Federal Act
on Radio and Television
(RTVA)

¹ This Act reg­u­lates the broad­cast­ing, pro­cessing, trans­mis­sion and re­cep­tion of ra­dio and tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vices. Un­less this Act provides to the con­trary, the trans­mis­sion of pro­gramme ser­vices us­ing tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions tech­niques is based on the Tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions Act of 30 April 1997³ (TCA).

² Pro­gram­ming of minor ed­it­or­i­al im­port­ance does not fall un­der this Act. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­term­ine the cri­ter­ia.

In this Act:

a.

pro­gramme ser­vice means se­quence of pro­grammes which are offered con­tinu­ously, defined in time and trans­mit­ted us­ing tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions tech­niques and which are in­ten­ded for the pub­lic;

b.

pro­grammemeans part of a pro­gramme ser­vice which is self-con­tained in terms of form and con­tent;

c.

ed­it­or­i­al pro­grammemeans a pro­gramme which is not ad­vert­ising.

c^bis.⁴

ed­it­or­i­al pub­lic­a­tionmeans an ed­it­or­i­al pro­gramme in a Swiss broad­caster‘s pro­gramme ser­vice or a con­tri­bu­tion pro­duced by the ed­it­or­i­al staff as part of the oth­er journ­al­ist­ic ser­vices of the Swiss Broad­cast­ing Cor­por­a­tion (SRG SSR) (Art. 25 para. 3 let. b);

d.

broad­castermeans the nat­ur­al or leg­al per­son bear­ing re­spons­ib­il­ity for the cre­ation of pro­grammes or for the com­pil­a­tion there­of in­to a pro­gramme ser­vice;

e.

Swiss pro­gramme ser­vicemeans a pro­gramme ser­vice which is sub­ject to Swiss sov­er­eignty in ac­cord­ance with the pro­vi­sions of the European Con­ven­tion on Trans­fron­ti­er Tele­vi­sion of 5 May 1989⁵; these pro­vi­sions also ap­ply, mu­tatis mutandis, to ra­dio pro­gramme ser­vices;

f.

trans­mis­sion by means of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions tech­niquesmeansthe elec­tric­al, mag­net­ic, op­tic­al or oth­er elec­tro­mag­net­ic send­ing or re­ceiv­ing of in­form­a­tion by wire or ra­dio (Art. 3 let. c TCA⁶);

g.

broad­cast­ingmeans the trans­mis­sion by means of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions tech­niques and in­ten­ded for the gen­er­al pub­lic;

h.

tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice means the trans­mis­sion of in­form­a­tion for third parties by means of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions tech­niques (Art. 3 let. b TCA);

i.

coupled ser­vicemeans atele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice which con­sti­tutes a func­tion­al unit with the pro­gramme ser­vice or which is ne­ces­sary for the use of the pro­gramme ser­vice;

j.

pro­cessing means the op­er­a­tion of ser­vices or tech­nic­al pro­ced­ures for the trans­mis­sion, bund­ling, en­cryp­tion or mar­ket­ing of pro­gramme ser­vices or for the se­lec­tion there­of on re­cep­tion equip­ment;

k.

ad­vert­ising means any pub­lic state­ment in the pro­gramme ser­vice, the pur­pose of which is to pro­mote the con­clu­sion of trans­ac­tions con­cern­ing goods or ser­vices, the sup­port of a cause or idea, or the achieve­ment of an­oth­er ef­fect de­sired by the ad­vert­iser or by the broad­caster and which is broad­cast in re­turn for pay­ment or sim­il­ar con­sid­er­a­tion or for self-pro­mo­tion pur­poses;

l.

of­fer for sale means ad­vert­ising which in­vites the pub­lic to dir­ectly con­clude a trans­ac­tion con­cern­ing the presen­ted goods or ser­vices;

m.

tele-shop­ping pro­gramme means a pro­gramme which ex­clus­ively con­tains of­fers for sale and lasts for at least 15 minutes;

n.

tele-shop­ping pro­gramme ser­vice means a pro­gramme ser­vice which con­sists solely of of­fers for sale and oth­er ad­vert­ising;

o.

spon­sor­ship means the par­ti­cip­a­tion of a nat­ur­al or leg­al per­son in the dir­ect or in­dir­ect fin­an­cing of a pro­gramme, with a view to pro­mot­ing their own name, their own trade mark or their own im­age.

p.⁷

ra­dio and tele­vi­sion fee: the fee in terms of Art­icle 68 para­graph 1.

Any per­son wish­ing to broad­cast a Swiss pro­gramme ser­vice must:

a.

no­ti­fy this in ad­vance to the Fed­er­al Of­fice of Com­mu­nic­a­tions (OF­COM); or

b.

hold a li­cence in ac­cord­ance with this Act.

Ra­dio and tele­vi­sion are in­de­pend­ent from the state.

¹ All ra­dio or tele­vi­sion pro­grammes must re­spect fun­da­ment­al rights. In par­tic­u­lar, pro­grammes must re­spect hu­man dig­nity, must be neither dis­crim­in­at­ory nor con­trib­ute to ra­cial hatred, nor en­danger pub­lic mor­als nor glor­i­fy or trivi­al­ise vi­ol­ence.

² Ed­it­or­i­al pro­grammes with in­form­a­tion con­tent must present facts and events fairly, so that the audi­ence can form its own opin­ion. Per­son­al views and com­ment­ar­ies must be iden­ti­fi­able as such.

³ The pro­grammes must not jeop­ard­ise the in­tern­al or ex­tern­al se­cur­ity of the Con­fed­er­a­tion or can­tons, their con­sti­tu­tion­al or­der or the ob­serv­ance of Switzer­land’s ob­lig­a­tions un­der in­ter­na­tion­al law.

⁴ Li­censed pro­gramme ser­vices must ap­pro­pri­ately ex­press the vari­ety of events and opin­ions in the to­tal­ity of their ed­it­or­i­al pro­grammes. If a cov­er­age area is served by an ad­equate num­ber of pro­gramme ser­vices, the li­cens­ing au­thor­ity may re­lease one or more broad­casters in the li­cence from the vari­ety ob­lig­a­tion.

Through the choice of trans­mis­sion time or oth­er meas­ures, broad­casters must en­sure that minors are not con­fron­ted by pro­grammes which jeop­ard­ise their phys­ic­al, men­tal, mor­al or so­cial de­vel­op­ment.

Con­tri­bu­tions pro­duced by the ed­it­or­i­al staff as part of the oth­er journ­al­ist­ic ser­vices from SRG SSR must com­ply with the pro­gramme ser­vice prin­ciples set out in Art­icles 4 and 5. The vari­ety re­quire­ment (Art. 4 para. 4) ap­plies only to dossiers re­lated to elec­tions and pop­u­lar votes.

¹ Un­less fed­er­al law provides oth­er­wise, broad­casters are not bound by the in­struc­tions of fed­er­al, can­ton­al or com­mun­al au­thor­it­ies.

² In the design of their ed­it­or­i­al pub­lic­a­tions and the ad­vert­ising, in par­tic­u­lar in the choice of themes, hand­ling of con­tent and rep­res­ent­a­tion, they are free and shall bear the re­spons­ib­il­ity there­for.¹²

³ No-one may de­mand that a broad­caster broad­cast spe­cif­ic present­a­tions and in­form­a­tion.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may re­quire tele­vi­sion broad­casters, with­in a frame­work of prac­tic­al feas­ib­il­ity and with ap­pro­pri­ate re­sources:

a.

to re­serve a sub­stan­tial pro­por­tion of the rel­ev­ant broad­cast­ing time for Swiss and oth­er European works;

b.

to re­serve an ap­pro­pri­ate amount of broad­cast­ing time or pro­gramme costs in their tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vices for the broad­cast­ing of Swiss and European works by in­de­pend­ent pro­du­cers.

² Tele­vi­sion broad­casters with a na­tion­al or re­gion­al-lan­guage pro­gramme ser­vice which broad­cast films in their pro­gramme ser­vice must spend at least 4 per cent of their gross rev­en­ue on the pur­chase, pro­duc­tion or co-pro­duc­tion of Swiss films or pay a cor­res­pond­ing sup­port fee not ex­ceed­ing 4 per cent. This ob­lig­a­tion also ap­plies to broad­casters of a na­tion­al or re­gion­al-lan­guage pro­gramme ser­vice win­dow in a for­eign tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vice which broad­casts films. However, it does not ap­ply to the SRG SSR.¹⁴

³ Tele­vi­sion broad­casters with a na­tion­al or re­gion­al-lan­guage pro­gramme ser­vice must pre­pare an ap­pro­pri­ate pro­por­tion of pro­grammes in a form suit­able for the hard of hear­ing and the visu­ally im­paired.

⁴ Li­censed re­gion­al tele­vi­sion broad­casters shall sub­title their main in­form­a­tion pro­grammes. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­term­ine the ex­tent of this ob­lig­a­tion. The cost of pro­cessing pro­grammes for per­sons hard of hear­ing is fun­ded in full from the ra­dio and tele­vi­sion fee (Art. 68a).¹⁵

¹ SRG SSR and the broad­casters with a li­cence un­der Art­icle 38 para­graph 1 let­ter a or Art­icle 43 para­graph 1 let­ter a must:¹⁶

a.

in­sert in their pro­gramme ser­vices without delay ur­gent po­lice mes­sages which are in­dis­pens­able to the main­ten­ance of pub­lic or­der and safety or the safety of per­sons, as well as of­fi­cial alerts and in­struc­tions;

b.¹⁷

in­form the pub­lic of de­cisions of the Con­fed­er­a­tion which are pub­lished ur­gently un­der Art­icle 7 para­graph 3 of the Pub­lic­a­tions Act of 18 June 2004¹⁸ (PublA) or by means of ex­traordin­ary pub­lic­a­tion un­der Art­icle 7 para­graph 4 PublA.

² The au­thor­ity re­quir­ing the broad­casts in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1 is re­spons­ible for them.

³ When ne­ces­sary, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall ex­tend the ob­lig­a­tions in para­graph 1 let­ter a to tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­viders which broad­cast pro­gramme ser­vices.

⁴ It shall en­sure that the pop­u­la­tion is as­sured of in­form­a­tion by ra­dio in crisis situ­ations. The li­cens­ing au­thor­it­ies reg­u­late the de­tails in the li­cences of the SRG SSR and of the ra­dio broad­casters men­tioned in Art­icles 38-43.

¹ Ad­vert­ising must be clearly sep­ar­ated from the ed­it­or­i­al part of the pro­gramme ser­vice and must be clearly iden­ti­fi­able as such. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may pro­hib­it those forms of ad­vert­ising which jeop­ard­ise sep­ar­a­tion or iden­ti­fi­ab­il­ity or sub­ject these forms to spe­cial pro­vi­sions.

² The broad­caster’s per­man­ent ed­it­or­i­al em­ploy­ees may not par­ti­cip­ate in its ad­vert­ising pro­grammes. Loc­al and re­gion­al broad­casters with lim­ited fin­an­cial re­sources are ex­cluded from this re­stric­tion.

¹ Ad­vert­ising for the fol­low­ing is pro­hib­ited:

a.

to­bacco goods;

b.¹⁹

al­co­hol­ic bever­ages which are sub­ject to the Al­co­hol Act of 21 June 1932²⁰; the Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall im­pose fur­ther re­stric­tions for the pro­tec­tion of health and young people;

c.²¹

...

d.

polit­ic­al parties, per­sons hold­ing polit­ic­al of­fice or can­did­ates for such of­fices and mat­ters which are the sub­ject of a pop­u­lar vote;

e.

re­li­gious be­liefs and the in­sti­tu­tions and per­sons rep­res­ent­ing them.

² The fol­low­ing are pro­hib­ited:

a.

ad­vert­ising for thera­peut­ic products in ac­cord­ance with the Fed­er­al Act of 15 Decem­ber 2000²² on Thera­peut­ic Products;

b.

sales of­fers for thera­peut­ic products and med­ic­al treat­ments.

³ Sur­repti­tious ad­vert­ising and sub­lim­in­al ad­vert­ising are pro­hib­ited.

⁴ Ad­vert­ising which:

a.

dis­par­ages re­li­gious or polit­ic­al con­vic­tions;

b.

is mis­lead­ing or un­fair;

c.

en­cour­ages be­ha­viour pre­ju­di­cial to health, the en­vir­on­ment or per­son­al safety.

is pro­hib­ited.

⁵The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may pro­hib­it oth­er ad­vert­ising in or­der to pro­tect health and young people.

¹ Ad­vert­ising must as a prin­ciple be in­ser­ted between in­di­vidu­al pro­grammes and must be broad­cast in blocks. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil de­term­ines when de­vi­ations from this prin­ciple are pos­sible. De­vi­ations may not pre­ju­dice the in­teg­rity and the value of the pro­gramme con­cerned.

² Ad­vert­ising may not in prin­ciple oc­cupy more than 20 per cent of one hour’s trans­mis­sion time. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­term­ine the ex­cep­tions.²³

³ When de­term­in­ing de­vi­ations from the prin­ciples in para­graphs 1 and 2, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall not­ably take in­to ac­count the fol­low­ing cri­ter­ia:

a.

broad­casters’ per­form­ance man­dates;

b.

the eco­nom­ic situ­ation of ra­dio and tele­vi­sion;

c.

trans­fron­ti­er com­pet­i­tion;

d.

in­ter­na­tion­al reg­u­la­tions on ad­vert­ising;

e.

the con­cerns of the audi­ence.

¹ The con­tent and schedul­ing of sponsored pro­grammes fall with­in the ex­clus­ive re­spons­ib­il­ity of the broad­caster. The lat­ter shall en­sure that the spon­sor does not in­flu­ence the pro­gramme in a man­ner which ad­versely af­fects ed­it­or­i­al in­de­pend­ence.

² If pro­grammes or se­quences of pro­grammes are sponsored in whole or in part, the spon­sors must be named at the be­gin­ning or end of each pro­gramme.

³ Sponsored pro­grammes may neither en­cour­age the con­clu­sion of trans­ac­tions con­cern­ing goods or ser­vices of the spon­sors or of third parties nor may they con­tain state­ments of an ad­vert­ising nature con­cern­ing goods and ser­vices.

⁴ Pro­grammes may not be fin­anced by spon­sors who primar­ily man­u­fac­ture or sell products or of­fer ser­vices for which ad­vert­ising is banned un­der Art­icle 10. Com­pan­ies act­ive in the area of thera­peut­ic products may spon­sor pro­grammes provided no products for which ad­vert­ising is banned are named or shown and no ad­vert­ising ef­fect is cre­ated for these products in some oth­er way.

