The Polish government should offer its support to Polish capital, according to Zygmunt Solorz-Zak, the founder and owner of the country’s leading broadcaster Polsat.
Speaking in a panel discussion entitled The television market in Poland – what’s yet to come? at PIKE 2017, he added that it is not worried about the government’s plans to deconcentrate media ownership and at the same time stressed “I don’t involve myself in politics”.
Solorz-Zak also supported the other panellists in their view that the public broadcaster TVP should be funded by receiver licence fees and no longer carry advertising. However, he revealed that he had had a conversation with TVP’s head Jacek Kurski in which Kurski had avoided discussing the issue of advertising.
Solorz-Zak also downplayed a dispute between Cyfrowy Polsat and the national commercial broadcaster TV Puls over the latter’s placement in Cyfrowy Polsat’s EPG, adding that it wasn’t his decision and he was willing to talk.
Although Dariusz Dabski, the head of TV Puls, had previously threatened legal action, he now struck a more conciliatory note in the panel discussion by saying “we are all one family and should discuss issues rather than go to court”.
However, at the same time he also said that the EPG move had serious impacted TV Puls’s viewing figures, with the audience share falling by 10%.
Meanwhile, Jerzy Straszewski, the president of the Polish Chamber of Electronic Communications (PIKE), said that regulators should not become involved in the dispute and that it should be resolved by internal discussions.
