Tv2) along with public service station Duna Tv were a permanent fixture of the sample used for examining the second half of 2017, while—based on the size of their coverage area—public service channels Duna World and m5 and commercial channels Sport1, Story4, Story5 and Viasat6 were also included in the sample for one month each.
The 17,664 hours of transmission time of the nine different television stations featured 81,799 identifiable sponsorship messages from 1,134 different companies. Tv2 featured the largest number of sponsorship messages (45,050), followed by RTL Klub (26,870) and Duna Tv (5,697). The percentage of sponsored content in relation to transmission time was 0.20, 0.75 and 1.41 per cent in the case of Duna Tv, RTL Klub and Tv2, respectively. The figures indicate that non-spot advertising sponsorship failed to assume a strong position in the field of commercial sponsorship messages in 2017 as well; RTL Klub showed the strongest growth with a one-fifth increase in sponsorship spots.
Most companies (107) appeared as sponsors in Tv2’s morning infotainment programme entitled Mokka, followed by RTL Klub’s Stíluskalauz (97) and Életmódkalauz (78) programmes. By far the largest number of sponsorship messages (16,178) were aired in Tv2’s weather report, followed by Mokka (2,461), Story Extra on RTL Klub (1,916), and Balatoni nyár (1,910) broadcast on Duna Tv and Duna World. Oddly enough, the majority of companies (907, 80 per cent) involved in sponsorship were committed to a single television station, while 18 per cent (188) worked with two media service providers.
The full study is available on the NMHH website.
Frequency-related decisions
The Media Council concluded the content-related examination of the bids received for the Budapest 98.6 MHz regional community radio frequency and requested further information from both bidders, Manna Vision Media Kft. and Scaletta Kft. The bidders have fifteen days from delivery to comply with the said request.
The Media Council examined the fulfilment of the formal requirements of the bid submitted for the Tokaj 101.8 MHz local radio frequency and called on the sole bidder, Hegyalja Média Kft., to submit missing documents.
The media service provision rights of 98.4 Mega Rádió, broadcasting on the Békéscsaba 98.4 MHz local frequency, have been extended by the Council for five more years, until June 2023, at the request of its media service provider Telekom Békés Kft.