A1 Croatia has accused United Group of putting pressure on it to continue distributing two of its channels.
A1 Croatia earlier announced that it would no longer carry United Group’s N1 and SportKlub from the end of this month, replacing them with similar channels such as Arena Sport.
In a statement A1 Croatia said: “When price negotiations failed, A1 Croatia made a business, purely commercial decision to replace these channels with channels of the same type. The response to this decision was a statement published by the N1 channel and a series of TV reports and announcements that followed, in which A1 Croatia was attacked for making a business decision. Among other things, the accusation that this business decision is “a blow to media freedom and censorship during the election campaign” is the best indicator of the unreliability of this media house, which by exclusive and propaganda journalism strikes at the same media freedom business interests of the United Media Group in Croatia instead of the public interest”.
It added: “At A1 Croatia, we are not surprised by such actions of the United Media Group, which in Croatia owns TV channels and portals N1, Sport Klub, Nova TV, Doma TV and the dnevnik.hr portal, as well as the telecom operator Telemach Hrvatska. Precisely because of such methods in business negotiations, United Media Group channels have already excluded three operators in Slovenia, then operators in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Northern Macedonia, etc. Given that we are still exposed to media attacks by N1, A1 Croatia will take all necessary legal steps”.
A1 Croatia concluded by saying: “Regardless of the damage done so far, A1 Croatia is still interested in distributing the N1 channel, all in the best interest of its users. Regardless of the messages that N1 is ready to broadcast its program free of charge, A1 Croatia is open to achieving commercially acceptable conditions for retaining N1 channels. However, what we cannot accept at all is media blackmail, ie journalism which, due to the commercial interests of the owners, puts pressure on any company through its own media due to a legitimate business decision”.
