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Mystery owner behind new Hungarian LGBTQI TV channel revealed: it will feature 18+ content too
This one blindsided us: an LGBTQI TV channel is poised to launch in Hungary any day now, even as public discourse last year rang with warnings from Prime Minister Viktor Orbán that there was no point planning for Pride in 2025 – because it simply wouldn’t happen. In the end, the biggest event yet went ahead, and just weeks ago, the Tisza Party swept to a two-thirds majority over Fidesz. But who might be bankrolling the aspiring Szivárvány TV? The answer has now emerged.
New LGBTQI TV channel may begin broadcasting in Hungary
The bombshell broke yesterday: a new channel called Szivárvány TV aims to beam out round-the-clock LGBTQI-themed programming – though not exclusively so. Its founder insists there’s no politics involved, save for the influence of the European Court of Justice’s recent ruling against Hungary’s child protection law. Otherwise, he stresses, it’s apolitical.
According to index.hu, the station will target homosexuals with content “aimed at them but not solely for them”, 24 hours a day. HÃrTV links the project to Tisza Party’s election triumph, a claim the founder hotly denies – revealing his identity precisely to disarm such attacks.
Tamás Pataki owns Eurocable Magyarország, a cable provider, and New Digital Media Kft., a media outfit. Speaking to Media1, the entrepreneur revealed the idea first struck him back in 2014, though he’d since pivoted to other ventures: launching Parlament TV, Hungary’s first Roma television station, and Budapest TV. Tellingly, he registered the szivarvanytv.hu domain with the Internet Service Providers’ Council database that same year.
EU court verdict helped
Pataki ties the channel’s timing to the EU court’s verdict deeming the child protection law, which lumped homosexuality with paedophilia, unlawful. He envisions a party-neutral outfit offering cultural and entertainment fare, with a strong emphasis on safeguarding minors, respecting societal norms, and steering clear of divisive ideologies.
The launch hinges on approval from the still wholly Fidesz-stacked Media Council, every member appointed by the Orbán government.
Pataki promises both free-to-air and encrypted content, with 18+ material “published in full compliance with child protection standards and classification requirements, secured by rigorous technical encoding”, per media1.hu.
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Well, whilst it might be a new dawn for Hungary, I severely doubt that there’s a national consensus behind supporting such a venture, I further doubt the incoming Tisza government will seek to support this as they are socially conservative and certainly while the Fidesz loyalists are in charge of the media authority there’s close to zero percent chance of this station getting a broadcasting licence.
While I’m supportive of programming targeted at homosexual audiences on a generic tv channel, I struggle with the concept of a channel targeted exclusively at them. The UK is a liberal society but we don’t have anything similar while we’re also a country of 70 million telly addicts. To my mind the dividing line is the fact that such a channel doesn’t revolve around gender, race, nationality or culture, it’s around sexuality which is inherently a hot button issue and isn’t in the same ball park as the aforementioned categories. An avowedly heterosexual television channel that seeks to exclude homosexuals would receive similar disapproval in a right thinking society. Really I think we should seek to occupy the same media landscape without drawing dividing lines, we are after all part of the same society. Programming expressly targeted at the LGBT community exists on UK television after the 9pm ‘watershed’ as it’s called, although homosexual actors, presenters and voices in general are widely found pre-9pm but the subject matter is never either overtly about sexuality in this case, or at all. I firmly believe that a healthy balance can be struck where there’s a willingness to do so but a dedicated television channel doesn’t feel appropriate. I am but one voice.
I would have no issue with an internet only channel that people have to expressly go and find, the issue with television is that while channel hopping people randomly land on stations they weren’t planning to view. Most important of all, I sincerely hope the new government will categorically end the vitriolic hate campaign against the LGBT community and encourage everyone to extend an arm of friendship to our fellow citizens who are just as much a valued part of Hungarian society as anyone else.