Ukrainian radio station fined for speaking Russian on air
The National Council for Television and Radio Broadcasting fined the Radio-Era FM project (LLC Radio-Era Television and Radio Company) UAH 317,4 thousand for violating language quotas.
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This decision was made at a meeting on October 5, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports with reference to the press service of the National Council.
“On the air of radio stations there should be 25%, and in the near future 30%, of Ukrainian songs. We conducted an inspection and found that on Radio Era FM in the period from 07:00 to 14:00 their share was 23%,” noted Chairman of the National Council Yuri Artemenko.
At the same time, a representative of the television and radio company, legal adviser Oleg Pilipenko, explained that this could have been caused by a cyber attack of the Petya A virus: the computer system, including the audio database server and the archive server with radio broadcasts, along with the radio station’s electronic broadcast network, failed.
Radio Era was a Ukrainian-language station from the very beginning. I don’t deny that there was a violation, but it turned out that we are not a music radio station, but a talk radio station. We had a minimum number of not even songs, but parts of musical compositions in journalistic programs. Most likely, this happened for the following reasons. We could not fully answer the inspector because the so-called virus destroyed all our archives,” said a representative of the television and radio company.
Member of the National Council Sergei Kostinsky, for his part, considers the situation similar to that which happened at Hromadske Radio, which is also a talk radio station. The fine for Hromadsky was UAH 1751,36.
“In a situation where they (Hromadske Radio - Ed.) during a certain period of time broadcast two songs in Russian, but there was not a single song in Ukrainian, a violation of the law regarding quotas occurred. This is the same thing, so there is no reason for us to level out the rules of the law in any way,” Kostinsky said.
It was decided that such a violation is grounds for imposing a sanction of “collection of a fine” in the amount of 5% percent of the total amount of the license fee. In the case of Radio Era FM, the fine is 317 thousand 438,21 UAH. The television and radio company is also obliged to eliminate the identified deficiencies within a month.
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