Federal Act
on Radio and Television
(RTVA)

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.