Prague, 17 December 2004

Re: Complaint against the Director General of Czech Television, Mgr. Jiří Janeček, to be dealt with by the Czech Television Council in accordance with § 8 para. f) of law no. 39/2001 on Czech Television


Dear members of the Czech Television Council,

Being aware of your responsibility for implementing the right of the general public to keep a check on the activities of Czech Television (CT), we are writing to you with this complaint against the Director General of CT, Mgr. Jiří Janeček.

As you may already know, the Director General of CT has drastically reduced current audiovisual production and, without consulting our professional organisation, the Association of Czech Cinematographers, or other professional organisations, he has stopped paying licence fees (royalties) to several creative professions, including cameramen - but not including scriptwriters, directors, and musical composers (represented by the Performing and Mechanical Rights Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (OSA).

According to the currently valid copyright law (law no.121/2000), cameramen have joint copyright in audiovisual works, or copyright in the visual component of audiovisual works. As such, they are entitled under the law, in addition to remuneration for creating the work, to remuneration for granting a licence to use the work to the extent agreed on in the contract, and according to the law they have the same legal claims as directors, scriptwriters, and other creative professions.

The fee laid down by the CT tariff has now been divided (but only in a
virtual sense) into two parts: 70% for the creation of the work, and 30%
for a single, lifelong purchase of all licences, including the right to grant sub-licences, and all this even without restriction on the countries to which this applies! In fact, therefore, this amounts to an aggressive reduction of the fee paid, below the limit of the tariffs imposed by CT, because the 7.5% licence fee (royalty) for using the copyright work by broadcasting it is no longer paid in addition to the main fee. We would also like to point out the fact that in civilised countries the amount paid for a single purchase of all licences is many times higher than the fee for creating an audiovisual work, because of the difficulty in estimating in advance how many times a work will be used during the 70-year copyright protection period after the death of the copyright-holder. The procedure used by Director General Janeček cannot however really be described as purchasing the licence, because the amount of the fee for creating the audiovisual work laid down in the tariff is final, and the licence is transferred under the conditions described above without any remuneration!

It only requires a simple calculation to conclude that the real total remuneration paid to professional cameramen for creating audiovisual work has been reduced to about 60-70% of its previous value - and that previous value itself had not been increased for many years because of the alleged difficult financial situation of CT.

For the years 2004 and 2005, and in the future, therefore, CT intends to acquire licences from cameramen for the whole copyright period, i.e. up to 70 years after their death, without paying them anything, by the method of reducing their fees to below 1995 levels!

Furthermore, the method used by CT representatives in dealing with cameramen is undignified and humiliating for the cameramen: "If you don't sign our version of the contract, then I can't use you to shoot the film". Most recently, on 2 December 2004, the creative team preparing the elevision film "Eden" including director Petr Nikolaev and cameraman Marek Jícha was split up by the chief producer Jaroslav Kučera. Cameraman Jícha was removed from the project, on which work was already under ay, precisely because CT was unwilling to honour copyright rights to a share in the licence. Chief producer Kučera referred to instructions "from above", in other words from Director General Janeček. We are afraid that instead of creative cooperation this sort of treatment is more reminiscent of monopolistic exploitation, discrimination, and existential pressure, the result of which cannot be the participation of a creative professional in a public service, which alone can justify the existence of an organisation such as CT. We do not consider that this approach can be ethically reconciled with the position that CT should occupy on the European media market.

Furthermore, the allegedly "economically efficient regime" described above, in which everybody is equal, but some are even more equal than the rest, leads to a far more serious situation, namely

THE VIOLATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF CZECH TELEVISION AS A PUBLIC
SERVICE!

The Director General and the management present themselves as a top-flight economic formation, but the ordinary viewers who pay their television fees only get substandard works, which often are not fit to be broadcast, for their money, because professional creative staff who are worthy of the name are being systematically driven out of CT, or else are so isenchanted by the situation that they are leaving of their own accord. We venture to say that the "economic" concept of Director General Janeček is based simply on an administrative restriction of creative work and financially undervaluing creative professionals. Any accountant without the ability to judge the quality of creative work is able to design a seemingly functional economic model.
For some time now we have been following (and have pointed them out on a number of occasions) the attempts by Director General Janeček to discredit the profession of cameraman, the creator of the visual element of audiovisual works, to the point where the artistic contribution by cameramen to audiovisual works is belittled and they are humiliated and reduced to the level of mere automated, machine-like, producers of pictures.

We are firmly convinced that public-service television must provide the maximum possible quality, cultural values, and links with the national cultural tradition. If CT is to justify its existence, it must follow a different moral and artistic line than the private television broadcasters. Since CT is currently administered by people who are for some reason incapable of understanding this aspect and remedying the situation, we can only conclude that for a long time now CT has failed to fulfil its calling - it fails to provide a public service! We therefore strongly appeal to you to intervene in a forceful and appropriate manner to put an end to this state of affairs, for which Mgr. Jiří Janeček, Director General of CT, is responsible. We are sure you will understand why we are approaching you on this occasion by means of an open letter, for reasons of public interest, and we are fully repared to cooperate with you and with the general public in providing any expert assistance you may require in order to safeguard CT as a public service.

Association of Czech Cinematographers

Josef Hanuš, President

110 00 Praha 1, Senovážné náměstí 23

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Copies of this open letter to the Czech Television Council are being sent for information to the following:

Council for Radio and Television Broadcasting

Ministry of Culture

Minister of Culture Pavel Dostál

Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic -

Lubomír Zaorálek, President

Committee for Science, Education, Culture, Youth and Sport

Subcommittee for Media Legislation

Deputy Kateřina Dostálová

Deputy Taťána Fischerová

Deputy MUDr., Mgr. Ivan Langer

Deputy Mgr. Václav Nájemník

Deputy Mgr. Ivana Levá

Deputy Mgr. Eva Nováková

Deputy Petr Pleva

Deputy Ing. Ladislav Skopal

Deputy JUDr. Hana Šedivá

Deputy Ing. Jaromír Talíř

Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic -

President MUDr. Přemysl Sobotka

Vice-president MUDr. Jiří Liška

Vice-president Ing. Edvard Outrata

Vice-president Doc. JUDr. Petr Pithart

Vice-president Ing. Petr Smutný

Committee on Education, Science, Culture, Human Rights and Petitions

Chairperson, Senator František Mezihorák

Vice-chairperson, Senator Václav Jehlička

Vice-chairperson, Senator Daniel Kroupa

Vice-chairperson, Senator Václav Roubíček

Verifier, Senator Zdeněk Bárta

Verifier, Senator Martin Dvořák

Verifier, Senator Martin Mejstřík

Senator Jaroslava Moserová

Senator Josef Pavlata

Senator Jiří Zlatuška

Ombudsman's Office

Ombudsman JUDr. Otakar Motejl

FITES

ARAS

Transparency International

Czech News Agency and printed and electronic media in the Czech Republic