Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of president Jair Bolsonaro, is promoting changes to audiovisual law “Lei do SeAC 2011” to revoke the ban for cross property.
Approved in 2011 amidst strong controversy, the law that regulates Brazilian pay (“Lei do SeAC”) is once again a talking point after congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of president Jair Bolsonaro, asked to eliminate the article banning cross property.
The article establishes that pay TV operators can’t be programmers as well.
It’s this article that’s now complicating the Time Warner acquisition by AT&T in Brazil, since the telecommunications giant also own Sky Brazil.
In fact, both antitrust regulator CADE and Anatel approved the purchase of Time Warner by AT&T, but on the condition that it sells all or part of its stake in Sky to conform to the cross-property ban.
Something similar happens to FOX, which offers through its FOX+ streaming platform its linear networks, which motivated an intervention by Anatel to understand that, by offering linear networks, FOX+ became a pay-TV operator.
The regulator thus suspended the application in a precautionary manner, based on the same principle of cross ownership: a programmer cannot itself be an operator. Justice days later lifted the measure, but the case is still under discussion.
According to Eduardo Bolsonaro, this article only benefits “a great local television station,” referring, though not to mentioning it, to Globo.
This is the second time in less than a month that the audiovisual sector has been targeted by the Bolsonaro Government, which threatened days ago to close Ancine.