⁵ News pro­grammes and pro­grammes on polit­ic­al cur­rent events, as well as pro­grammes and se­quences of pro­grammes which are re­lated to the ex­er­cise of polit­ic­al rights in the Con­fed­er­a­tion, can­tons and com­munes may not be sponsored.

¹ Ad­vert­ising which is aimed at minors or in which minors ap­pear may neither ex­ploit their lack of life ex­per­i­ence nor harm them in their phys­ic­al or men­tal de­vel­op­ment. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall im­pose cor­res­pond­ing reg­u­la­tions on the form of the ad­vert­ising.

² Pro­grammes for chil­dren may not be in­ter­rup­ted by ad­vert­ising.

³ Of­fers for sale may not be dir­ec­ted at minors.

⁴ In or­der to safe­guard the con­cerns men­tioned in para­graph 1, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil ex­cludes spe­cif­ic forms of spon­sor­ship of chil­dren’s pro­grammes.

¹ Ad­vert­ising is pro­hib­ited in the ra­dio pro­gramme ser­vices of the SRG SSR. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may provide for ex­cep­tions for self-pro­mo­tion.

² ...²⁴

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may par­tially or wholly re­strict ad­vert­ising and spon­sor­ship in the SRG SSR’s ra­dio and tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vices and in oth­er journ­al­ist­ic ser­vices which are ne­ces­sary for the ful­fil­ment of its pro­gramme ser­vice man­date and which are fin­anced by the ra­dio and tele­vi­sion fees²⁵ (Art. 25 para. 3 let. b).

Li­censed broad­casters of Swiss pro­gramme ser­vices must no­ti­fy OF­COM²⁶ of the gross rev­en­ue from ad­vert­ising and spon­sor­ship.

Broad­casters of Swiss pro­gramme ser­vices must no­ti­fy OF­COM of any changes in cap­it­al and in vot­ing rights as well as any sub­stan­tial hold­ings in oth­er un­der­tak­ings.

¹ Broad­casters are ob­liged to provide the li­cens­ing and su­per­vis­ory au­thor­it­ies free of charge with the in­form­a­tion and to pro­duce the doc­u­ments that the au­thor­it­ies re­quire for their su­per­vis­ory activ­ity and for the as­sess­ment of any risks to di­versity of opin­ion and pro­gram­ming (Art. 74 and 75).²⁷

² The ob­lig­a­tion to provide in­form­a­tion also ap­plies to leg­al and nat­ur­al per­sons:

a.

in which the broad­caster has asub­stan­tial hold­ing or which have a sub­stan­tial hold­ing in the broad­caster and which are act­ive in the ra­dio and tele­vi­sion mar­ket or re­lated mar­kets;

b.

which can­vass for ad­vert­ising or spon­sor­ship for the broad­caster;

c.

which pro­duce a ma­jor part of the pro­gramme ser­vice con­cerned for the broad­caster;

d.

which or­gan­ise a pub­lic event in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 72;

e.

which are act­ive in the ra­dio and tele­vi­sion mar­ket and which oc­cupy a dom­in­ant po­s­i­tion in one or more me­dia-re­lated mar­kets;

f.²⁸

that are act­ive in one or more me­dia-rel­ev­ant mar­kets in terms of Art­icle 74 in which a risk to di­versity of opin­ion and pro­gram­ming is as­sessed in­so­far as the in­form­a­tion is re­quired to as­sess a dom­in­ant po­s­i­tion in the mar­ket.

³ The right to re­fuse to provide in­form­a­tion or pro­duce doc­u­ments is gov­erned by Art­icle 16 of the Fed­er­al Act of 20 Decem­ber 1968²⁹ on Ad­min­is­trat­ive Pro­ced­ure (APA).

¹ Broad­casters of Swiss pro­gramme ser­vices must sub­mit an an­nu­al re­port and an­nu­al ac­counts to the Fed­er­al Of­fice. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil ex­empts cer­tain cat­egor­ies of broad­casters from these ob­lig­a­tions.

² The Fed­er­al Of­fice may pub­lish in­form­a­tion from broad­casters’ an­nu­al re­ports.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil de­term­ines what the an­nu­al re­port and an­nu­al ac­counts must con­tain and which in­form­a­tion OF­COM may pub­lish.

¹ OF­COM pro­duces stat­ist­ics in co­oper­a­tion with the Fed­er­al Stat­ist­ic­al Of­fice. These con­tain the in­form­a­tion which the com­pet­ent au­thor­it­ies re­quire:

a.

for le­gis­la­tion and the ap­plic­a­tion of the law;

b.

in or­der to ac­quire an over­view of the mar­ket.

² Broad­casters of Swiss pro­gramme ser­vices must sub­mit the ne­ces­sary in­form­a­tion to OF­COM reg­u­larly.

³ OF­COM may make stat­ist­ic­al res­ults avail­able to the pub­lic.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil reg­u­lates the de­tails; in par­tic­u­lar, it lays down the prin­ciples re­gard­ing data col­lec­tion, in­di­vidu­al sur­veys, the use of the col­lec­ted data and the pub­lic­a­tion of stat­ist­ic­al res­ults.

¹ Broad­casters of Swiss pro­gramme ser­vices must re­cord all pro­grammes and keep the re­cord­ings and the rel­ev­ant ma­ter­i­al and doc­u­ment­a­tion for at least four months. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may ex­empt cer­tain cat­egor­ies of broad­casters from this ob­lig­a­tion.

² Con­tri­bu­tions as part of the oth­er journ­al­ist­ic ser­vices from SRG SSR must also be re­cor­ded and re­tained with the rel­ev­ant ma­ter­i­al and doc­u­ment­a­tion. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the dur­a­tion and ex­tent of the re­cord­ing and re­ten­tion ob­lig­a­tion, tak­ing ac­count of tech­nic­al feas­ib­il­ity and what can reas­on­ably be ex­pec­ted of SRG SSR.

3 If a com­plaint is sub­mit­ted to the Om­buds­man Ser­vice with­in the re­ten­tion peri­od or an ob­jec­tion is raised with the In­de­pend­ent Com­plaints Au­thor­ity for Ra­dio and Tele­vi­sion or an of­fi­cial su­per­vis­ory pro­ced­ure is opened, the re­cord­ings, ma­ter­i­als and doc­u­ment­a­tion must be re­tained un­til the com­ple­tion of the pro­ceed­ings.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may re­quire Swiss broad­casters to keep re­cord­ings of their pro­gramme ser­vices avail­able so that these re­main per­man­ently con­served for the pub­lic. Broad­casters may be fin­an­cially com­pensated for the res­ult­ing costs.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil de­term­ines which pro­gramme ser­vices must be con­served and reg­u­lates the com­pens­a­tion of broad­casters as well as the de­liv­ery, archiv­ing and avail­ab­il­ity of re­cord­ings. In par­tic­u­lar, it may is­sue tech­nic­al reg­u­la­tions con­cern­ing the nature and format of the data me­dia and des­ig­nate the bod­ies which co­ordin­ate the ne­ces­sary work and se­lect the pro­gramme ser­vices to be con­served.

³ Where the rev­en­ue from the charge for ac­cess­ing the re­cor­ded pro­gramme ser­vices and for their con­tin­ued use is not suf­fi­cient, the ex­pendit­ure of the bod­ies un­der para­graph 2 and the com­pens­a­tion for broad­casters in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1 is fin­anced from the ra­dio and tele­vi­sion fee.³¹

⁴ In or­der to as­sure the long-term use of the archives, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may take sup­port meas­ures for the con­ser­va­tion of the cor­res­pond­ing play­back equip­ment.

¹ Li­censed broad­casters of Swiss pro­gramme ser­vices pay an an­nu­al fee for their li­cence. The rev­en­ue from the li­cence fee is used primar­ily to pro­mote re­search pro­jects in the ra­dio and tele­vi­sion sec­tor (Art. 77), and sec­ond­ar­ily for new broad­cast­ing tech­no­lo­gies (Art. 58).³²

² The fee amounts to a max­im­um of 1 per cent of the gross rev­en­ue from ad­vert­ising and spon­sor­ship. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil de­term­ines the amount of the fee and an ex­emp­tion amount.

The SRG SSR provides a ser­vice for the com­munity. In so do­ing, it does not at­tempt to make a profit.

¹ The SRG SSR ful­fils the con­sti­tu­tion­al man­date in the area of ra­dio and tele­vi­sion (the pro­gramme ser­vice man­date). In par­tic­u­lar:

a.

it sup­plies the en­tire pop­u­la­tion com­pre­hens­ively in terms of con­tent with equi­val­ent ra­dio and tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vices in the three of­fi­cial lan­guages;

b.

it pro­motes un­der­stand­ing, co­he­sion and ex­change between the parts of the coun­try, lin­guist­ic com­munit­ies, cul­tures and so­cial group­ings and takes ac­count of the par­tic­u­lar­it­ies of the coun­try and the needs of the can­tons;

c.

it pro­motes closer links between Swiss cit­izens liv­ing abroad and their home coun­try and it pro­motes Switzer­land and the un­der­stand­ing of its con­cerns abroad.

² The SRG SSR broad­casts at least one ra­dio pro­gramme ser­vice for Ro­man­sh-speak­ing Switzer­land. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil also lays down the prin­ciples in ac­cord­ance with which the ra­dio and tele­vi­sion needs of this lin­guist­ic re­gion must ad­di­tion­ally be taken in­to con­sid­er­a­tion.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil lays down the prin­ciples in ac­cord­ance with which the needs of people with sens­ory dis­ab­il­it­ies must be taken in­to con­sid­er­a­tion. In par­tic­u­lar, it de­term­ines the ex­tent to which spe­cial pro­grammes must be provided in sign lan­guage for the deaf.

⁴ The SRG SSR con­trib­utes to:

a.

free pub­lic opin­ion-form­ing through com­pre­hens­ive, di­verse and ac­cur­ate in­form­a­tion es­pe­cially re­gard­ing polit­ic­al, eco­nom­ic and so­cial mat­ters;

b.

cul­tur­al di­versity and the re­in­force­ment of the coun­try’s cul­tur­al val­ues as well as the pro­mo­tion of Swiss cul­ture, with par­tic­u­lar em­phas­is on Swiss lit­er­at­ure and Swiss mu­sic and film, es­pe­cially by broad­cast­ing Swiss pro­duc­tions and pro­grammes it has pro­duced it­self;

c.

edu­ca­tion of the pub­lic, es­pe­cially through the reg­u­lar broad­cast­ing of pro­grammes with edu­ca­tion­al con­tent;

d.

en­ter­tain­ment.

⁵ The stand­ard lan­guage is gen­er­ally to be used in im­port­ant in­form­a­tion broad­casts which are of in­terest bey­ond the lin­guist­ic and na­tion­al bor­ders.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil awards the SRG SSR a li­cence.

² A pub­lic con­sulta­tion is held be­fore the award of the li­cence or be­fore changes to the li­cence with con­sequences for me­dia policy.

³ The li­cence de­term­ines in par­tic­u­lar:

a.

the num­ber and nature of ra­dio and tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vices;

b.

the scope of the fur­ther ed­it­or­i­al pro­gram­ming which is ne­ces­sary to ful­fil the pro­gramme ser­vice man­date at the level of the lin­guist­ic re­gion, as well as at na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al level and which is fin­anced from ra­dio and tele­vi­sion fees;

c.

the de­tails of the in­clu­sion of Swiss lit­er­at­ure, mu­sic and film in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 24 para­graph 4 let­ter b; it may set down cor­res­pond­ing min­im­um quotas.

⁴ The SRG SSR may of­fer cer­tain pro­gramme ser­vices in co­oper­a­tion with oth­er broad­casters. The co­oper­a­tion is reg­u­lated in agree­ments which re­quire the con­sent of the Fed­er­al De­part­ment of the En­vir­on­ment, Trans­port, En­ergy and Com­mu­nic­a­tions (DE­TEC).³³

⁵ DE­TEC³⁴ may amend in­di­vidu­al pro­vi­sions of the li­cence be­fore its term ex­pires if the ac­tu­al or leg­al con­di­tions have changed and the amend­ment is ne­ces­sary to safe­guard im­port­ant in­terests. The SRG SSR will be paid ap­pro­pri­ate com­pens­a­tion.

⁶ DE­TEC may re­strict the SRG SSR’s li­cence or par­tially sus­pend it if:

a.

the su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity has made an ap­plic­a­tion in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 89;

b.

the SRG SSR has re­peatedly or ser­i­ously vi­ol­ated its ob­lig­a­tions re­gard­ing fin­an­cial man­age­ment and ac­count­ing (Art. 35 and 36).

¹ The SRG SSR is pro­hib­ited from broad­cast­ing re­gion­al pro­gramme ser­vices.

² The SRG SSR may with the ap­prov­al of DE­TEC in­sert time-lim­ited re­gion­al win­dows in its ra­dio pro­gramme ser­vices. Spon­sor­ship is pro­hib­ited in such win­dows. These re­gion­al win­dows must be lim­ited to a max­im­um of one hour per day.³⁵

The SRG SSR’s pro­gramme ser­vices shall be pro­duced pre­dom­in­antly in the lan­guage re­gions for which they are in­ten­ded.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall peri­od­ic­ally agree with the SRG SSR the scope of ed­it­or­i­al pro­gram­ming for for­eign coun­tries in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 24 para­graph 1 let­ter c and the cor­res­pond­ing costs.

² In crisis situ­ations, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may agree with the SRG SSR spe­cial short-term per­form­ance man­dates for pur­poses of in­ter­na­tion­al un­der­stand­ing.

³ At least half the costs for ser­vices in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1 will be re­im­bursed to the SRG SSR by the Con­fed­er­a­tion; the costs for ser­vices in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 2 will be re­im­bursed in full.

¹ The SRG SSR and un­der­tak­ings con­trolled by it must re­port in ad­vance to OF­COM activ­it­ies which are not laid down in the li­cence and which may ad­versely af­fect the po­s­i­tion and mis­sion of oth­er Swiss me­dia un­der­tak­ings.

