Federal Act
on Radio and Television
(RTVA)

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.