Federal Act
on Radio and Television
(RTVA)

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.