² If such activ­ity ad­versely af­fects the ful­fil­ment of the pro­gramme ser­vice man­date or sub­stan­tially lim­its the de­vel­op­ment po­ten­tial of oth­er me­dia un­der­tak­ings, DE­TEC may im­pose con­di­tions on com­mer­cial activ­ity, fin­an­cing, sep­ar­a­tion of ac­count­ing and or­gan­isa­tion­al sep­ar­a­tion or pro­hib­it the activ­ity.

¹ The ra­dio and tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vices of the SRG SSR shall be broad­cast at least over the en­tire lin­guist­ic re­gion con­cerned. At least one SRG SSR ra­dio and tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vice shall be broad­cast throughout Switzer­land in Ger­man, French and Itali­an. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may provide for ex­cep­tions. It also takes in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the needs of the Ro­man­sh-speak­ing pop­u­la­tion in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 24 para­graph 2. In do­ing so, it en­sures that fre­quen­cies and chan­nels are made avail­able to the oth­er broad­casters for each means of broad­cast­ing.

² For each pro­gramme ser­vice, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil de­term­ines the cov­er­age area and tech­nic­al means of broad­cast­ing.

¹ The SRG SSR shall or­gan­ise it­self so that:

a.

its autonomy and in­de­pend­ence from the state and from so­cial, eco­nom­ic and polit­ic­al group­ings is guar­an­teed;

b.

it is man­aged eco­nom­ic­ally and the ra­dio and tele­vi­sion fees are used for the pur­pose for which they were in­ten­ded;

c.

the con­cerns of the lin­guist­ic re­gions are taken in­to con­sid­er­a­tion and na­tion­al lead­er­ship and co­ordin­a­tion is as­sured;

d.

the pub­lic is rep­res­en­ted in the or­gan­isa­tion;

e.

ed­it­or­i­al activ­ity is sep­ar­ate from eco­nom­ic activ­it­ies;

f.

it can be man­aged, su­per­vised and in­spec­ted in ac­cord­ance with the prin­ciples of the law on com­pan­ies lim­ited by shares.

² Its art­icles of as­so­ci­ation must be ap­proved by DE­TEC.

¹ The man­dat­ory man­age­ment bod­ies are the Gen­er­al As­sembly, the Board of Dir­ect­ors, the aud­it­or and the Ex­ec­ut­ive Board.

² Un­less this Act provides oth­er­wise, the pro­vi­sions of the law on com­pan­ies lim­ited by shares ap­ply mu­tatis mutandis to the pro­vi­sions of the art­icles of as­so­ci­ation on the rights, ob­lig­a­tions and re­spons­ib­il­it­ies of the SRG SSR man­age­ment bod­ies.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may nom­in­ate up to a quarter of the mem­bers of the Board of Dir­ect­ors.

² The Board of Dir­ect­ors does not is­sue in­di­vidu­al dir­ect­ives in mat­ters re­lated to cur­rent pro­gramme ser­vices.

³ The mem­bers of the Board of Dir­ect­ors must not be em­ployed by the SRG SSR or any of the un­der­tak­ings con­trolled by it. They are not bound by in­struc­tions.

The SRG SSR is mainly fin­anced by ra­dio and tele­vi­sion fees. Oth­er sources of fin­ance are avail­able to it, un­less this is re­stric­ted by this Act, the Or­din­ance, the li­cence or rel­ev­ant in­ter­na­tion­al law.

¹ The SRG SSR and the un­der­tak­ings con­trolled by it shall con­duct their fin­an­cial ac­count­ing in ac­cord­ance with the re­cog­nised prin­ciples of best prac­tice. They shall con­duct them­selves cost-ef­fect­ively, use their re­sources in ac­cord­ance with the pro­vi­sions and en­sure the long-term main­ten­ance of their as­sets with re­gard to the ful­fil­ment of their man­date.

² The SRG SSR shall use the share of fees³⁶ al­loc­ated to it solely to cov­er the costs res­ult­ing from the broad­cast­ing of ra­dio and tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vices and the costs of the oth­er journ­al­ist­ic ser­vices (Art. 25 para. 3 let. b).

³ If it ceases to carry out an activ­ity that was a ma­jor ele­ment when the fees were set, DE­TEC may re­quire SRG SSR to build up re­serves in the amount of the cor­res­pond­ing sum, which will be taken in­to ac­count dur­ing the sub­sequent fee ad­just­ment.³⁷

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall en­sure that the pro­vi­sions of Art­icle 6a para­graphs 1–5 of the Fed­er­al Per­son­nel Act of 24 March 2000³⁸ are ap­plied ac­cord­ingly in the SRG SSR and in the un­der­tak­ings con­trolled by it for the mem­bers of the man­aging bod­ies, mem­bers of man­age­ment staff and oth­er per­son­nel who are re­mu­ner­ated in a sim­il­ar way.

¹ The SRG SSR and the un­der­tak­ings con­trolled by it shall main­tain their books in ac­cord­ance with the reg­u­la­tions which ap­ply to com­pan­ies lim­ited by shares and in ac­cord­ance with the ac­count­ing stand­ards re­cog­nised by the Swiss stock ex­changes.

² It shall main­tain sep­ar­ate ac­counts for the activ­it­ies in­volved in car­ry­ing out their man­date un­der the terms of the li­cence and for their oth­er activ­it­ies.

³ The Board of Dir­ect­ors of the SRG SSR shall com­mu­nic­ate the fol­low­ing to DE­TEC yearly:

a.

the group ac­counts;

b.

the an­nu­al ac­counts, the pre­lim­in­ary es­tim­ate, the fin­an­cial plan and the an­nu­al re­port of the SRG SSR and of the un­der­tak­ings con­trolled by it.

⁴ DE­TEC shall audit the SRG SSR’s fin­an­cial ac­count­ing on the basis of the re­ports from the Board of Dir­ect­ors. It may de­mand ad­di­tion­al in­form­a­tion. In par­tic­u­lar, DE­TEC may de­mand of the SRG SSR’s Board of Dir­ect­ors or of the seni­or man­age­ment bod­ies of con­trolled un­der­tak­ings in­form­a­tion on how they have dis­charged their re­spons­ib­il­ity.

⁵ DE­TEC may carry out audits on the premises of the SRG SSR and the un­der­tak­ings con­trolled by it if:

a.

re­port­ing is in­ad­equate and the SRG SSR does not provide ad­equate in­form­a­tion with­in the re­quired time des­pite a re­quest by DE­TEC; or

b.

there are well-foun­ded sus­pi­cions that the SRG SSR or one of the un­der­tak­ings con­trolled by it has not ful­filled the ob­lig­a­tions stated in Art­icle 35 para­graph 1.

⁶ Sub­ject to the re­quire­ments of para­graph 5, DE­TEC may en­trust the Fed­er­al Audit Of­fice or oth­er ex­perts with the fin­an­cial audit. The Fed­er­al Audit Of­fice Act of 28 June 1967³⁹ is not ap­plic­able.

⁷ Audits on grounds of pure ex­pedi­ency are not per­mit­ted.

SRG SSR hold­ings in oth­er broad­casters are sub­ject to the ap­prov­al of DE­TEC.

¹ Li­cences with a per­form­ance man­date and a share of fees (fee-shar­ing li­cences) may be awar­ded to broad­casters of loc­al-re­gion­al pro­gramme ser­vices which:

a.

provide to an area that has no ad­equate fund­ing op­tions ra­dio and tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vices which take ac­count of loc­al or re­gion­al par­tic­u­lar­it­ies by provid­ing com­pre­hens­ive in­form­a­tion, par­tic­u­larly on polit­ic­al, eco­nom­ic and so­cial mat­ters and which con­trib­ute to the de­vel­op­ment of cul­tur­al life in the cov­er­age area;

b.

con­trib­ute to the ful­fil­ment of the man­date un­der the Fed­er­al Con­sti­tu­tion in urb­an areas by means of com­ple­ment­ary, non-profit-ori­ent­ated ra­dio pro­gramme ser­vices.

² Fee-shar­ing li­cences give an en­ti­tle­ment to broad­cast the pro­gramme ser­vice with­in a spe­cif­ic cov­er­age area (right of ac­cess) and to a pro­por­tion of the rev­en­ue from ra­dio and tele­vi­sion fees.

³ One fee-shar­ing li­cence is awar­ded for each cov­er­age area.

⁴ The li­cence spe­cifies as a min­im­um:

a.

the cov­er­age area and the tech­nic­al means of broad­cast­ing;

b.

the re­quired pro­gramme ser­vices and the op­er­a­tion­al and or­gan­isa­tion­al re­quire­ments ne­ces­sary for these;

c.

oth­er re­quire­ments and con­di­tions which the li­censee must ful­fil.

⁵ ...⁴⁰

¹ After con­sulta­tion with the Fed­er­al Com­mu­nic­a­tions Com­mis­sion, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil de­term­ines the num­ber and ex­tent of the cov­er­age in which fee-shar­ing li­cences are awar­ded, as well as the tech­nic­al means of broad­cast­ing in the cov­er­age area con­cerned. When it does so, it dis­tin­guishes between cov­er­age areas for ra­dio and for tele­vi­sion.

² Cov­er­age areas in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 38 para­graph 1 let­ter a must be defined so that:

a.

they con­sti­tute a polit­ic­al and geo­graph­ic­al unit or are marked by es­pe­cially close cul­tur­al or eco­nom­ic con­tacts; and

b.

their ex­ist­ing fund­ing op­tions to­geth­er with an ap­pro­pri­ate pro­por­tion of the rev­en­ue from ra­dio and tele­vi­sion fees al­low the broad­caster to ful­fil its per­form­ance man­date.

³ Ex­cep­tions may be made for re­gion­al pro­gramme ser­vices which are broad­cast in at least two na­tion­al lan­guages in a mul­ti­lin­gual area.

⁴ The num­ber and ex­tent of the cov­er­age areas are ex­amined by the Fed­er­al Coun­cil peri­od­ic­ally but after ten years at the latest. DE­TEC may make minor ad­just­ments to the ex­tent.

⁵ Be­fore de­fin­ing the cov­er­age areas and be­fore sig­ni­fic­ant changes, the can­tons and the li­censed broad­casters dir­ectly con­cerned shall be con­sul­ted.

¹ The share of fees for broad­casters re­ceiv­ing a share of fees in terms of Art­icle 68a para­graph 1 let­ter b amounts to 4 to 6 per cent of the rev­en­ue from ra­dio and tele­vi­sion fees. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil de­cides:

a.

when fix­ing the amount of the fee, on the re­spect­ive shares al­loc­ated to ra­dio and tele­vi­sion, tak­ing ac­count of the need to ful­fil the per­form­ance man­dates in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 38 para­graph 1;

b.

the max­im­um per­cent­age which the share of fees may make to the op­er­at­ing costs of the in­di­vidu­al broad­caster.⁴¹

² DE­TEC lays down each li­censee’s share of the rev­en­ue from ra­dio and tele­vi­sion fees for a spe­cif­ic peri­od. It takes in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the size and eco­nom­ic po­ten­tial of the cov­er­age area as well as the ex­pendit­ure which the li­censee must in­cur to ful­fil the per­form­ance man­date in­clud­ing trans­mis­sion costs.

³ The pro­vi­sions of the Sub­sidies Act of 5 Oc­to­ber 1990⁴² ap­ply.

¹ Broad­casters which hold a fee-shar­ing li­cence must ful­fil the per­form­ance man­date defined in the li­cence. In or­der to en­sure the ful­fil­ment of the per­form­ance man­date and of in­de­pend­ent pro­gramme pro­duc­tion, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may im­pose oth­er ob­lig­a­tions. In par­tic­u­lar, it may ob­lige the broad­casters to pro­duce a mis­sion state­ment and ed­it­or­i­al stat­utes.

² Broad­casters with a fee-shar­ing li­cence must use the fin­an­cial re­sources eco­nom­ic­ally and in ac­cord­ance with the reg­u­la­tions. Dis­tri­bu­tion of profits is not per­mit­ted. Broad­cast­ing of the fee-sup­por­ted pro­gramme ser­vice must be sep­ar­ated in the ac­counts from any oth­er eco­nom­ic activ­it­ies car­ried out by the li­censee. If an un­der­tak­ing which is eco­nom­ic­ally con­trolled by the li­censee car­ries out activ­it­ies in con­nec­tion with the pro­gramme ser­vice, the li­censee shall en­sure that these activ­it­ies are kept sep­ar­ate in the ac­counts from oth­er activ­it­ies.⁴³

³ Co­oper­a­tion with oth­er broad­casters must not jeop­ard­ise the ful­fil­ment of the per­form­ance man­date or the in­de­pend­ence of pro­gramme pro­duc­tion.

¹ The li­censee shall sub­mit the ac­counts to OF­COM on an an­nu­al basis. The lat­ter shall ex­am­ine wheth­er the fin­an­cial re­sources have been used eco­nom­ic­ally and in ac­cord­ance with the reg­u­la­tions. If not, it may re­duce or re­claim the share of fees from a li­censee.

² OF­COM may also re­quest in­form­a­tion from the li­censee and from those ob­liged to provide in­form­a­tion in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 17 para­graph 2 let­ter a–c and carry out on-the-spot fin­an­cial audits.

³ Audits on grounds of pure ex­pedi­ency are not per­mit­ted.

¹ DE­TEC may award oth­er broad­casters a li­cence for wire­less ter­restri­al broad­cast­ing of a pro­gramme ser­vice if this pro­gramme ser­vice:

a.

takes ac­count of loc­al or re­gion­al par­tic­u­lar­it­ies in an area by means of com­pre­hens­ive in­form­a­tion, par­tic­u­larly con­cern­ing polit­ic­al, eco­nom­ic and so­cial mat­ters and con­trib­utes to the de­vel­op­ment of cul­tur­al life in the cov­er­age area;

b.

con­trib­utes to a sig­ni­fic­ant ex­tent in a lin­guist­ic re­gion to the ful­fil­ment of the per­form­ance man­date provided for by the Con­sti­tu­tion.

² The li­cence defines the scope of ac­cess to tech­nic­al means of broad­cast­ing and the per­form­ance man­date with re­gard to pro­gramme ser­vices. DE­TEC may im­pose oth­er ob­lig­a­tions in or­der to en­sure the ful­fil­ment of the per­form­ance man­date and the in­de­pend­ence of pro­gramme pro­duc­tion.

