South Korea’s cable TV system operators will guarantee 80 percent of the previous year’s channel fees each year to improve programme providers’ production and scheduling stability. Under revised guidelines unveiled on Aug. 13, operators will first allocate 80 percent of prior-year fees to each channel after setting the year’s total content payments, and apply audience share and evaluations only to remaining funds. Additional payments of 3 to 15 percent will reward higher TV content investment, while holdback-related bonuses and penalties will also apply.

Rules governing channel transactions premised on cable operators\' dominance do not fit current market conditions, a seminar heard. Some large multi-programme providers use popular channels to push bundled deals, leaving operators unable to drop only unwanted channels, analysts said. A professor argued guidelines banning forced bundling are not working in practice and called for recognising refusal of individual contracts as grounds to end a channel. Lawyers also urged assessing bargaining power case by case.