ODS party will not support a rider introduced by MP Petr Rafaj of ESSD for returning advertising on Czech TV to the 1% level, in effect until this year. Rafaj’s rider to an unrelated banking bill calls for increasing Czech public TV (ET) advertising revenue without any reduction in the user subscription fee. ET would be required to devote a third of the additional CZK 500m per year to its archives, a third to the film fund and the rest to digitalization. The politicians were concerned with the fact that the ad reduction at ET had led to higher ad rates at commercial stations..
Our view: We do not expect the amendment to be passed by the parliament. It would be a totally non-standard way of changing the bill via another completely unrelated bill. We view the news as neutral. We reiterate our Buy rating for the stock.