KATHMANDU: Around 150 foreign television channels, currently broadcast in Nepal, will be forced to ‘shut-down’ if the government endorses the proposed legislation for advertising regulation.
The Advertisement (Regulation) Bill, which has already been endorsed by the National Assembly will be tabled in the House of Representatives (HoR) for a final endorsement before it becomes a law.
The government plans to set up an Advertising Board to oversee advertising in the country as per the new proposed rules.
The foreign satellite television channels will be mandated to broadcast without any advertisements or face a hefty financial penalty of Rs 5 lakhs apart from downlinking permits of violating channels being revoked.
The new rules will also prevent transmission of any foreign advertisements, sources said. Moreover, the new law will also bar domestic broadcasters from dubbing advertisements’ of foreign companies and broadcast within the country.
Observers say the new advertising regulations is the new version of its earlier “Clean Feed Policy,” which the Ministry of Information and Communication had proposed a few years earlier, but eventually did not for various reasons.
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