¹ A li­cence may be awar­ded if the can­did­ate:

a.

is able to ful­fil the per­form­ance man­date;

b.

cred­ibly demon­strates that it can fin­ance the ne­ces­sary in­vest­ments and op­er­a­tion;

c.

demon­strates to the li­cens­ing au­thor­ity the iden­tity of the ma­jor­ity hold­er of its cap­it­al and who makes sub­stan­tial fin­an­cial re­sources avail­able to it;

d.

guar­an­tees that it com­plies with the em­ploy­ment law reg­u­la­tions and the work­ing con­di­tions of the in­dustry, the ap­plic­able law and in par­tic­u­lar the ob­lig­a­tions and con­di­tions as­so­ci­ated with the li­cence;

e.

sep­ar­ates ed­it­or­i­al activ­ity from eco­nom­ic activ­it­ies;

f.

is a nat­ur­al per­son with res­id­ence in Switzer­land or a leg­al per­son dom­i­ciled in Switzer­land;

g.⁴⁴

...

² In the ab­sence of any in­ter­na­tion­al ob­lig­a­tions to the con­trary, a leg­al per­son con­trolled from abroad, a do­mest­ic leg­al per­son with for­eign par­ti­cip­a­tion or a nat­ur­al per­son without Swiss cit­izen­ship may be re­fused the li­cence if the cor­res­pond­ing for­eign state does not guar­an­tee re­cip­roc­al rights to a sim­il­ar ex­tent.

³ A broad­caster or the un­der­tak­ing to which it be­longs may ac­quire a max­im­um of two tele­vi­sion li­cences and two ra­dio li­cences. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may per­mit ex­cep­tions for the in­tro­duc­tion of new broad­cast­ing tech­no­lo­gies.⁴⁵

¹ Li­cences are awar­ded by DE­TEC. As a rule, OF­COM puts the li­cences out to tender; it may con­sult in­ter­ested parties.

^1bisLi­cences may be ex­ten­ded with a pub­lic ten­der­ing pro­cess, in par­tic­u­lar where the situ­ation in the cov­er­age areas or tech­no­lo­gic­al changes pose sig­ni­fic­ant chal­lenges to broad­casters. In reach­ing a de­cision, ac­count is taken of pre­vi­ous ful­fil­ment of the per­form­ance man­date.⁴⁶

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may provide for a spe­cial pro­ced­ure for the award of short-term li­cences.

³ If there are sev­er­al can­did­ates for one li­cence, pref­er­ence is giv­en to the can­did­ate that is best able to ful­fil the per­form­ance man­date. If sev­er­al can­did­ates are es­sen­tially equi­val­ent from this view­point, pref­er­ence is giv­en to the can­did­ate which best en­hances to the di­versity of opin­ion and the di­versity of pro­gram­ming.

⁴ Li­cences for wire­less ter­restri­al trans­mis­sion of pro­gramme ser­vices are as a rule awar­ded be­fore the in­vit­a­tion to tender for the cor­res­pond­ing ra­diocom­mu­nic­a­tion li­cences in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 22a TCA⁴⁷.⁴⁸

¹ Each li­cence is awar­ded for a spe­cif­ic term. As a rule, com­par­able li­cences are lim­ited to the same term.

² A li­cence ex­pires in the case of re­lin­quish­ment by the broad­caster, on with­draw­al and on ex­piry of its term.

¹ OF­COM ex­am­ines wheth­er the li­censed pro­gramme ser­vice ful­fils the per­form­ance man­date. For pur­poses of cla­ri­fic­a­tion, it may call in ex­tern­al ex­pert­ise or ex­perts.

² If it finds sub­stan­tial short­com­ings, it takes meas­ures. It may not­ably re­duce the claim to shares of fees by up to half un­til the short­com­ings are remedied.

¹ A trans­fer of the li­cence must be no­ti­fied to DE­TEC be­fore it takes place and must be ap­proved by the lat­ter.

² DE­TEC ex­am­ines wheth­er the li­cence re­quire­ments are also met after the trans­fer. It may re­fuse ap­prov­al with­in three months of re­ceipt of no­ti­fic­a­tion; in par­tic­u­lar cases the peri­od may be ex­ten­ded.

³ Eco­nom­ic trans­fer of the li­cence is also deemed to be a trans­fer. Such a case ap­plies if more than 20 per cent of the share cap­it­al, nom­in­al cap­it­al or re­gistered cap­it­al or where ap­plic­able the par­ti­cip­at­ing cap­it­al or vot­ing rights are trans­ferred.

^{1 DE­TEC may amend in­di­vidu­al pro­vi­sions of the li­cence be­fore its term ex­pires if the ac­tu­al or leg­al con­di­tions have changed and the amend­ment is necessary to safe­guard im­port­ant pub­lic in­terests.}

² The li­censee is ap­pro­pri­ately com­pensated if the amend­ment sub­stan­tially re­stricts the rights gran­ted with the li­cence. It re­ceives no com­pens­a­tion if the amend­ment is based on im­port­ant na­tion­al in­terests or on a change in in­ter­na­tion­al ob­lig­a­tions.

³ At the re­quest of the broad­caster, DE­TEC may amend in­di­vidu­al con­di­tions if the amend­ment ap­plied for cor­res­ponds to the re­quire­ments for the award of the li­cence.

¹ DE­TEC may re­strict, sus­pend or with­draw the li­cence if:

a.

the li­censee has ac­quired it as a res­ult of in­com­plete or in­cor­rect in­form­a­tion;

b.

the li­censee ser­i­ously vi­ol­ates this Act or its im­ple­ment­ing pro­vi­sions;

c.

the li­censee con­tinu­ously fails to meet its ob­lig­a­tions laid down in the li­cence des­pite meas­ures un­der Art­icle 47 para­graph 2;

d.

the li­censee ser­i­ously ex­ploits the li­cence for un­law­ful pur­poses;

e.

im­port­ant na­tion­al in­terests so re­quire.

² DE­TEC shall with­draw the li­cence if es­sen­tial con­di­tions re­lat­ing to the award there­of are no longer ap­plic­able.

³ The li­censee has a claim to com­pens­a­tion if DE­TEC:

a.

with­draws the li­cence be­cause es­sen­tial con­di­tions re­lat­ing to the award there­of cease to ex­ist and the Con­fed­er­a­tion is re­spons­ible for this;

b.

sus­pends or with­draws the li­cence be­cause im­port­ant na­tion­al in­terests so re­quire.

¹ Broad­casters may broad­cast their pro­gramme ser­vices them­selves on the basis of the pro­vi­sions of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions law or com­mis­sion a tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­vider to broad­cast the pro­gramme ser­vices.

² The broad­cast­ing ser­vices are provided on fair, reas­on­able and non-dis­crim­in­at­ory terms.

³ Art­icle 47 TCA⁴⁹ con­cern­ing com­mu­nic­a­tion in ex­traordin­ary situ­ations is ap­plic­able to broad­casters which trans­mit their pro­gramme ser­vices them­selves.

¹ OF­COM may re­strict or pro­hib­it the trans­mis­sion of a pro­gramme ser­vice us­ing tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions tech­niques if the pro­gramme ser­vice:

a.

in­fringes in­ter­na­tion­al tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions law which is bind­ing on Switzer­land;

b.

ser­i­ously and con­tinu­ously vi­ol­ates the in­ter­na­tion­al reg­u­la­tions which are bind­ing on Switzer­land re­gard­ing pro­gramme con­tent, ad­vert­ising or spon­sor­ship; or

c.

is the sub­ject of a ban on broad­cast­ing in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 89 para­graph 2.

² Both the broad­caster of the pro­gramme ser­vice in ques­tion and the tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­vider which broad­casts the pro­gramme ser­vice or feeds the sig­nal for broad­cast­ing may ob­ject to the de­cision of OF­COM.

³ ...⁵⁰

The fol­low­ing are ac­cess-en­titled for wire­less ter­restri­al broad­cast­ing with­in the frame­work of the li­cence:

a.

the pro­gramme ser­vices of the SRG SSR;

b.

the pro­gramme ser­vices of broad­casters which hold a li­cence with a per­form­ance man­date.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall en­sure that suf­fi­cient fre­quen­cies are made avail­able to ful­fil the con­sti­tu­tion­al per­form­ance man­date of ra­dio and tele­vi­sion (Art. 93 para. 2 FC). In par­tic­u­lar, it shall en­sure that ac­cess-en­titled pro­gramme ser­vices can be trans­mit­ted us­ing wire­less ter­restri­al tech­no­logy in the in­ten­ded cov­er­age area and shall spe­cify the rel­ev­ant prin­ciples.

² For fre­quen­cies or fre­quency blocks which are used in ac­cord­ance with the na­tion­al fre­quency al­loc­a­tion plan (Art. 25 TCA⁵²) for the broad­cast­ing of ra­dio and tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vices, it de­term­ines:

a.

the broad­cast­ing area;

b.

the num­ber of ra­dio or tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vices which are to be broad­cast, or the trans­mis­sion ca­pa­cit­ies which are to be re­served for the broad­cast­ing of pro­gramme ser­vices.

³ In ac­cord­ance with the re­quire­ments spe­cified by the Fed­er­al Coun­cil, DE­TEC shall en­sure that suf­fi­cient broad­cast­ing of pro­gramme ser­vices can be as­sured to serve the pop­u­la­tion in ex­traordin­ary situ­ations.

¹ Any per­son ac­quir­ing a ra­diocom­mu­nic­a­tion li­cence for the util­isa­tion of a fre­quency which is in­ten­ded for the broad­cast­ing of an ac­cess-en­titled pro­gramme ser­vice must broad­cast the lat­ter in ad­equate qual­ity and re­spect the pro­vi­sions of the li­cence with re­gard to pro­gramme ser­vices and of the ra­diocom­mu­nic­a­tion li­cence with re­gard to tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions law.

² Broad­casters pay the own­er of a ra­diocom­mu­nic­a­tion li­cence cost-based com­pens­a­tion for the broad­cast­ing of ac­cess-en­titled pro­gramme ser­vices. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil de­term­ines the chargeable costs. If the ra­diocom­mu­nic­a­tion li­cence is awar­ded in a bid­ding pro­ced­ure, the award price as men­tioned in Art­icle 39 para­graph 4 TCA⁵³ is not in­cluded in the chargeable costs.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may ex­tend the trans­mis­sion ob­lig­a­tion to ser­vices which are coupled with ac­cess-en­titled pro­gramme ser­vices.

¹ If the parties can­not agree on the broad­cast­ing ob­lig­a­tion and broad­cast­ing con­di­tions with­in three months, OF­COM ad­ju­dic­ates.

² For the de­cision, it refers to com­par­able do­mest­ic or for­eign ref­er­ence val­ues in so far as the parties do not pro­duce evid­ence which jus­ti­fies de­vi­ation there­from.

³ For the peri­od from the sub­mis­sion of the ap­plic­a­tion to the leg­ally-en­force­able de­cision, it may or­der trans­mis­sion on an in­ter­im basis and fix the fin­an­cial con­di­tions.

⁴ The pro­ced­ure and the ob­lig­a­tion to provide in­form­a­tion are based, mu­tatis mutandis, on the pro­vi­sions of the TCA on the grant­ing of ac­cess by dom­in­ant pro­viders (Art. 11, 11a and 11b TCA⁵⁴).⁵⁵

¹ In ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 38 para­graph 1 let­ter a, OF­COM provides a con­tri­bu­tion to a broad­caster with a fee-shar­ing li­cence which in­curs ad­di­tion­al ex­pense for the wire­less ter­restri­al broad­cast­ing of its ra­dio pro­gramme ser­vice in a moun­tain re­gion.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the con­di­tions and cal­cu­la­tion cri­ter­ia by which OF­COM pays the con­tri­bu­tions.

¹ OF­COM may for a lim­ited peri­od sub­sid­ise the in­tro­duc­tion of new tech­no­lo­gies for broad­cast­ing pro­gramme ser­vices by con­trib­ut­ing to the cost of con­struct­ing and op­er­at­ing trans­mit­ter net­works, provided that in­suf­fi­cient fund­ing op­tions are avail­able in the cor­res­pond­ing cov­er­age area.

² It may provide the pub­lic with in­form­a­tion on new tech­no­lo­gies, in par­tic­u­lar the tech­nic­al re­quire­ments and pos­sible ap­plic­a­tions, and work with third parties to do so.

³ The sub­sidies in terms of para­graphs 1 and 2 shall be paid for from the rev­en­ue from the li­cence fee (Art. 22) and, if this is not suf­fi­cient, from the rev­en­ue from the ra­dio and tele­vi­sion fee.

⁴ When de­term­in­ing the amount of the ra­dio and tele­vi­sion fee (Art. 70), the Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­term­ine the pro­por­tion which is avail­able for sub­sidies. This is shall amount to no more than one per cent of the total rev­en­ue from the ra­dio and tele­vi­sion fee.

⁵ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil de­term­ines who is en­titled to sup­port and the re­quire­ments for re­ceiv­ing sub­sidies.

¹ In their cov­er­age area, the fol­low­ing must be broad­cast by wire:

a.

pro­gramme ser­vices of the SRG SSR with­in the frame­work of the li­cence;

b.

pro­gramme ser­vices based on a li­cence with a per­form­ance man­date.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may also spe­cify pro­gramme ser­vices of for­eign broad­casters which are to be trans­mit­ted by wire be­cause of their spe­cial con­tri­bu­tion to edu­ca­tion, cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment or free opin­ion-form­ing.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil de­term­ines the max­im­um num­ber of ac­cess-en­titled pro­gramme ser­vices in ac­cord­ance with para­graphs 1 and 2 with­in the frame­work of the tech­nic­al cap­ab­il­it­ies of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­viders. The pro­gramme ser­vices are to be trans­mit­ted free of charge and in ad­equate qual­ity.

⁴ The tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­vider which already broad­casts pro­gramme ser­vices in the cov­er­age area and reaches the most house­holds is primar­ily sub­ject to the broad­cast­ing ob­lig­a­tion. With­in the same cov­er­age area, OF­COM may re­quire more than one tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­vider if this is ne­ces­sary to en­sure that a pro­gramme ser­vice can be re­ceived by the gen­er­al pub­lic. In the event of re­fus­al, OF­COM may ar­range im­me­di­ate broad­cast­ing by way of pre­cau­tion.

⁵ If com­pli­ance with this ob­lig­a­tion leads to an un­reas­on­able eco­nom­ic bur­den on the tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­vider, OF­COM shall re­quire the ac­cess-en­titled broad­caster to pay ap­pro­pri­ate com­pens­a­tion.

⁶ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may ex­tend the trans­mis­sion ob­lig­a­tion to ser­vices which are coupled with ac­cess-en­titled pro­gramme ser­vices.

