The one hundred and twenty and one hundred and fifty-page publications provide a detailed overview of the authority’s work in the field of infocommunications and the operation of the Media Council in 2020. As every year, the professional reports enriched with graphs and tables are available on the NMHH website from the end of May this year.

The electronic communications report

The parliamentary report provides information broken down by professional areas and provides an overview of current technological trends, in particular the regulatory challenges arising from new technologies. A separate chapter deals with the past year of the postal services market, developments in the management of finite resources (i.e. spectrum and identifier management as well as measurement service), the protection of user interests, child protection and educational support, as well as the authority’s international professional activities.

Of course, as with any review of 2020, the main emphasis is given to the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting emergency that has transformed the entire industry and everyday life. “We present our report on the communications work of the past year with the conviction that technologies not only help us survive the pandemic, but also overcome it,” reads the message from Monika Karas, President of NMHH, in the publication.

Similarly, the whole report is determined by the transposition of the European Electronic Communications Code into national law. Hungary was the first in the EU to implement the content of the code, which brought changes affecting the entire sector. Details of the related extensive official work can also be found in the publication.

The Report of the Media Council

As the pandemic also profoundly affected the media sector, Covid was also a specific topic in the Media Council’s annual publication. “The emergency measures have induced many serious structural changes and rearrangements in the market: the revenues of media players have decreased, in addition to advertising revenues as well as marketing expenditures. In order to protect the industry, we need innovation in the media market as a whole and a predictable supportive regulatory environment,” writes Monika Karas, adding: “The Media Council has taken into account the new circumstances, with a view to flexibility and fairness, but also the obligations contained in the legislation and in the contracts with the media service providers.”

The publication also reports on the regulatory and supportive activities of the Media Council, the work of the body’s Institute for Media Studies, the administration of media service licences and the decisions taken on freedom of speech, opinion and the press. A separate chapter deals with the monitoring activities of the Media Council, i.e. the analysis of radio and television contents. The report illustrates the situation of the media market in Hungary through about eighty figures and tables.

In addition, a twenty-page appendix describes media consumption data for 2019-2020. From this we can get a detailed picture of the access to Hungarian televisions and radios, their programme flow structure and the development of the printed press and the use of the internet in Hungary. The appendix to the report summarises last year’s awards and festival appearances for films and programmes previously supported by the Media Council’s patronage programme.