Lapid bill grants provisional franchises to radio stations

MANILA, Philippines — Senator Lito Lapid on Monday filed a measure seeking to grant provisional franchises to radio stations with pending franchise renewal applications.

Lapid filed the bill a week after the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) issued a cease-and-desist order against ABS-CBN, directing the network to stop operating its television and radio broadcasting stations nationwide “absent a valid congressional franchise required by law.”

This, despite NTC’s earlier assurance that it would grant a provisional authority to ABS-CBN to continue operating while its franchise renewal remains pending in Congress.

According to Lapid, his measure “seeks to address that seeming inequity in the treatment of legislative franchise applicants and remove that exercise of wisdom extended to the NTC.”

Last week, ABS-CBN was forced to go off the air after its franchise lapsed on May 4.

“While we can simply dismiss an inaction by Congress to a franchise application or a renewal for that matter as plainly that, a simple denial of an application, it would seem to be not true and prudent if it involves the livelihood of several thousands in an institution that has long established itself as the country’s premier broadcasting station,” Lapid said in the bill’s explanatory note.

“A vast majority of the people just would not give up on its favorite television network and would rather take to task the very representatives they have entrusted to act on their behalf and to advance only the general and collective interest,” he added.

Once enacted, Lapid’s bill would amend a provision under Republic Act 3846 or the law which regulates radio stations and radio communications across the country.

With the amendment, all franchise applications of radio stations will be provisionally renewed until the lapse of the session of the Congress which is deliberating on it.

“It should give them ample time to address issues and concerns of the legal and political luminaries and win the coveted authority for their continued operation,” the senator said.

Lapid said that if there had been more time to approve the the bill renewing the franchise of ABS-CBN and if the NTC had been “adamant in its promise” to grant provisional authority to the network pending the review of its franchise renewal application, “the masses would still have enjoyed their favorite pastimes on television.”

“People could have meaningful options for entertainment as they grapple with the quarantine measures being presently enforced and the country would have still enjoyed the support of a partner in surviving a pandemic that the nation currently suffers,” the senator said.

The NTC heeded the call for the strict application of the law instead and “chose to turn its back on what was once a compassionate treatment to similarly situated entities.”

“Never had it been in the history of Congress that a private bill would stir so much exchange of equally intelligent and reasonable insights from persons of varying social, legal and political perspectives,” Lapid pointed out.

“Much will still be written about this saga in Philippine broadcast until the society put this to close. But it has given as a worthwhile takeaway, a realization of a legal loophole which can be easily plugged by legislative remediation,” he added.

EDV