¹ On ap­plic­a­tion by a broad­caster, OF­COM shall re­quire a tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­vider for a spe­cif­ic peri­od to provide broad­cast­ing by wire of a pro­gramme ser­vice with­in a spe­cif­ic area, if:

a.

the pro­gramme ser­vice con­trib­utes to a sig­ni­fic­ant ex­tent to the ful­fil­ment of the man­date un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion; and

b.

broad­cast­ing can reas­on­ably be ex­pec­ted from the tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­vider tak­ing ac­count of the avail­able trans­mis­sion ca­pa­cit­ies and its eco­nom­ic ca­pa­city.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil de­term­ines the max­im­um num­ber of pro­gramme ser­vices.

³ OF­COM may with­draw the right pri­or to ex­piry of the de­creed term if the broad­caster no longer provides the ser­vices stated in the de­cision.

^{4The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may ex­tend the trans­mis­sion ob­lig­a­tion to ser­vices which are coupled with ac­cess-en­titled pro­gramme ser­vices.}

In the case of the broad­cast­ing of pro­gramme ser­vices not reg­u­lated by Art­icles 59 and 60, the tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­vider de­cides on the basis of its ca­pa­cit­ies for trans­mit­ting pro­gramme ser­vices. In par­tic­u­lar, the eco­nom­ic be­ne­fit of the broad­cast­ing ser­vice to the broad­caster may be taken in­to ac­count in the pay­ment of the broad­cast­ing costs.

¹ Time-delayed tele­vi­sion view­ing is defined as the tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vice of a broad­caster that is trans­mit­ted and re­cor­ded by a tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­vider and which the tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­vider makes avail­able to its end cus­tom­ers for view­ing in its en­tirety for a lim­ited peri­od of time in com­pli­ance with the pro­vi­sions on copy­right.

² Tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­viders that of­fer time-delayed tele­vi­sion view­ing may not make any modi­fic­a­tions to the lin­ear tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vices that they trans­mit and re­cord without the con­sent of the broad­caster. The rules on ad­vert­ising and spon­sor­ship ap­ply by ana­logy to time-delayed tele­vi­sion view­ing.

³ In or­der to guar­an­tee the pro­tec­tion of young people, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may is­sue pro­vi­sions on the ac­cess­ib­il­ity of tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vices by means of time-delayed tele­vi­sion view­ing. In do­ing so, it shall take ac­count of the age rat­ing sys­tems re­cog­nised in Switzer­land.

The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may de­cree that tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­viders broad­cast the pro­gramme to be trans­mit­ted in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 59 para­graphs 1 and 2 on pre­ferred chan­nels.

¹ Ac­cess to tech­nic­al pro­cessing must be guar­an­teed to broad­casters on fair, reas­on­able and non-dis­crim­in­at­ory terms. If pro­cessing us­ing the tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­vider’s equip­ment es­sen­tially cor­res­ponds to the state of the art, the broad­caster is not en­titled to use its own equip­ment for pro­cessing.

² Any per­son provid­ing ser­vices as a high­er-level user in­ter­face which con­trol pro­gramme ser­vice se­lec­tion must use the state of the art to en­sure that ref­er­ence is clearly made in the first stage of use to ac­cess-en­titled pro­gramme ser­vices.

³ Op­er­at­ors and pro­viders of pro­cessing ser­vices or equip­ment must:

a.

provide third parties with a jus­ti­fied in­terest with all in­form­a­tion and dis­close all doc­u­ment­a­tion, the know­ledge of which is ne­ces­sary to en­force the rights in para­graph 1;

b.

provide OF­COM on its re­quest with all in­form­a­tion and sub­mit all doc­u­ment­a­tion which is ne­ces­sary to veri­fy wheth­er the ob­lig­a­tions in the pro­vi­sions on tech­nic­al pro­cessing are be­ing com­plied with.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may ex­tend the pro­vi­sions on tech­nic­al pro­cessing to coupled ser­vices.

⁵ If no reg­u­la­tions ex­ist for spe­cif­ic cir­cum­stances, OF­COM shall in in­di­vidu­al cases take the de­cisions re­quired to safe­guard di­versity of opin­ion and di­versity of pro­gram­ming.

In so far as is ne­ces­sary to safe­guard di­versity of opin­ion, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may, after con­sulta­tion with the parties con­cerned, stip­u­late open in­ter­faces or de­cree oth­er pro­vi­sions con­cern­ing their tech­nic­al con­fig­ur­a­tion for equip­ment or ser­vices which are used for pro­cessing of pro­gramme ser­vices. In so do­ing, it takes ac­count of the equip­ment or ser­vices already on the mar­ket and al­lows ap­pro­pri­ate trans­ition­al peri­ods.

¹ Any per­son of­fer­ing pro­gramme ser­vices as bundled pack­ages or provid­ing ser­vices which are used for the pro­cessing of pro­gramme ser­vices must ful­fil the tech­nic­al re­quire­ments that en­able third parties to broad­cast these pro­gramme ser­vices in­di­vidu­ally un­der cost-ef­fect­ive con­di­tions and use the equip­ment or ser­vices in­di­vidu­ally.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may de­cree reg­u­la­tions re­lat­ing to un­bund­ling in so far as this is ne­ces­sary to safe­guard di­versity of opin­ion.

Every­one is free to re­ceive pro­gramme ser­vices broad­cast with­in Switzer­land and from abroad if they are in­ten­ded for a gen­er­al audi­ence.

¹ The can­tons may in spe­cif­ic areas pro­hib­it the erec­tion of out­door an­ten­nas if:

a.

this is ne­ces­sary for the pro­tec­tion of sig­ni­fic­ant loc­al and na­tion­al land­scapes, his­tor­ic­al sites or nat­ur­al and art monu­ments; and

b.

re­cep­tion of the cus­tom­ary pro­gramme ser­vices in the re­gion re­mains guar­an­teed un­der ac­cept­able con­di­tions.

² The erec­tion of an out­door an­tenna for the re­cep­tion of ad­di­tion­al pro­gramme ser­vices must be ap­proved by way of ex­cep­tion if the in­terest in re­ceiv­ing the pro­gramme ser­vices over­rides the in­terest in pro­tect­ing the loc­al and na­tion­al land­scape.

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion charges a fee to fin­ance the per­form­ance man­date for ra­dio and tele­vi­sion in terms of the Fed­er­al Con­sti­tu­tion (Art. 93 para. 2 FC).

² The fee is charged for each house­hold and each un­der­tak­ing.

³ The rev­en­ue from and the ap­plic­a­tion of the fee, with the ex­cep­tion of the pay­ments due to the Con­fed­er­a­tion, are not shown in the fed­er­al fin­an­cial state­ments.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­term­ine the amount of the fee for house­holds and for un­der­tak­ings. The de­cis­ive factors are the need:

a.

to fin­ance SRG SSR pro­gramme ser­vices and oth­er journ­al­ist­ic ser­vices from SRG SSR that are re­quired to ful­fil the pro­gramme ser­vice man­date (Art. 25 para. 3 let. b);

b.

to sup­port pro­gramme ser­vices from fee-shar­ing li­censees (Art. 38–42);

c.

to sup­port the Found­a­tion for Audi­ence Re­search (Art. 81);

d.

to sub­sid­ise the con­struc­tion of trans­mit­ter net­works in or­der to in­tro­duce new broad­cast­ing tech­no­lo­gies (Art. 58);

e.

to fin­ance the pro­cessing of pro­grammes in li­censed re­gion­al tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vices for per­sons hard of hear­ing (Art. 7 para. 4);

f.

for the tasks of the col­lec­tion agency, the Fed­er­al Tax Ad­min­is­tra­tion (FTA), OF­COM and the can­tons and com­munes in con­nec­tion with col­lect­ing the fee and en­for­cing the ob­lig­a­tion to pay (Art. 69d–69g and 70–70d);

g.

to fin­ance the main­ten­ance of pro­gramme ser­vices (Art. 21).

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­term­ine how the rev­en­ue from the fee is al­loc­ated for the uses in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1. In do­ing so, it may de­term­ine the shares al­loc­ated for the ra­dio pro­gramme ser­vices, tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vices and oth­er journ­al­ist­ic ser­vices from SRG SSR sep­ar­ately.

³ In de­cid­ing on the amount of the fee, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall take ac­count of the Price Su­per­visor’s re­com­mend­a­tion. Any di­ver­gence from the re­com­mend­a­tions must be pub­licly jus­ti­fied.

¹ House­hold mem­bers’ ob­lig­a­tion to pay be­gins on the first day of the month fol­low­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of the house­hold and ends on the last day of the month in which the house­hold is dis­solved.

² The make-up of the house­hold as re­gistered in the can­ton­al or com­mun­al re­gister of res­id­ents is de­cis­ive when col­lect­ing the fee.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the fre­quency, due date and the pre­script­ive peri­od for the fee.

¹ Each private house­hold must pay the same fee.

² The defin­i­tion of a private house­hold is gov­erned by the le­gis­la­tion on the har­mon­isa­tion of re­gisters.

³ The fol­low­ing per­sons are jointly and sev­er­ally li­able for pay­ment of the house­hold fee:

a.

adults for whom the house­hold is their main res­id­ence, in ana­log­ous terms to the defin­i­tion of the com­mune of res­id­ence in Art­icle 3 let­ter b of the Re­gister Har­mon­isa­tion Act of 23 June 2006⁵⁹ (RHA); or

b.

adults who have no main res­id­ence in Switzer­land and for whom the house­hold is their sec­ond­ary res­id­ence, in ana­log­ous terms to the defin­i­tion of the com­mune of res­id­ence in Art­icle 3 let­ter c RHA.

⁴ Each per­son’s li­ab­il­ity ex­tends to the amount due from the fee peri­ods at the start of which the per­son is a mem­ber of the house­hold.

⁵ If all the adults who be­longed to a house­hold at the start of a month leave that house­hold with­in that month, the house­hold is deemed to be dis­solved as of the last day of that month.

¹ The fol­low­ing per­sons are ex­emp­ted from the ob­lig­a­tion to pay the fee:

a.

on ap­plic­a­tion, per­sons who re­ceive an­nu­al be­ne­fits un­der Art­icle 3 para­graph 1 let­ter a of the Fed­er­al Act of 6 Oc­to­ber 2006⁶⁰ on Be­ne­fits sup­ple­ment­ary to the Old Age, Sur­viv­ors' and In­valid­ity In­sur­ance; the ex­emp­tion ap­plies ret­ro­spect­ively from the date on which sup­ple­ment­ary be­ne­fits were first claimed, but at the earli­est from a date five years pri­or to re­ceipt of the ap­plic­a­tion by the col­lec­tion agency;

b.

per­sons en­titled to priv­ileges, im­munit­ies and fa­cil­it­ies un­der Art­icle 2 para­graph 2 of the Host State Act of 22 June 2007⁶¹ (HSA) and who en­joy dip­lo­mat­ic status, provided they do not hold Swiss cit­izen­ship; the Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the ex­emp­tion of oth­er per­sons en­joy­ing priv­ileges, im­munit­ies and fa­cil­it­ies and the mem­bers of staff of in­sti­tu­tion­al be­ne­fi­ciar­ies un­der Art­icle 2 para­graph 1 let­ters d, e and f HSA, provided they do not hold Swiss cit­izen­ship.

² Where one mem­ber of a private house­hold meets the re­quire­ments for an ex­emp­tion un­der para­graph 1, all mem­bers of the house­hold con­cerned are ex­emp­ted from the ob­lig­a­tion to pay.

¹ Each col­lect­ive house­hold must pay the same fee.

² The defin­i­tion of a col­lect­ive house­hold is gov­erned by the le­gis­la­tion on the har­mon­isa­tion of re­gisters.

³ The fee is owed by the private or pub­lic en­tity re­spons­ible for the col­lect­ive house­hold.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may del­eg­ate the col­lec­tion of the fee per house­hold and re­lated du­ties to a col­lec­tion agency out­side the fed­er­al ad­min­is­tra­tion. The le­gis­la­tion on pub­lic pro­cure­ment ap­plies.

² OF­COM su­per­vises the col­lec­tion agency.

¹ The col­lec­tion agency may is­sue ad­min­is­trat­ive rul­ings:

a.

to fee pay­ers: on the ob­lig­a­tion to pay;

b.

to the can­tons and com­munes: on the pay­ments made un­der Art­icle 69g para­graph 4.

² The col­lec­tion agency acts as an au­thor­ity as defined in Art­icle 1 para­graph 2 let­ter e APA⁶². It may dis­miss an ob­jec­tion in debt en­force­ment pro­ceed­ings in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 79 of the Fed­er­al Act of 11 April 1889⁶³ on Debt En­force­ment and Bank­ruptcy (DEBA) and is deemed to be an ad­min­is­trat­ive au­thor­ity in terms of Art­icle 80 para­graph 2 num­ber 2 DEBA.

³ It may not pur­sue any eco­nom­ic activ­ity oth­er than that del­eg­ated to it un­der this Act.

⁴ Each year it shall pub­lish a re­port on its activ­it­ies and its an­nu­al ac­counts.

¹ In or­der to as­sess eli­gib­il­ity for an ex­emp­tion from the fee un­der Art­icle 69b para­graph 1 let­ter, the col­lec­tion agency may pro­cess data that al­lows con­clu­sions to be drawn as to a per­son’s health or so­cial as­sist­ance claims. The data pro­cessing and the su­per­vi­sion there­of are gov­erned by pro­vi­sions of the Fed­er­al Act of 19 June 1992⁶⁴ on Data Pro­tec­tion that ap­ply to fed­er­al bod­ies.

² The col­lec­tion agency shall take the or­gan­isa­tion­al and tech­nic­al meas­ures re­quired to se­cure the data against un­au­thor­ised pro­cessing. It may only pro­cess data that it ob­tained in con­nec­tion with its activ­it­ies un­der this Act for the pur­pose of col­lect­ing and en­for­cing pay­ment of the fee and may only pass on the data to third parties for these pur­poses.

³ Data that al­low con­clu­sions to be drawn with re­gard to a per­son’s health or so­cial in­sur­ance claims may not be dis­closed to third parties. Such data may be stored by third parties in en­cryp­ted form (con­tent en­cryp­tion). Data may only be de­cryp­ted by the col­lec­tion agency. Per­sons en­trus­ted with ser­vi­cing, main­ten­ance or pro­gram­ming tasks may pro­cess such data with­in the in­form­a­tion sys­tem if this is re­quired in or­der to carry out their tasks and data se­cur­ity is guar­an­teed. In do­ing so, the con­tent of the data may not be mod­i­fied.

