Spain plans 750 local DTT channels

[Gregg Lengling]

The Spanish Government has announced that Spain's local DTT market will be shared out by 750 TV channels in around 200 areas of more than 20,000 inhabitants throughout the Iberian Peninsula, each subdivided divided into four regions. Spanish regional governments are set to call for public tenders to the local DTT licences over the next few months.

One of the objectives of the new Local DTT National Plan, to be approved before the end of the year, is to consolidate the local TV marketplace and straighten out the very confusing legal situation, which has meant that some TV stations have been, strictly speaking, broadcasting illegally using poor infrastructure for many years. Hence, it is planned that the number of local DTT licences issued will be below the existing thousand or so local TV stations, meaning that many local analogue broadcasters face closure.

Spain's Minister of Science and Technology, Juan Costa, said that the launch of local DTT with local content would hugely aid the development and consolidation of the Spanish DTT market, but the Government's local DTT plans have been condemned as being "unrealistic" by local TV operators' association ATEL, which has demanded that the Administration implement a global DTT plan which does not threaten analogue switch-off.