12:11 26.07.2021

In early days of new requirements of language law, TV industry turns out to be inconsistent in protecting language – council

3 min read
In early days of new requirements of language law, TV industry turns out to be inconsistent in protecting language – council

The National Council for Television and Radio Broadcasting says that in the early days of the new requirements of the law on ensuring the functioning of the Ukrainian language as a national language, the television industry turned out to be inconsistent in protecting the language.

"We saw and were convinced that a formal attitude towards such a sensitive instrument as language leads to the opposite result. Instead of investing moderate money in the creation of the usual high-quality television product, the television channels treated this formally and deliberately simplistically, in order to then appeal to the drop in ratings and loss of income. Unfortunately, in the early days of the new requirements, we were faced with the fact that the television industry turned out to be inconsistent in the issue of protecting the language," the national council said in a statement.

The department said some players immediately ignored the requirements of the law, taking advantage of this to win in competitive competition, while others, having survived rating losses for several days, also resorted to breaking the law.

"Only superficially, for now, analyzing the reasons for these losses, one can name a number of reasons. One of them is the categorically low quality of sound, which sharply alienated even the part of the audience who wanted to watch in Ukrainian! Broadcasters did not prepare for the transition to broadcasting in the national language two the years that the legislator allocated for this, they did it at the last moment carelessly, primitively and formally. It is a pity that the quality of dubbing, which has been and remains a special pride of film distribution for many years, is not available to some television channels even with unheard of financial support from owner," the national council said.

The department said the most outrageous is the fact that deliberate violation of the law occurs with the understanding of the lack of tools to punish such violations.

"It is necessary to improve the legislation, and finally take on the development of economic levers: from fines and, most importantly, to the system of national grants for the creation of high-quality Ukrainian-language content, public preferences for those who produce this product, to the program of events in which all powerful players of media and cinema will be included, to develop a whole strategy of quality and values ​​in creating a Ukrainian-language market," the council said in the statement.

The National Council calls on broadcasters to strictly adhere to the current legislation, as well as to make all practical efforts so that the Ukrainian language takes its rightful place on the air and on online platforms.

"We call on legislators to study the situation in society and make amendments to the legislation necessary to improve relations between public institutions and the media industry, in order to ensure the functioning of the national language as a tool for uniting Ukrainian society, a means of strengthening the state unity and territorial integrity of Ukraine, its independent statehood and national security," the council said.

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