MEXICO CITY (IPS/GIN) -- Seven out of 10 Mexican television viewers watch channels belonging to the Televisa consortium, while two out of 10 watch TV Azteca channels. Radio broadcasting stations are concentrated in the hands of 13 business groups.
Although this handful of firms already has almost all of the audience and a large share of the advertising, it wants an even bigger piece of the pie -- and might get it.
Amid open pressure from Televisa, the Senate has been debating since January a bill that would give even more power to big media companies like Televisa, which also own newspapers, sports stadiums, theaters and football teams.
The bill, approved in December by the House of Representatives, would replace a law in effect since the 1960s, which is criticized for favoring the concentration of media ownership and allowing government to allocate and withhold broadcasting frequencies, which are by definition public property.
But far from democratizing the media, the new law, which would open up the airwaves to competition, would give even more power to the powerful, sinking small community and educational radio and television broadcasters, observers say.
The criticisms of the bill, which senators of all parties have voiced, have been thoroughly ignored by the newscasts and talk show programs aired by the television channels that monopolize Mexican audiences and, therefore, advertising money. In contrast, many radio stations have aired the debate in this country of 104 million people.
Televisa, which is run by the Azcárraga family, has a corner on 60 percent of the advertising market in Mexico and operates 225 television channels. TV Azteca, belonging to the Salinas family, has 42 channels.
Televisa sells programs and has partners and shares throughout Latin America and in the United States, and is the largest Spanish-speaking television consortium in the world.
As for radio, most of the 1,142 commercial stations on the air are managed by 13 business groups -- among them Televisa and TV Azteca.
"Everything about the new law shows clearly what power the television companies have and use, especially Televisa, and how politicians and members of the business community are made to serve their purposes," media expert Néstor Cortés told IPS.
The bill would allow stations that have already been assigned a frequency to branch out into digital services of all kinds simply by notifying the government, while potential new competitors would have to participate in a public bidding process.
"Money will define the right to communicate," Cortés declared.
Public tenders, or bids, and the distribution of new frequencies would be organized and reviewed by a committee made up of government and business, according to the bill.
Educational and community media sponsored by the government, municipalities and public universities would depend entirely on the state, while independent media like community radio stations are not even mentioned by the bill.
The bill must now make it through the Senate, return to the lower house, and finally be signed into law by the executive branch, which could take weeks or months.
Financial columnist Darío Celis doubts the bill will be approved. However, Sen. Javier Corral of the governing National Action Party, one of the most prominent critics of the initiative, says the bill will first undergo major amendments.
The government of President Vicente Fox, which generally has close ties with Televisa and TV Azteca, indicated that it would not interfere in the matter, but some observers say it supports the bill.
Its swift passage by the House of Representatives, at a time when the most informed and critical legislators were absent, angered academics and non-governmental organizations that had advocated reforming the law on radio and television for more than a decade.
The present legislation was convenient to the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ruled the country from 1929 to 2000 and used it to silence critics in the media.
The "new version of the law in terms of concessions and permits is, to say the least, a step backward in what is supposed to be a transition to democracy. It's an illegitimate Band-aid solution that excludes the majority of the people, an example of subservience to the powers that be, and of under-the-table dealings," said Aleida Calleja, the representative in Mexico of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters.
"Now concessions will be auctioned off to the highest bidder, and a public good like the broadcasting spectrum will be given to whoever has the most money," she maintained.
In January, after the House of Representatives approved the bill, some members of the business community and broadcasters associations criticized its provisions, but nearly all of them have gradually changed their position and are now calling for it to be passed.
On March 1, the newspaper El Universal published a transcript of a series of telephone conversations between a Televisa lawyer and legislators and businesspeople. The secretly recorded conversations show that the corporation is doing everything in its power to get the bill approved.
"These changes are due to pressure from the powerful, especially Televisa, whose lobbyists have been making offers and threats to all of those who opposed the bill in the political and business worlds," Cortés said.
