The Media Council has found six episodes of the Éjjel-nappal Budapest series to be in violation of the law. The media service provider misclassified episodes as 'Suitable for 12 years and over' which, based on their content, should have been correctly made available only under the rating 'Suitable for 16 years and over'.
The illegal content presented how one of the TV show's characters became a drug addict, her first drug procurement and use, the failed attempts of friends and relatives and the outcome of her drug career as well as the distortion of her personality, her aggravating psychic disturbances, moral degradation, how her relationships turned totally hollow and finally, viewers could watch her become physically drained and pass out without being provided with any counterpoint or an interpretative context. The programme also presented the procurement, consumption and passing on of drugs without formulating any critique or comment.

The pertaining regulation does not prohibit the transmission of such contents, but such contents may only be broadcast if the appropriate age rating is indicated. The law requires the media to be heedful of those members of its potential audience who are not yet able to evaluate and interpret correctly and properly what they see. The Media Council of the NMHH has thus ordered the channel to pay a fine of HUF 39,375,000. It should be noted that the Authority has received 52 complaints from spectators since the start of the show.

The Media Council of the NMHH is continuously monitoring the age rating practice of television channels to protect minors. Since 2011 the Council has imposed sanctions against RTL Klub 11 times and it did so against TV2 on 13 occasions for similar infringements, but the public service media is no exception: it has been condemned several times.

Further decisions and research to defend viewer rights

At its last meeting the Media Council of the NMHH decided to launch proceedings against the media service provider of TV2 for suspicion of illicit product placement in an April transmission of its morning show 'Mokka'.

The Council also had studies prepared by the Authority on its agenda. According to the findings of the surveys on children's programmes and TV product placement practices carried out by NMHH's programme analysts, there has not been any children's programme in 2014 which television viewers complained about and the Authority has not registered any cartoon with inappropriate age rating yet. According to another study the survey on TV product placement in 2014 Q1 showed that after Christmas the number of product placements fell sharply, yet it still remains high with only a small fraction of them giving rise to legality problems.