The Polish public broadcaster TVP has scored a legal victory against Spanski Enterprises in a New York court.
As a result, its international channel TVP Polonia will once again be available to viewers throughout the Americas.
In a statement, TVP says that it signed its first contract with the Canadian company Spanski Enterprises in 1994. However, the decision to make the contract subject to US law was made when TVP’s president Robert Kwiatkowski, now a member of the National Media Council, was on the board and resulted in any disputes about breaches of the contract being extremely expensive for TVP.
It adds that although the contract expired on December 13, 2019, Spanski Enterprises brought a court action against TVP before that date claiming it had the right to unilaterally extend the duration of the contract authorising the exclusive distribution of TVP Polonia in the Americas for the next 10 years.
TVP notes that the terms of the contract assuming the exclusivity of Spanski Enterprises to distribute the channel in certain markets and gave it many other rights assessed as unfavourable to TVP.
TVP was therefore forced to suspend the distribution of TVP Polonia in the last phase of the dispute but following the court ruling it will once more be made available to viewers in Americas, especially the large Polish diaspora residing in the US.
