PRESIDENT Rodrigo R. Duterte has renewed for another 25 years the operating franchise of the Manila Broadcasting Co. (MBC).
Signed on Oct. 30, Republic Act No. 11109 grants the MBC a franchise to construct, install, operate and maintain radio and television broadcasting stations.
The MBC, the firm behind DZRH radio and DZRH News Television, Aksyon Radyo, Love Radio, Yes The Best, Easy Rock, and Radyo Natin, is owned by the FJE Group of Companies.
Under the law, the company has a responsibility to “provide, free of charge, adequate public service time which is reasonable and sufficient to enable the government, through the broadcasting stations or facilities of the grantee, to reach the pertinent populations or portions thereof on important public issues and relay important public announcements and warnings concerning public emergencies and calamities, as necessity, urgency or law may require.”
The franchise holder will also have to provide “at all times sound and balanced programming; promote public participation; assist in the functions of public information and education; conform to the ethics of honest enterprise; promote audience sensibility and empowerment including closed captioning and not use it stations or facilities for the broadcasting of obscene or indecent language, speech, act or scene; or for the dissemination of deliberately false information and willful misrepresentation, to the detriment of the public interest; or to incite encourage, or assist in subversive or treasonable acts.”
The law requires MBC to secure from the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) permits and licenses for the construction and operation of stations or facilities. Also, the grantee is not allowed to use any frequency in the radio or television spectrum without authorization from the NTC.
The franchise granted to the MBC will be deemed revoked if it fails to operate continuously for two years. — Arjay L. Balinbin
