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04-05-2009

Viasat 3 breaks with ORTT

By Gyorgy Karpati
    Commercial broadcaster Viasat3 (www.viasat3.hu) announced its departure from the authority of the Hungarian National Radio and Television Commission (ORTT, www.ortt.hu) on April 30.

    The decision was made by the TV channel's owner Modern Times Group Broadcasting AB (MTG) (www.mtg.se) which initiated the removal of Viasat3 from the registry of ORTT starting May 1. The broadcaster of the TV channel will be Viasat Broadcasting UK registered under the independent UK regulator OFCOM (www.ofcom.org).

    The three other Hungarian language TV channels owned by MTG (TV6, Viasat History and Viasat Explorer) are already under the authority of OFCOM.

    The management of Viasat3 insisted that the decision will not cause problems for the Hungarian broadcast and was undertaken because of financial and organizational reasons.

    Viasat3 is one of the stronger TV channels in Hungary, generally ranked third after the two biggest commercial channels TV2 and RTL Klub.

    Modern Times Group operates TV channel and network in 21 countries including Scandinavia and the Baltics and has more than 80 million viewers around the world.