Television, the Fragile Virtual Shelter?

Nearly two decades of political, economic and social upheavals in Bulgaria directly conditiones the profound changes in the TV system and the trends of its development. Currently the number of the registered TV broadcasters in the country exceeds 100 (among them four with national terrestrial coverage). Bulgarian children spend on the average three hours a day watching television. However, the approach of the Bulgarian television stations as a whole towards the children’s audience is subordinated mainly to the entertainment function. Television channels offer far less cognitive and educational issues. A disturbing tendency is the limited production of quality children’s programs. The technical methods for filtering TV programs with harmful contents are not yet popular in the country and the culture of preventing the children from harmful TV influence is still at an embryonic stage. In this situation of major importance are the activities in the area of regulation and self-regulation, as well as of citizens’ control on children’s TV programming. The article examines the current developments of the Bulgarian national terrestrial TV programming with respect to protection of minors from harmful and inappropriate content. The analysis is linked to the media effects and especially – to the public interest being served by TV performance. Regulatory practices of the Bulgarian Council for Electronic Media are also examined, as are their sources in the pan-European broadcasting media instruments such as the European Convention on Transfrontier Television of the Council of Europe and the Audiovisual Media Services Directive of the European Union as well as on the international regulatory practices of European Platform of Regulatory Authorities.