⁴ The col­lec­tion agency must pass on the data re­quired for col­lect­ing and en­for­cing pay­ment to any suc­cessor agency in good time and free of charge. Once the data has been passed on, it must per­man­ently de­lete the data that it no longer re­quires.

¹ The col­lec­tion agency shall ob­tain the data on house­holds and their mem­bers re­quired for col­lect­ing the fee from the fol­low­ing re­gisters:

a.

the re­gister of res­id­ents (Art. 2 para. 2 let. a RHA⁶⁵);

b.

the Or­dipro in­form­a­tion sys­tem of the Fed­er­al De­part­ment of For­eign Af­fairs (Art. 2 para. 1 let. c RHA).

² It shall ob­tain the data via the Fed­er­al In­form­a­tion and Com­mu­nic­a­tion Plat­form in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 10 para­graph 3 RHA.

³ Can­tons and com­munes shall provide the col­lec­tion agency with the data from their re­gisters of res­id­ents in the re­quired format and with the re­quired reg­u­lar­ity for de­liv­ery via the Fed­er­al In­form­a­tion and Com­mu­nic­a­tion Plat­form in en­cryp­ted form.

⁴ The col­lec­tion agency shall pay con­tri­bu­tions from the fee rev­en­ue to com­munes and can­tons to­wards the in­vest­ments spe­cific­ally re­quired in or­der to trans­mit data to the col­lec­tion agency.

⁵ The col­lec­tion agency may sys­tem­at­ic­ally use the OASI num­ber⁶⁶ in terms of Art­icle 50c of the Fed­er­al Act of 20 Decem­ber 1946⁶⁷ on Old-Age and Sur­viv­ors’ In­sur­ance (OASIA):

a.

to ful­fil its tasks in con­nec­tion with col­lect­ing the fee;

b.

in the case of quer­ies to com­munes and can­tons re­lated to trans­mit­ted data.

⁶ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­term­ine the data that the col­lec­tion agency may ob­tain in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1. It shall reg­u­late the de­tails with re­gard to volume and format of the data, the reg­u­lar­ity of data de­liv­er­ies and the con­tri­bu­tions to can­tons and com­munes in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 4.

¹ A cor­por­ate un­der­tak­ing is re­quired to pay the fee if it reached the min­im­um turnover fixed by the Fed­er­al Coun­cil in the tax peri­od that ended in the pre­vi­ous cal­en­dar year in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 34 of the Value Ad­ded Tax Act of 12 June 2009⁶⁸ (VATA).

² An un­der­tak­ing is any en­tity entered in the FTA re­gister of per­sons li­able to pay VAT and which has its re­gistered of­fice, dom­i­cile or per­man­ent es­tab­lish­ment in Switzer­land. A simple part­ner­ship un­der Art­icle 530 of the Code of Ob­lig­a­tions⁶⁹ is not deemed to be an un­der­tak­ing.⁷⁰

³ Turnover in terms of para­graph 1 is defined as the total turnover ex­clud­ing VAT achieved by an un­der­tak­ing that must be de­clared in ac­cord­ance with the VATA, ir­re­spect­ive of wheth­er it qual­i­fies for VAT li­ab­il­ity. Where group tax­a­tion ap­plies, the total turnover of the VAT group is de­cis­ive.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall spe­cify the min­im­um turnover at a level that en­sures that small un­der­tak­ings are ex­empt from the fee.

⁵ The amount of the fee is de­term­ined by the turnover. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall spe­cify sev­er­al turnover levels with a sep­ar­ate tar­iff for each level (tar­iff cat­egor­ies).

¹ The FTA col­lects the fee.

² Each year, when as­sess­ing the li­ab­il­ity to pay VAT, the FTA shall al­loc­ate each un­der­tak­ing li­able to pay the fee to a tar­iff cat­egory and in­voice it for the fee.

³ If an un­der­tak­ing has made no VAT re­turns or its re­turns are clearly in­ad­equate, the FTA shall use its dis­cre­tion to al­loc­ate the un­der­tak­ing to a tar­iff cat­egory.

⁴ If al­loc­a­tion to a tar­iff cat­egory for the tax peri­od end­ing in the pre­vi­ous cal­en­dar year is tem­por­ar­ily im­possible, the FTA shall in­voice the fee when the tar­iff cat­egory has been de­term­ined.

¹ The fee be­comes due for pay­ment 60 days after it is in­voiced and the debt pre­scribes five years after the due date. In the event of late pay­ment, de­fault in­terest of 5 per cent per an­num be­comes due without pri­or no­tice.

² If a per­son li­able to pay the fee files an ob­jec­tion in debt en­force­ment pro­ceed­ings, the FTA shall is­sue a rul­ing on the amount of the fee due and at the same time dis­miss the ob­jec­tion in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 79 DEBA⁷¹.

³ In the event of any dis­pute, the rank­ing of cred­it­ors is post­poned un­til an en­force­able rul­ing has been is­sued.

⁴ Any fees that are due or have been in­voiced may be off­set against re­funds of VAT.

⁵ Se­cur­ity for the fee is gov­erned by Art­icles 93–95 VATA⁷². Joint li­ab­il­ity and suc­ces­sion to li­ab­il­ity are gov­erned by Art­icles 15 and 16 VATA.

⁶ The pro­ced­ure is gov­erned by the APA⁷³.

¹ The FTA must keep its activ­it­ies in col­lect­ing the fee sep­ar­ate from its oth­er activ­it­ies in its ac­counts.

² It shall pub­lish its an­nu­al ac­counts each year, to­geth­er with an an­nu­al re­port on the col­lec­tion of the fee.

¹ The FTA shall pro­cess data re­quired to carry out its activ­it­ies in ac­cord­ance with this Act. The pro­vi­sions of the VATA⁷⁴ on data pro­cessing ap­ply.

² The duty of con­fid­en­ti­al­ity and its ex­cep­tions un­der Art­icle 74 VATA also ap­ply to col­lect­ing and en­for­cing pay­ment of the fee.

The can­tons may provide for fees for the re­cep­tion of ra­dio and tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vices which are trans­mit­ted us­ing wire­less ter­restri­al tech­no­logy on the basis of a pub­lic sup­ply con­tract.

¹ If the re­port­ing of a pub­lic event in Switzer­land is re­stric­ted by ex­clus­ive agree­ments, any in­ter­ested broad­caster has the right to short, up-to-date, me­dia-com­pat­ible re­port­ing of this event.

² The or­gan­iser of a pub­lic event and the broad­caster be­ne­fit­ing from first ex­ploit­a­tion or ex­clus­ive rights are ob­liged to provide any in­ter­ested broad­caster with the pos­sib­il­ity of short re­port­ing.

³ They shall give in­ter­ested broad­casters:

a.

ac­cess to the event, in so far as tech­nic­al and spa­tial cir­cum­stances per­mit; and

b.

the de­sired parts of the trans­mis­sion sig­nal un­der ap­pro­pri­ate con­di­tions.

⁴ With ref­er­ence to Art­icle 90, OF­COM may or­der or­gan­isers of a pub­lic event and broad­casters with first or ex­clus­ive rights to take ap­pro­pri­ate meas­ures to en­sure ex­er­cise of the right of short re­port­ing.

¹ Re­port­ing of events of ma­jor im­port­ance to so­ci­ety must be made freely ac­cess­ible to a sub­stan­tial pro­por­tion of the gen­er­al pub­lic.

² DE­TEC drafts a list of in­ter­na­tion­al and na­tion­al events of ma­jor im­port­ance to so­ci­ety and up­dates it reg­u­larly.

³ For broad­casters of Swiss tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vices, the lists draf­ted by the mem­ber states of the European Con­ven­tion on Trans­fron­ti­er Tele­vi­sion of 5 May 1989⁷⁷ are bind­ing in the state con­cerned with re­gard to free ac­cess.

¹ A risk to di­versity of opin­ion and pro­gram­ming ex­ists if:

a.

a broad­caster ab­uses its dom­in­ant po­s­i­tion in the rel­ev­ant mar­ket;

b.

a broad­caster or an­oth­er un­der­tak­ing act­ive in the ra­dio and tele­vi­sion mar­ket ab­uses its dom­in­ant po­s­i­tion in one or more me­dia-re­lated mar­kets.

² DE­TEC shall con­sult the Com­pet­i­tion Com­mis­sion to as­sess the dom­in­ant po­s­i­tion as defined in Art­icle 4 para­graph 2 of the Car­tel Act of 6 Oc­to­ber 1995⁷⁹. The Com­pet­i­tion Com­mis­sion shall ap­ply the prin­ciples of com­pet­i­tion law and may pub­lish its com­ments.⁸⁰

¹ If, after ob­tain­ing the Com­pet­i­tion Com­mis­sion’s re­port, DE­TEC as­cer­tains that a broad­caster or an­oth­er un­der­tak­ing act­ive in the ra­dio and tele­vi­sion mar­ket has jeop­ard­ised di­versity of opin­ion and pro­gram­ming as a res­ult of its ab­use of its dom­in­ant po­s­i­tion, it may take meas­ures in the area of ra­dio and tele­vi­sion. As a rule, it takes a de­cision with­in three months of re­ceipt of the re­port.

² It may de­mand that the broad­caster or the un­der­tak­ing con­cerned:

a.

en­sures di­versity by meas­ures such as grant­ing broad­cast­ing time for third parties or co­oper­at­ing with oth­er par­ti­cipants in the mar­ket;

b.

takes meas­ures against cor­por­ate journ­al­ism, such as is­su­ing ed­it­or­i­al stat­utes to en­sure ed­it­or­i­al free­dom;

c.

should such meas­ures prove to be clearly in­ad­equate, ad­apts the busi­ness and or­gan­isa­tion­al struc­ture of the un­der­tak­ing.

The Con­fed­er­a­tion may sup­port the ba­sic and con­tinu­ing edu­ca­tion and train­ing of pro­gramme pro­du­cers, in par­tic­u­lar through con­tri­bu­tions to in­sti­tu­tions for ba­sic and con­tinu­ing edu­ca­tion and train­ing. OF­COM reg­u­lates the award cri­ter­ia and de­cides on the con­tri­bu­tions.

The Fed­er­al Coun­cil reg­u­lates the re­quire­ments and cal­cu­la­tion cri­ter­ia in ac­cord­ance with which re­search pro­jects in the ra­dio and tele­vi­sion sec­tor are sup­por­ted from the li­cence fee (Art. 22).

¹ The Found­a­tion for Audi­ence Re­search is re­spons­ible for col­lect­ing sci­entif­ic data on the use of ra­dio and tele­vi­sion in Switzer­land. In do­ing so, it must ap­ply sci­entif­ic meth­od­o­logy and is in­de­pend­ent of the SRG SSR, oth­er broad­casters and the ad­vert­ising in­dustry. It may trans­fer the activ­it­ies in whole or in part to sub­si­di­ary un­der­tak­ings con­trolled by it and bring in in­de­pend­ent ex­perts with re­gard to data col­lec­tion. The Found­a­tion is sub­ject to su­per­vi­sion by DE­TEC.

² The Found­a­tion en­sures that Swiss broad­casters and sci­entif­ic re­search have suf­fi­cient data avail­able on the use of ra­dio and tele­vi­sion.Li­censed broad­casters in moun­tain and peri­pher­al re­gions mustbe able to ob­tain data with a qual­ity com­par­able to that provided to oth­er broad­casters.

¹ The Found­a­tion pub­lishes the most im­port­ant res­ults of its sur­veys at least once a year.

² It makes the ba­sic data on use avail­able to third parties at prices which cov­er the costs. The data is provided to uni­versity re­search­ers and OF­COM free of charge.

¹ The Found­a­tion reg­u­lates its or­gan­isa­tion and its activ­it­ies by means of reg­u­la­tions which must be ap­proved by DE­TEC.

² The board of the Found­a­tion com­prises the same num­ber of rep­res­ent­at­ives from the SRG SSR as from oth­er Swiss broad­casters. In ad­di­tion, oth­er per­sons are ap­poin­ted to the Found­a­tion board. Ac­count is taken of the need for lan­guage re­gions and sexes to be rep­res­en­ted fairly.⁸²

³ DE­TEC se­lects the found­a­tion board. In do­ing so, it takes ac­count of the pro­pos­als of those con­cerned.

¹ The Found­a­tion re­ceives an an­nu­al con­tri­bu­tion from the rev­en­ue from ra­dio and tele­vi­sion fees for the de­vel­op­ment and ac­quis­i­tion of sur­vey meth­ods and sys­tems.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil de­term­ines the amount of the con­tri­bu­tion when de­term­in­ing the amount of the ra­dio and tele­vi­sion fees.

³ The Sub­sidies Act of 5 Oc­to­ber 1990⁸³ ap­plies. Activ­it­ies in ac­cord­ance with Art­icles 78 and 79 shall be sep­ar­ated from any oth­er activ­it­ies in the ac­counts of the found­a­tion and of any sub­si­di­ary com­pan­ies.

¹ The In­de­pend­ent Com­plaints Au­thor­ity for Ra­dio and Tele­vi­sion (the Com­plaints Au­thor­ity) com­prises nine part-time mem­bers.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil elects the mem­bers of the Com­plaints Au­thor­ity and ap­points the pres­id­ent.

³ The fol­low­ing may not be­long to the Com­plaints Au­thor­ity:

a.

mem­bers of the Fed­er­al As­sembly;

b.

per­sons in the ser­vice of the Con­fed­er­a­tion;

c.

mem­bers of the man­age­ment and em­ploy­ees of Swiss broad­casters.

⁴ If there is an in­com­pat­ib­il­ity, the per­son con­cerned shall de­clare which of the two of­fices he or she opts for. If he or she opts for an of­fice in para­graph 3, he or she shall resign from the Com­plaints Au­thor­ity four months at the latest from the oc­cur­rence of the in­com­pat­ib­il­ity.

¹ The Com­plaints Au­thor­ity is com­pet­ent for:

a.⁸⁴

deal­ing with com­plaints about the con­tent of ed­it­or­i­al pub­lic­a­tions and the re­fus­al of ac­cess to the pro­gramme ser­vice or oth­er journ­al­ist­ic ser­vices from SRG SSR (Art. 94);

b.

the se­lec­tion and su­per­vi­sion of the om­buds­man ser­vices (Art. 91).

