Increasing government intervention in the Hungarian radio market?

24.hu reports that the pro-government Hold Reklám Ltd. changes the name Pop FM into Retro Rádió. Although they won the Media Council’s tender, they still cannot keep the name they originally wanted. The previous Retro Radio will be known as Magyar FM.

They are already doing a test broadcasting at FM 103.3 MHz, which means that there is probably not much sense in Class FM going to court trying to invalidate the results of the tender.

Hold Reklám Ltd. won the tender on the 22nd of May and they have 120 days to start broadcasting. It looks like they will be ready much sooner than that and they can start broadcasting on the commercial radio frequency that was previously home to the popular Class FM in the next few days.

Although they registered the name Pop FM at the Hungarian Intellectual Property Office before the tender, now they want to use another radio station’s name. They are waiting for approval from the Media Council. Hold Reklám is not only using the name of Retro Radio, but they are also adopting the house style of the small community radio station, which until now has been using a free frequency and broadcasting only in Budapest and Nyíregyháza.

We have mentioned that Retro FM is ready to broadcast only a few days after officially winning the tender.

It looks like they bought the studio months ago in Budapest and were putting the new equipment into service these past days. The cause of this rush may well be that Class FM still has a few lawsuits pending against the Media Council. This way, even if the Advenio Zrt that is operating Class FM wins the lawsuit, they cannot take the frequency away from Retro FM. They might get compensation from the Media Council, paid by the taxpayer’s money, but the radio station will probably not be silenced.

There were rumours about Balázs Sebestyén coming to Pop FM/Retro Radio, but at the moment it looks like he and the popular Morning Show are staying at Radio1. The new Retro Radio will keep its own morning show led by Endre Hepi and Anita Hudák.

Source: 24.hu