list of contributors - GALA

4. Case Report
Topic: Fair Competition restrictive practices. Resolution Nº SPPLC/ 0007/2005
Case: Televen vs. Venevision and Radio Caracas Television
Who: Ministry of Production and Commerce – Superintendence for the Promotion
and Protection of Fair Competition (PROCOMPETENCIA)
When: February 24 th , 2005
Where: Caracas – Venezuela.
What Happened: Televen made a formal complaint against Venevision and Radio Caracas
Television for the presumable commission of exclusionary practices, boycott
and agreements for fixing fees and commercialization conditions in the
advertising market.
The plaintiff, which is a relatively small TV channel, alleged that Venevision
and Radio Caracas Television, which are the biggest and older TV channels
in Venezuela, were making practices to exclude Televen from the advertising
and national TV investment market, by planning the programming and
sharing the market thru fees and prices agreements and commercialization
conditions for the advertisers, like making contracts which limited the
possibility of contracting with Televen, in the pre-sale seasons.
Televen also alleged that both channels were associated with a company
named Sercotel, which collected the payments that the advertisers were
making for the advertising spaces, and then shared it between the two
channels.
Both channels alleged, among other things, that they did not make
agreements for sharing the market, and that their activities were common
practices in the sector.
Procompetencia decided that indeed there were arranged and exclusionary
practices, since from the evidence was demonstrate the sharing of the
investment of the advertisers and the existence from RCTV and Venevisión
of an agreement of wills to distribute the market of advertising spaces. Also,
that the preferential benefits that RCTV and Venevision had offered to the
advertisers in the pre-sale seasons, conditioning them to exclusivity,
constituted an exclusionary practice.
5. Case Report
Topic: Coming into force of some dispositions of the Radio and TV Social Liability
Act.
When: March 8 th , 2005
Where: Caracas, Venezuela
What Happened: The Radio and TV Social Liability Act, which came into force last December
8 th , 2004, postponed the validity of some of its disposition to lapses of three,
six, nine, twelve, eighteen, twenty four and thirty six months. In this sense,
last March 8 th came into force the following dispositions:
• Adaptation of the TV and radio programs to each programming
hours;
• Broadcasting of one hundred percent (100%) of national
production Propaganda;
• Obligation of the TV channels to publish the programming
guides. Also, before each program the station must announce the kind of
program and the classified elements that it contents; and to broadcast the
programming according to the guides;