Skopje, 28 September 2023 – Today, the Agency for Audio and Audiovisual Media Services held its third public meeting, at which Agency Director Zoran Trajchevski presented an overview of the activities carried out in accordance with the Annual Work Programme for the past three months.
Those present had an opportunity to hear about the activities related to the supervisions conducted over the broadcasters, the operators of public electronic communication networks, the providers of on-demand AVM services, and the print media publishers; the imposed public warning measures; the conducted researches, as well as the activities in the field of international cooperation.
Also presented at the meeting were the measures undertaken by the Agency and the most frequent violations committed by the broadcasters and operators of public electronic communication networks (OPECN) in 2020, 2021 and 2022. As Sanja Filipovska, M.A., of the Department of Legal Affairs and Public Procurement pointed out, the most frequent violations by the broadcasters had been the result of their non-compliance with the rules for minors’ protection and for broadcasting at least 30% of programme that is originally created as Macedonian audiovisual works, while the OPECN’s most frequent violations had been due to retransmitting programme services that had not been covered by the programme service registration certificates issued by the Agency.
In the above three years, the Agency had issued a total of 143 public warnings and initiated 17 misdemeanour proceedings against broadcasters, and 35 public warnings and 8 misdemeanour proceedings against OPECN, respectively. A discussion was opened on this topic in order to establish the reasons for the violations and to give recommendations that the radio and television stations should pay more attention in the future to increase the level of compliance with the legal obligations.