Editave Multimédia filed a formal complaint with ERC's Regulatory Council against the Municipality of Vila Nova de Famalicão, accusing the council of designing a 210 thousand euro public tender to favor one radio operator and automatically block the other. The company, owner of Fama Rádio, Famatv and the digital newspaper Opinião Pública, claims that the procedure suffers from "discriminatory design" and severely distorts the local market.
The tender, published yesterday in the Official Gazette, provides for the acquisition of advertising broadcasting services for a period of 20 months, divided into two lots with a maximum ceiling of 105 thousand euros each. In Lot 2, the simultaneous requirement of local radio and printed/digital newspaper limits eligibility to a single operator in the municipality — Rádio Cidade Hoje and its respective newspaper, Jornal Cidade Hoje. In Lot 1, the requirement to combine digital radio and television with a printed press medium excludes Fama Rádio and Famatv, since the Editave group has had no printed edition for about six months.
Editave speaks of a "two-step market blockade": first, the council allegedly used public funds to create a printed municipal bulletin in 61,750 copies that destroyed the commercial viability of independent printed newspapers; second, it uses the absence of independent printed newspapers as a legal pretext in the tender to close the door on institutional advertising to the affected group's radio and television stations.
In addition to the complaint to the media regulator, the company filed a submission of errors and omissions with the procedure jury, invoking the violation of principles of the Public Procurement Code, such as "technological neutrality." Editave requested the disaggregation of Lot 1's services or, alternatively, that the tender admit duly ERC-registered digital periodic publications. By press time, the response from the Municipality of Famalicão was not known.