² It pro­duces an activ­ity re­port an­nu­ally for the Fed­er­al Coun­cil.

The Com­plaints Au­thor­ity is in­de­pend­ent and is not bound by any dir­ect­ives from the Fed­er­al As­sembly, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil and the fed­er­al ad­min­is­tra­tion. The right of in­struc­tion based on Art­icle 104 para­graph 2 is re­served.

¹ Un­less the Fed­er­al Coun­cil provides to the con­trary, the Com­mit­tees Or­din­ance of 3 June 1996⁸⁵ ap­plies.

² The Com­plaints Au­thor­ity or­gan­ises it­self. It shall draw up reg­u­la­tions on its or­gan­isa­tion and man­age­ment. The reg­u­la­tions are sub­ject to the ap­prov­al of the Fed­er­al Coun­cil.

³ The Com­plaints Au­thor­ity has its own sec­ret­ari­at. It reg­u­lates the du­ties in the reg­u­la­tions in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 2. The con­di­tions of ser­vice of the sec­ret­ari­at per­son­nel are gov­erned by the le­gis­la­tion ap­plic­able to fed­er­al gov­ern­ment em­ploy­ees.

¹ OF­COM shall en­sure that this Act and its im­ple­ment­ing pro­vi­sions, the li­cence and rel­ev­ant in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ments are com­plied with. The Com­plaints Au­thor­ity is re­spons­ible for deal­ing with com­plaints about the con­tent of ed­it­or­i­al pub­lic­a­tions and re­fus­al of ac­cess to the pro­gramme ser­vice or oth­er journ­al­ist­ic ser­vices from SRG SSR (Art. 83 para. 1 let. a and Art. 94–98).⁸⁶

² Su­per­vis­ory meas­ures re­lat­ing to the pro­duc­tion and pre­par­a­tion of pro­gramme ser­vices and the oth­er journ­al­ist­ic ser­vices from SRG SSR and on the grounds of simple ex­pedi­ency are not per­mit­ted.⁸⁷

³ The pro­vi­sions of the APA⁸⁸ ap­ply to the su­per­vis­ory pro­ced­ure un­less this Act provides oth­er­wise.

⁴ No pro­vi­sion­al meas­ures are per­mit­ted in the Com­plaints Au­thor­ity’s su­per­vi­sion pro­ced­ure (Art. 91–98).⁸⁹

⁵ The Com­plaints Au­thor­ity only eval­u­ates com­plaints against pub­lished ed­it­or­i­al pub­lic­a­tions and com­plaints about re­fus­al of ac­cess to the pro­gramme ser­vice or to oth­er journ­al­ist­ic ser­vices from SRG SSR. It does not act ex of­fi­cio.⁹⁰

¹ The su­per­vis­ory au­thor­it­ies shall in­form the pub­lic of their activ­it­ies. In par­tic­u­lar, they may pub­lish the de­cisions on ad­min­is­trat­ive and crim­in­al mat­ters and make them ac­cess­ible on­line.

² They shall not di­vulge any com­mer­cial secrets.

¹ The su­per­vis­ory au­thor­it­ies may pro­cess sens­it­ive per­son­al data if this is ne­ces­sary for the per­form­ance of the du­ties im­posed by this Act.

² Data pro­cessing by the su­per­vis­ory au­thor­it­ies and su­per­vi­sion there­of are gov­erned by the pro­vi­sions of the Fed­er­al Act of 19 June 1992⁹¹ on Data Pro­tec­tion which ap­ply to fed­er­al bod­ies.

1 If the su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity es­tab­lishes an in­fringe­ment of the law, it may:

a.

re­quire the nat­ur­al or leg­al per­son re­spons­ible for the in­fringe­ment:

1.

to rem­edy the de­fi­ciency and take meas­ures to en­sure that that the in­fringe­ment does not re­cur,

2.

to in­form the au­thor­ity of the pre­cau­tions taken,

3.

to sur­render to the Con­fed­er­a­tion the rev­en­ue achieved as a res­ult of the in­fringe­ment;

b.

re­quest DE­TEC to make the li­cence sub­ject to con­di­tions, or to re­strict, sus­pend or with­draw the li­cence.

² At the re­quest of the Com­plaints Au­thor­ity (Art. 97 para. 4), DE­TEC may ban the pro­gramme ser­vice or al­low it only un­der cer­tain con­di­tions.⁹²

¹ The su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity may im­pose a pen­alty not ex­ceed­ing 10 per cent of its av­er­age turnover achieved in Switzer­land in the pre­vi­ous three busi­ness years on any per­son who:

a.

vi­ol­ates a leg­ally-bind­ing de­cision of the su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity or a leg­ally-bind­ing de­cision of the ap­peals au­thor­ity;

b.

ser­i­ously in­fringes con­di­tions of the li­cence;

c.

vi­ol­ates reg­u­la­tions con­cern­ing ad­vert­ising and spon­sor­ship which are con­tained in this Act (Art. 4, 5 and 9-14), its im­ple­ment­ing pro­vi­sions, the li­cence or the rel­ev­ant in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ments;

d.

vi­ol­ates the reg­u­la­tions con­cern­ing the trans­mis­sion ob­lig­a­tion (Art. 55);

e.

fails to com­ply with the ob­lig­a­tion to guar­an­tee the right of short re­port­ing of pub­lic events (Art. 72);

f.

fails to guar­an­tee free ac­cess to events of ma­jor im­port­ance to so­ci­ety (Art. 73);

g.

vi­ol­ates meas­ures as defined in Art­icle 75 (me­dia con­cen­tra­tion);

h.⁹³

...

² Any per­son who fails to com­ply with, or be­lated or in­com­pletely com­plies with one of the fol­low­ing ob­lig­a­tions or who provides false in­form­a­tion may be re­quired to pay an amount not ex­ceed­ing CHF 10 000:

a.

ob­lig­a­tion to no­ti­fy (Art. 3);

b.

pub­lic­a­tion ob­lig­a­tions (Art. 8);

c.

ob­lig­a­tion to no­ti­fy rev­en­ue from ad­vert­ising and spon­sor­ship (Art. 15);

d.

ob­lig­a­tion to no­ti­fy hold­ings (Art. 16);

e.

ob­lig­a­tion to provide in­form­a­tion (Art. 17);

f.

re­port­ing ob­lig­a­tion (Art. 18);

g.

ob­lig­a­tion to sub­mit stat­ist­ic­al in­form­a­tion (Art. 19);

h.

ob­lig­a­tion to re­cord and re­tain pro­grammes (Art. 20) or to per­man­ently con­serve pro­grammes (Art. 21);

i.

ob­lig­a­tions of the SRG SSR (Art. 29);

j.

ob­lig­a­tions for broad­casters with a fee-shar­ing li­cence (Art. 41);

k.

ob­lig­a­tion to no­ti­fy trans­fer of the li­cence (Art. 48);

l.

ob­lig­a­tion to com­ply with the li­cence area des­ig­nated by the Fed­er­al Coun­cil when broad­cast­ing or ar­ran­ging the broad­cast­ing of pro­gramme ser­vices (Art. 52 para. 3);

m.

broad­cast­ing of pre­scribed pro­gramme ser­vices on pre­ferred chan­nels (Art. 62);

n.

ob­lig­a­tion to provide in­form­a­tion and to sub­mit doc­u­ment­a­tion (Art. 63 para. 3).

³ When as­sess­ing the pen­alty, the su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity shall take par­tic­u­lar ac­count of the ser­i­ous­ness of the in­fringe­ment and the fin­an­cial cir­cum­stances of the pen­al­ised leg­al or nat­ur­al per­son.

¹ The Com­plaints Au­thor­ity shall des­ig­nate an in­de­pend­ent om­buds­man ser­vice for each re­gion of the three of­fi­cial lan­guages; the om­buds­man ser­vice is at­tached to the Com­plaints Com­mis­sion for ad­min­is­trat­ive pur­poses.

² The SRG SSR shall provide its own in­de­pend­ent om­buds­man ser­vices.

³ The om­buds­man ser­vice deals with re­ports about:

ed­it­or­i­al pro­grammes that have been broad­cast, where the re­port relates to vi­ol­a­tions of Art­icles 4 and 5 of this Act or of in­ter­na­tion­al law bind­ing on Swiss broad­casters;

a^bis.⁹⁵

pub­lished con­tri­bu­tions pro­duced by the ed­it­or­i­al staff as part of the oth­er journ­al­ist­ic ser­vices from SRG SSR where the re­port relates to an in­fringe­ment of Art­icle 5a;

b.⁹⁶

re­fus­al to grant ac­cess to the pro­gramme ser­vices of Swiss broad­casters or to the part of the oth­er journ­al­ist­ic ser­vices from SRG SSR pro­duced by the ed­it­or­i­al staff.

⁴ The re­gion­al-lan­guage om­buds­man ser­vices are sub­ject to the su­per­vi­sion of the Com­plaints Au­thor­ity.

¹ Any per­son may sub­mit a re­port to the com­pet­ent om­buds­man ser­vice:

a.

about ed­it­or­i­al pub­lic­a­tions al­leging an in­fringe­ment of Art­icles 4, 5 and 5a of this Act;

b.

al­leging re­fus­al of ac­cess (Art. 91 para. 3 let. b).

² Re­ports must be sub­mit­ted with­in 20 days of the ap­pear­ance of the pub­lic­a­tion or re­fus­al of a re­quest for ac­cess in terms of Art­icle 91 para­graph 3 let­ter b.

³ If the re­port relates to more than one pro­gramme or con­tri­bu­tion, the peri­od be­gins with the broad­cast­ing or ap­pear­ance of the last pub­lic­a­tion that is the sub­ject of the re­port. However, the first of the pub­lic­a­tions re­por­ted must not be more than three months be­fore the last.

⁴ A re­port may only con­cern two or more con­tri­bu­tions pro­duced by the ed­it­or­i­al staff as part of the oth­er journ­al­ist­ic ser­vices from SRG SSR if these con­tri­bu­tions are pub­lished in the same elec­tion or vote dossier.

⁵ The re­port must be sub­mit­ted in writ­ing and, if it relates to oth­er journ­al­ist­ic ser­vices from SRG SSR, be ac­com­pan­ied by sup­port­ing doc­u­ments. A brief state­ment of grounds must be provided, ex­plain­ing in what way the ed­it­or­i­al pub­lic­a­tion is de­fi­cient in terms of con­tent or the re­fus­al to grant ac­cess to the pro­gramme ser­vice or to the part of the oth­er journ­al­ist­ic ser­vices from SRG SSR pro­duced by the ed­it­or­i­al staff is un­law­ful.

¹ The om­buds­man ser­vice ex­am­ines the case and me­di­ates between the parties con­cerned. It may in par­tic­u­lar:

a.

dis­cuss the mat­ter with the broad­caster or in minor cases hand it over to it for dir­ect set­tle­ment;

b.

ar­range a dir­ect en­counter between the parties con­cerned;

c.

is­sue re­com­mend­a­tions to the broad­caster;

d.

in­form those con­cerned about the re­spons­ib­il­it­ies, the ap­plic­able law and leg­al rem­ed­ies.

² It has no power to make de­cisions or is­sue dir­ect­ives.

³ Forty days at the latest after sub­mis­sion of the re­port, the om­buds­man ser­vice shall in­form the parties in writ­ing of its find­ings and the man­ner in which the re­port is to be settled.

⁴ By mu­tu­al con­sent, the parties may be in­formed of the set­tle­ment or­ally.

⁵ The om­buds­man ser­vice bills the broad­caster after the re­port has been dealt with. In the event of a vex­a­tious re­port, at the re­quest of the om­buds­man ser­vice or the broad­caster the Com­plaints Au­thor­ity may award pro­ced­ur­al costs against the per­son sub­mit­ting the re­port.

¹ Com­plaints against an ed­it­or­i­al pub­lic­a­tion that has ap­peared or against re­fus­al to grant ac­cess may be sub­mit­ted by any per­son who:⁹⁹

a.

was in­volved in the re­port pro­ced­ure be­fore the om­buds­man ser­vice; and

b.¹⁰⁰

demon­strates a close re­la­tion­ship with the sub­ject of the dis­puted ed­it­or­i­al pub­lic­a­tion or whose ap­plic­a­tion for ac­cess (Art. 91 para. 3 let. b) has been re­jec­ted.

² Nat­ur­al per­sons who do not have a close re­la­tion­ship with the sub­ject of the dis­puted ed­it­or­i­al pub­lic­a­tion may also sub­mit a com­plaint if the com­plaint is signed by a min­im­um of 20 per­sons.¹⁰¹

³ Nat­ur­al per­sons who sub­mit a com­plaint in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 2 must be at least 18 years old and hold Swiss cit­izen­ship or hold a per­man­ent or tem­por­ary res­id­ence per­mit.¹⁰²

⁴ Com­plaints may also be sub­mit­ted by DE­TEC, in which case the pro­vi­sions of para­graph 1 do not ap­ply.

¹ With­in 30 days of re­ceipt of the re­port in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 93 para­graph 3, a com­plaint may be sub­mit­ted in writ­ing with the Com­plaints Au­thor­ity. The om­buds­man ser­vice’s re­port must be at­tached.

² DE­TEC sub­mits its com­plaint dir­ectly to the Com­plaints Au­thor­ity with­in 30 days of the trans­mis­sion of the pro­gramme con­cerned.

³ In the com­plaint, a brief state­ment of grounds must be provided ex­plain­ing:

a.

how the ed­it­or­i­al pub­lic­a­tion which is the sub­ject of the com­plaint has vi­ol­ated pro­vi­sions con­cern­ing con­tent in Art­icles 4, 5 and 5a of this Act or of in­ter­na­tion­al law bind­ing on Swiss broad­casters; or

b.

why the re­fus­al to grant ac­cess is un­law­ful.¹⁰³

¹ If there is a pub­lic in­terest in a de­cision, the Com­plaints Au­thor­ity shall also con­sider com­plaints which have been sub­mit­ted with­in the time lim­it but which do not meet all the form­al re­quire­ments. In this case the party lodging the com­plaint does not have party rights.

² Un­less the com­plaint is clearly in­ad­miss­ible or without mer­it, the Com­plaints Au­thor­ity in­vites the broad­caster to com­ment.

³ The Com­plaints Au­thor­ity may re­fuse or sus­pend the con­sid­er­a­tion of a com­plaint if ju­di­cial rem­ed­ies in civil or crim­in­al law are pending or have not been used or if an ad­min­is­trat­ive pro­ced­ure is be­ing con­duc­ted in the same mat­ter.

