TV licenses tender ends, four winners to pay €246million in total

After a marathon process that lasted 66 hours, the TV licenses tender concluded with old and two aspiring media bosses to have won the bid.

SKAI TV (Alafouzos) secured the first license of the first day of the bid with 43.6 million euro.

New media player Vladimiros Kalogritsas won the second license Wednsday noon with 52.6 million euro.

ANT1 (Kyriakou) secured the third license Thursday noon ith 75.6 million euro.

In the dawn of Friday, new media player Marinakis (Alter Ego TV) won the fourth license with 73.9 million euro.

Next step is the government control on the source of money (pothen esches) offered in the bid.

When everything is cleared, the bid offers will have to be paid in installments in a period of two years. First installment of some 30% will have to be paid within 15 days, the second after one year and the third in the second year.

However, the bid is not over yet, at least not legally, because Greece’s highest court, the Council of State, will have to dig in the issue of whether the procedure was conform with the Constitution as some bidders appealed the procedure.

The next bid to be held will be for TV licenses for regional broadcasters.

ALPHA TV (Kontominas) and STAR TV (Vardinogiannis) are left without a license and will have to stop broadcasting via Digea* in 90 days. Once powerful MEGA TV was left out of the tender for the very beginning due to its financial situation.

While there are scenarios that losers might merge with winners or lease TV program to them, certain is that hundreds if not thousands of journalists, technicians and administrative personnel will lose their jobs.

Without a license is left also Ivan Savvidis; the Russian-born Greek businessman said that the bid money should be given to… “poor Greeks from Pontos.”

I will have to disappoint Savvidis and the poor Pontus-Greeks as the money will most probably will go to Greece’s creditors.

*Digea is the digital network operator that provides a digital terrestrial television transmission network in Greece for the seven (before the bid) nationwide private TV channels.

PS The TV Licenses bid certainly overhauls the Greek private TV landscape and we will certainly miss the exiting crime series on STAR TV late at night and the wonderful Christmas stories films. I suppose, without late TV, I will start reading books again (Marx “The Capital”, Engels, John Locke, Adam Smith etc) but to tell you the truth, I seriously considering to … migrate.