TIRANA, March 22 – Albania is late in the process of digitizing all broadcasts as a pan-European June deadline approaches, according discussions held at a meeting in Tirana this week.
Prime Minister Edi Rama and OSCE Ambassador Florian Raunig both attended the meeting and expressed the need to speed up the process.
OSCE has been a strong supporter in the process, a support Raunig pledged to continue.
The government has contracted a German company to assist in the process.
Digitalization is not only a technological and modernization breakthrough, but is also a chance to create an orderly, well-regulated and more advanced broadcast landscape in Albania, according to the OSCE.
“This new broadcast market should be characterized by equal chances and opportunities for all media players. It should provide a transparent business environment without any monopoly or privileged positions,” Raunig said.
He added this fair competition of commercial media should be a guarantee that broadcast media will not be only a profitable business venture, but will also fulfill the media’s basic social role and responsibility — to safeguard democracy and serve the interests of all Albanian citizens.
This will also be a new step for the public TVSH that has still to be considered as a “truly independent national public broadcaster,” he added.
For the last two years, Albanian parliamentary parties have not managed to implement the existing legislation and elect a new steering board for the RTSH, which has blocked its transformation process into an economically sustainable, editorially independent and professionally sound public broadcaster that is controlled by the public, funded by the public and made for the public.