¹ The de­lib­er­a­tions of the Com­plaints Au­thor­ity are pub­lic un­less private in­terests worthy of pro­tec­tion de­mand oth­er­wise.

² The Com­plaints Au­thor­ity de­term­ines wheth­er:

a.

the con­tested ed­it­or­i­al pub­lic­a­tions have vi­ol­ated pro­vi­sions con­cern­ing con­tent laid down in Art­icles 4, 5 and 5a or rel­ev­ant in­ter­na­tion­al law; or

b.

an un­law­ful re­fus­al to grant ac­cess (Art. 91 para. 3 let. b) has oc­curred.¹⁰⁴

³ If it es­tab­lishes that a vi­ol­a­tion has oc­curred, it may take or ap­ply for the meas­ures provided for in Art­icle 89.

⁴ In the event of re­peated ser­i­ous vi­ol­a­tions of the ob­lig­a­tions in Art­icle 4 para­graphs 1 and 3 and Art­icle 5 in the pro­gramme ser­vice or of the ob­lig­a­tions in re­la­tion to oth­er journ­al­ist­ic ser­vices from SRG SSR (Art. 5a), the Com­plaints Au­thor­ity may ap­ply to DE­TEC for a pro­gramme ban (Art. 89 para. 2).¹⁰⁵

¹ Pro­ceed­ings of the Com­plaints Au­thor­ity are free of charge.

² The com­plain­ant may be charged the pro­ced­ur­al costs for vex­a­tious com­plaints. APA¹⁰⁶ ap­plies.

¹ Leg­al rem­ed­ies are based on the gen­er­al pro­vi­sions on the ad­min­is­tra­tion of fed­er­al justice.

² Rul­ings is­sued by the col­lec­tion agency may be con­tested by fil­ing an ap­peal with OF­COM.

³ Ap­peals against de­cisions of the Com­plaints Au­thor­ity may be filed dir­ectly with the Fed­er­al Su­preme Court.

¹ The com­pet­ent au­thor­ity charges ad­min­is­trat­ive fees, in par­tic­u­lar for:

a.

grant­ing, amend­ing, and re­vok­ing li­cences;

b.

su­per­vis­ory activ­ity;

c.

mak­ing de­cisions;

d.

deal­ing with en­quir­ies.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil de­term­ines the rates of fees. In so do­ing, it shall con­sider the ad­min­is­trat­ive ex­pense and may take ac­count of the lim­ited fin­an­cial re­sources of the nat­ur­al or leg­al per­son who is charged the fee.

³ The com­pet­ent au­thor­ity may re­quire the party ob­liged to pay the fees to provide ap­pro­pri­ate guar­an­tees.

¹ ...¹⁰⁸

² Any per­son who wil­fully vi­ol­ates a leg­ally en­force­able de­cision of the com­pet­ent su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity or of the leg­al au­thor­it­ies is li­able to a fine not ex­ceed­ing CHF 100,000.

³ Any per­son who in­flu­ences a li­cens­ing pro­ced­ure or a pro­ced­ure to amend a li­cence in his or her fa­vour by provid­ing false in­form­a­tion is li­able to a fine not ex­ceed­ing CHF 100,000.

⁴ In minor cases a pen­alty may not be im­posed.

¹ OF­COM has jur­is­dic­tion to pro­sec­ute and ad­ju­dic­ate on of­fences. The Fed­er­al Act of 22 March 1974¹⁰⁹ on Ad­min­is­trat­ive Crim­in­al Law ap­plies.

² ...¹¹⁰

The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall im­ple­ment this Act un­less the du­ties here­un­der are as­signed to an­oth­er au­thor­ity. It shall en­act the im­ple­ment­ing pro­vi­sions. It may del­eg­ate the task of is­su­ing ad­min­is­trat­ive and tech­nic­al reg­u­la­tions to DE­TEC.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may con­clude agree­ments of re­stric­ted scope un­der in­ter­na­tion­al law which fall with­in the scope of this Act.

² In the case of in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ments with tech­nic­al or ad­min­is­trat­ive con­tent, it may del­eg­ate this power to DE­TEC or OF­COM.¹¹²

The re­peal and amend­ment of ex­ist­ing le­gis­la­tion is reg­u­lated in the An­nex.

1. Ir­re­spect­ive of wheth­er this Act (RTVA) or the amend­ment of 24 March 2006 to the Tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions Act of 30 April 1997¹¹⁴ comes in­to force first, Art­icle 56 para­graph 4 RTVA¹¹⁵ reads on the entry in­to force of the act which comes in­to force later or on sim­ul­tan­eous entry in­to force of both acts as fol­lows:

...

2. and 3.¹¹⁶

...

¹ Li­cences for ra­dio and tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vices which have been awar­ded on the basis of the Fed­er­al Act of 21 June 1991¹¹⁷ on Ra­dio and Tele­vi­sion (RTVA 1991) con­tin­ue to be val­id sub­ject to para­graph 2 un­til their ex­piry un­less broad­casters ex­pressly de­clare that they do not wish to make use of them.

² Fol­low­ing the com­mence­ment this Act, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may can­cel the li­cences of SRG SSR, swiss­info/SRI, Tele­text AG and of those broad­casters which broad­cast their pro­gramme ser­vices in co­oper­a­tion with the SRG SSR in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 31 para­graph 3 RTVA 1991 at the end of any cal­en­dar year, sub­ject to nine months’ no­tice.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may ex­tend the li­cences of SRG SSR and of swiss­info/SRI which have been gran­ted on the basis of the RTVA 1991 by a max­im­um of five years from the com­mence­ment of this Act.

⁴ DE­TEC may ex­tend oth­er li­cences awar­ded on the basis of the RTVA 1991 by a max­im­um of five years from the com­mence­ment of this Act. A right of can­cel­la­tion may be provided for in the ex­ten­ded li­cences.

⁵ If the li­cences of SRG SSR or of swiss­info/SRI con­tin­ue to ap­ply or if they are ex­ten­ded, Art­icles 22 and 25 para­graphs 5 and 6 ap­ply, mu­tatis mutandis.

⁶ The pro­vi­sions of Art­icle 22 and Art­icles 44-50 re­gard­ing oth­er li­cences with a per­form­ance man­date which con­tin­ue to be val­id or which have been ex­ten­ded ap­ply mu­tatis mutandis.

The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may ex­tend the dir­ect­ives for trans­mit­ter net­work plan­ning in terms of Art­icle 8 para­graph 1 RTVA 1991¹¹⁸ by a max­im­um of five years from the com­mence­ment of this Act or amend them after con­sulta­tion with the Com­mu­nic­a­tions Com­mis­sion.

¹ Broad­casters of ra­dio and tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vices which at the time of the com­mence­ment of this Act re­ceive a pro­por­tion of ra­dio and tele­vi­sion fees in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 17 para­graph 2 RTVA 1991¹¹⁹ may con­tin­ue to claim a share of the fees un­til the ex­piry of their li­cence in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 107. The en­ti­tle­ment to a pro­por­tion of the fees and the cal­cu­la­tion of the pro­por­tion are based on Art­icle 17 para­graph 2 of the RTVA 1991 and on Art­icle 10 of the Or­din­ance of 6 Oc­to­ber 1997¹²⁰ on Ra­dio and Tele­vi­sion.

² With­in the frame­work of the con­di­tions in para­graph 1, OF­COM may ar­range a share of fees for broad­casters which have a li­cence in ac­cord­ance with RTVA 1991 and which have com­menced trans­mis­sion op­er­a­tions after the com­mence­ment of this Act.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil takes the fin­an­cial re­quire­ment in­to ac­count when set­ting the ra­dio and tele­vi­sion fee (Art. 70).

⁴ The trans­ition­al ar­range­ments in para­graph 1 end at the time when the fee-shar­ing li­cences in ac­cord­ance with Art­icles 38–42 are awar­ded, but at the latest five years after the com­mence­ment of this Act.

¹ Sur­pluses from the share of fees for broad­casters of loc­al or re­gion­al pro­gramme ser­vices (Art. 38) that ex­ist when this pro­vi­sion comes in­to force shall be used for the be­ne­fit of fee-shar­ing broad­casters as fol­lows:

a.

one quarter for the ba­sic and con­tinu­ing edu­ca­tion and train­ing of their em­ploy­ees;

b.

three quar­ters for pro­mot­ing new broad­cast­ing tech­no­lo­gies in terms of Art­icle 58 and di­git­al tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tion tech­niques.

² Up to 10 per cent of the sur­pluses may be used to provide gen­er­al in­form­a­tion to the pub­lic in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 58 para­graph 2.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­term­ine the ex­tent of the amount to be used to fund the tasks in ac­cord­ance with para­graphs 1 and 2. In do­ing so, it shall take ac­count of the por­tion to be re­tained as the li­quid­ity re­serve.

⁴ OF­COM shall grant in­di­vidu­al con­tri­bu­tions in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1 on ap­plic­a­tion. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the con­di­tions and cal­cu­la­tion cri­ter­ia by which OF­COM pays the con­tri­bu­tions.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­term­ine the date from which the new ra­dio and tele­vi­sion fee will be charged.

² Un­til that date, the re­cep­tion fee for private and com­mer­cial re­cep­tion will be charged in ac­cord­ance with the pre­vi­ous law (Art. 68–70 and Art. 101 para. 1 of the Fed­er­al Act of 24 March 2006¹²³ on Ra­dio and Tele­vi­sion).

³ The use of the rev­en­ue from the re­cep­tion fee is gov­erned by the pro­vi­sions of the new law on the ra­dio and tele­vi­sion fee.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the trans­ition to the new fee sys­tem. It may in par­tic­u­lar provide that funds avail­able from the re­cep­tion fee are trans­ferred to the new sys­tem, and de­cide which au­thor­it­ies con­tin­ue on­go­ing first in­stance pro­ceed­ings.

⁵ It may de­cide on an as­sess­ment peri­od for the first peri­od of the cor­por­ate fee that dif­fers from that in Art­icle 70 para­graph 1.

¹ Mem­bers of a private house­hold in which no device suit­able for re­ceiv­ing ra­dio or tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vices is avail­able or in op­er­a­tion shall be ex­emp­ted from the pay­ing the free for one fee peri­od.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late which cat­egor­ies of device are deemed suit­able for re­ceiv­ing pro­gramme ser­vices.

³ OF­COM may enter the rooms or premises of a house­hold ex­emp­ted un­der para­graph 1 in or­der to veri­fy wheth­er the re­quire­ments for the ex­emp­tion are be­ing met.

⁴ Any per­son ex­emp­ted from the fee in terms of para­graph 1 who ob­tains or be­gins to op­er­ate a device suit­able for re­ceiv­ing pro­gramme ser­vices in the house­hold be­fore ex­piry of the fee peri­od must no­ti­fy the col­lec­tion agency of this in ad­vance.

⁵ Any per­son who be­longs to a house­hold ex­emp­ted from the fee in terms of para­graph 1 in which a device suit­able for re­ceiv­ing pro­gramme ser­vices in the house­hold is avail­able or in op­er­a­tion without no­tice there­of be­ing giv­en to the col­lec­tion agency in ad­vance in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 4 shall be li­able to a fine not ex­ceed­ing 5000 francs.

⁶ The col­lec­tion agency shall provide OF­COM with on­line ac­cess to the per­son­al data re­quired for pro­sec­ut­ing per­sons in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 5. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may is­sue pro­vi­sions on the ex­tent of this data, ac­cess to the data, au­thor­isa­tion for pro­cessing, re­ten­tion and data se­cur­ity.

⁷ Ex­emp­tions from the fee ex­pire five years from the date from which the fee is charged in ac­cord­ance Art­icle 109bpara­graph 1.

¹ Ex­ist­ing li­cences for the re­trans­mis­sion by wire of ra­dio and tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vices in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 39 RTVA 1991¹²⁵ (wire li­cences) re­tain their valid­ity un­til their own­er ob­tains a tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices li­cence in ac­cord­ance with Art­icles 4 ff. TCA¹²⁶, but at the latest up to two years after the com­mence­ment of this Act.

² Wire li­cences con­tin­ue to be sub­ject to:

a.

Art­icle 42 para­graphs 2–4 RTVA 1991;

b.

Art­icle 47 para­graph 1 RTVA 1991 con­cern­ing the trans­mis­sion of pro­gramme ser­vices of oth­er broad­casters whose li­cence has been ex­ten­ded in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 107 of this Act.

³ The ob­lig­a­tions of a wire li­censee in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 2 end as soon as trans­mis­sion by wire of the pro­gramme ser­vices covered therein (in ac­cord­ance with Art­icles 59 and 60) in their area of op­er­a­tion is cla­ri­fied with leg­al force, but at the latest after five years.

Ex­ist­ing li­cences for the wire­less re­trans­mis­sion of ra­dio and tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vices in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 43 RTVA 1991¹²⁷ (re­lay li­cences) re­tain their valid­ity un­til their own­er ob­tains a ra­dio and tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices li­cence in ac­cord­ance with Art­icles 4 ff. or Art­icles 22 ff. TCA¹²⁸ re­spect­ively, but at the latest two years after the com­mence­ment of the act.

The SRG SSR shall im­ple­ment the or­gan­isa­tion­al struc­ture (Art. 31–33) at the time of re­new­al of its li­cence.

¹ Pro­ced­ures in ac­cord­ance with Art­icles 56 ff. and 70 ff. of the RTVA 1991¹²⁹ pending at the time of com­mence­ment of this Act shall be as­sessed by the com­pet­ent au­thor­ity in ac­cord­ance with the new act. The new pro­ced­ur­al law shall be ap­plied.

²If a case re­lat­ing to su­per­vis­ory law has aris­en be­fore the com­mence­ment of this Act and if a pro­ced­ure is pending, RTVA 1991 is ap­plic­able. If a case con­tin­ues after the com­mence­ment of this Act and if a pro­ced­ure is pending, the vi­ol­a­tions which oc­curred be­fore the com­mence­ment of this Act shall be as­sessed on the basis of RTVA 1991. Ap­plic­a­tion of Art­icle 2 para­graph 2 of the Crim­in­al Code¹³⁰ is re­served.

¹ This Act is sub­ject to an op­tion­al ref­er­en­dum.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­term­ine the com­mence­ment date.

Com­mence­ment date: 1 April 2007¹³¹