A Warsaw court has revoked the licences of two independent conservative television channels, TV Republika and wPolsce24.
The Administrative Court (WSA) has overturned a decision taken by the State broadcasting regulator (KRRiT) that, in June 2024, granted terrestrial broadcasting licence rights to the two independent channels.
On April 9, the court announced its ruling on the complaint against the decision by KRRiTV annulling both the licences, calling on the State regulator to hold the pitch for available broadcast licenses again . It awarded costs to the petitioner, MWE Networks Group, a broadcaster that had unsuccessfully pitched for one of the licences.
The KRRiTV’s decision was challenged by one of the body’s board members, Professor Tadeusz Kowalski.
He claimed there was” insufficient information about the applicants”, even though both TV Republika and wPolsce24 were long-established broadcasters on the internet and both were backed by media companies with a long track record in the Polish market.
TV Republika and wPolsce24 have announced they would appeal against the court’s ruling. KRRiTV issued a statement saying: “Everything was done in accordance with the law” and that the applications were “analysed thoroughly on financial and substantive grounds” before the decision to grant licences was taken.
Commenting on the court’s verdict, Tomasz Sakiewicz, whose company owns TV Republika, said: “This court judge will go down in history and hopefully will one day be held to account for such decisions.”
“We won’t allow TV Republika to be closed by such abuses of the law by a judge who simply does not understand the documents before her.”
“We haven’t had such a decision in Poland before but will cope, and so will our viewers. If need be we’ll broadcast from abroad if they do manage to take our licenses away,” Sakiewicz said.
TV Republika is currently Poland’s most popular news channel with a 5.6 per cent share of the total television audience, topping the long-time leader TVN24, which has a 5.2 per cent share of the market.
The independent, conservative channel has risen rapidly during the lifetime of the current centre-left government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, from a low market share of 0.2 per cent back in December 2023 to where it is today.
After it was granted a terrestrial TV licence, TV Republika doubled its audience share in a space of just a few months.
WPolsce24 has also recorded an impressive rise, from 0.1 per cent market share back in late 2023 to 1.1 per cent of the total TV audience in March of this year.
Both TV Republika and wPolsce24 have benefited from viewers moving away from the state broadcaster TVP Info, which was taken over by the Tusk government along with the rest of the public media just before Christmas of 2023.
Before the takeover of Polish state television, TVP Info was recording a market share of more than 5 per cent. That slumped dramatically to just over 1 per cent of the total TV audience by early 2024 and has only recovered slightly to reach 1.8 per cent in March of this year.
Most of the journalists who worked for TVP Info before the Tusk takeover have now moved to work for TV Republika and wPolsce24.
Both of the independent television channels have been criticised by the ruling Tusk coalition for alleged hostility towards the current government and bias in favour of the opposition Conservatives (PiS).
Reporters from both TV Republika and wPolsce24 have, on occasion, been debarred from government press briefings.
