Entrepreneurs, churches, and politicians are surreptitiously buying, selling and leasing TV channels in Brazil.
Loopholes in the legislation enable this marketplace, with up to 1,200 channels up for sale, according to traders that requested anonymity.
TV channels are concessions from the Ministry of Communications, granted at no cost, and they can only change hands after three years in operation.
However, interested parties have a queue of thousands of requests, and so they resort to "shelf channels", that are named this way because their holders don't build broadcast stations nor request operation permits to Anatel (National Agency of Telecommunications, the Brazilian version of the FCC).
According to the Ministry, the legal deadline for building and permit requesting is one year after the concession grant. But until last August, the law didn't provision any penalties if the deadline was not obeyed.
The result was the boost of a black market. In the countryside, an analogic channel is worth at least R$ 100,000 (US$ 24,000). If the channel can migrate to DTV signal, the price skyrockets to R$ 1 million (US$ 240,000).
In August, president Michel Temer issued a decree toughening the rules for broadcasters, which now have four months to start a channel's operation after the concession grant
Translated by NATASHA MADOV
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