Latvia intends to ban radio advertising in Russian | Radio news

The Latvian National Council for Electronic Media (NLECMI) plans to submit proposals regarding licenses for radio broadcasting and the use of languages ​​in radio advertising to the Saeima in the near future.

Chairman of the National Electronic Council Ivars Abolins told members of the subcommittee on media policy of the Sejm Commission on Human Rights and Public Affairs that he proposes to ban advertising in Russian on commercial radio stations, as well as to stop issuing licenses for radio broadcasting in Russian.

And since commercial radio stations renew their licenses every eight years, gradually all Russian-language radio stations in Latvia will be closed, Abolins noted.

Media expert, board member of the society “For Legal Content” Gunta Lidaka noted that Abolins did not discuss this issue with industry representatives. According to her, this contradicts democratic principles.

“These proposals were not discussed in the industry. These proposals were submitted to parliament, despite the fact that none of the media organizations were informed about such changes. And we saw how work on media laws in Latvia takes place without democratic processes. And Thank God that the chairman and members of the commission have a much better idea of ​​how democratic legislation works, how certain bills are discussed in a democratic society, than the council on radio and television. The most paradoxical thing is that these innovations, in principle, do not improve the media. environment of Latvia, but on the contrary, they worsen the situation,” Lidaka said.

In turn, the head of the European Association of Electronic Media of National Minorities, Andrzej Piatetsky, notes that the closure of Russian-language radio stations will have a strong, but very local impact on the Latvian market. And the audience will go to non-Latvian resources.

“We believe that this law will work exclusively in the interests of international platforms. We all understand perfectly well that today it is not a problem to switch from a radio station to streaming music services, such as Apple music and YouTube music or Spotify. That is, this is a loss of audience, and behind it the loss of money in local media. These restrictions will work exclusively on local media and will not work on international platforms,” Pyatetsky said.

Also regarding the ban on advertising in Russian. Advertisers will follow the audience to international platforms. This is where money and taxes will go, accordingly, says Pyatetsky.

Gunta Lidaka also noted that representatives of the advertising industry completely disagree with such proposals from the Electronic Media Council.

“The advertising industry immediately stated at the meeting that such changes are unacceptable to them, that this worsens the economic situation of the Latvian media and worsens the possibility of creating local content in the Latvian media. Therefore, this contradicts all European legislation, which says that we must every country of the European Union defends the interests of media, freedom, media diversity,” Lidaka concluded.