Commitment to its viewers and subscribers

Getting to know our clients and viewers in order to respond to their needs, offering them the maximum guarantee of service, ethics and legal compliance. This is our commitment with all of those who enjoy our programming, both with those who do so sporadically and openly, as well as with our most loyal subscribers and, of course, with the advertisers.

This approach leads us to analysing their worries and needs, but also to keeping constant track of the Spanish society's trends and demands, in order to be ahead of our time in proposing contents.

Likewise and just as we had stated in the previous chapter, our commitment goes beyond the evident commercial demands, by worrying about broadcasting supportive contents.

This approach to our viewers and subscribers obliges us to develop activities in all of our chain of values, looking for guarantees and commitments in our relationships with providers and in the purchasing processes.

For a responsible and professional performance.
The fundamental pillar for offering our viewers the best services and guarantees consists in having a team of professionals with great morals and ethics in the fulfilment of their work.

Like this, and in order to guarantee the quality, seriousness and openness of our audiovisual services, we have endorsed different regulation codes for the contents and for the broadcasting of our television channels:

We may find the Code for the Promotion of Self-Regulation among the most relevant ones, addressed at guaranteeing underage children protection against programming contents that may seriously harm either their physical, mental or moral development. It establishes protection time frames from in between 6.00am to 10.00pm.

Among the main contents of the Code for the Promotion of Self-Regulation, the following are the most relevant ones:

• To collaborate in the children's correct teaching of basic literacy, avoiding indecent or offensive language.
• To avoid encouraging children to imitate behaviours that may be harmful or dangerous for the health.
• To avoid either messages or scenes which contain explicit violent or sexual matters that lack educational or informational contents.
• To encourage the awareness of all the professionals who are related to the programming of childhood problems.
• To encourage parental guidance, in such a way that the parents or tutors may make a critical selection of the programmes underage children watch.
• To provide guidance criteria for the programmes' classification in terms of their appropriateness for the child and juvenile viewers, likewise committing the authors to enforce the application of systems for indicating the TV programmings' ratings.

 

This Code's control and follow-up is carried out by means of two independent bodies, the Auto-Regulation Committee and the Combined Commission of Follow-Ups, that are in charge of analysing any claim that may arise from possible non-fulfilments and of issuing reports and settlements at the same time as the organizations that represent the civil society.

We drew up an Ethics Code of Journalistic Behaviour, especially designed for the CNN+ and Cuatro's News' Services, but also applicable to all of our professionals, in order to establish homogeneous ethical and behavioural criteria.

Sogecable's Ethical Code of Journalistic Behaviour.
All the employees, collaborators, contractors and others who may work on behalf of the CNN+ and Cuatro's News' Services will abide to the following rules and practices when producing and distributing the News' service:

1. They will respect the strictest journalistic practice norms.

2. They will cover all of the subjects with journalistic value without taking into account the influence of any government, institution or other external person or third party.

3. They will research, prepare and present news' programmes that are balanced, accurate and objective at all times.

4. The news will convey the nature and reality of the events and interviews accurately.

5. They will not use any material in such a way so as to either mislead or confuse the audience.

6. In accordance with the accepted journalistic practice, they will periodically detect and correct serious mistakes of fact, tendency or omission.

7. The selection of issues and the research, preparation and presentation of the news will be decided by the news' staff, and not by any staff not related to the news' programmes, including, only by way of information, the advertisers, advertising agencies, the advertising department and the programme distributors.

8. They will neither promise nor guarantee the information, promotion or forwarding of materials without any real informational value and will at all times act on their own behalf.

9. They will avoid the reality or appearance of any personal conflict or professional interests, including, only by way of information, the following:
a. They will reject gifts, commissions or privileges, except those with symbolic value, from physical persons, mercantile societies or others whom they are covering or may have to cover.
b. They will avoid externally working for politicians, mercantile societies or others they are covering or may have to cover.
c. They will avoid participating or adopting public standpoints with regard to any event, including, only by way of information, political campaigns, marches, demonstrations, pickets and political meetings, in such a way that they may influence the public's opinion insofar as the service's honesty, including, only by way of information, the following: a) while any of the aforementioned activities are being performed, they will in no way either make use of their condition as advisers, employees, collaborators, contractors or perform on any company's behalf; and b) they will not inform about any issue they have participated in. In order to avoid there being any doubt, none of the above mentioned must be interpreted as restrictive of the constitutional rights granted by the Spanish law in any way.
d. The editorial staff will not inform about the mercantile companies or mercantile sectors in which either they or members of their close families have interests in, and they will abide to all the laws related to the purchase or sale of financial interests.
e. They will refuse to be paid for speeches, for intervening as judges in contests or for appearing in events for mercantile companies, associations, physical persons or other groups they may cover, unless it were not previously approved by the Surveillance Committee or by the person whom the Board may appoint at any moment.

10. They will neither prepare nor, in any way, control or try to control the results of any news' event.

11. The news will not be influenced by opinions or prejudices.

12. Information or communications from external sources will not be broadcast without first contrasting them.

13. No plagiarism will be made.

14. They will use all the legal means for protecting their sources' confidentiality.

15. They will not try to feed morbid curiosity by revealing any vicious or criminal details.

16. The agency or agencies will be summoned when information is provided by only one news' agency or when there is any contradictive information from other agencies.

17. They will offer a balanced coverage of the news' subjects, offering the representatives of the different points of view the chance to convey their ideas.

18. They will not allow people with more interest in one piece of news to watch the news' information previously; however, they may watch it for promotional purposes.

Free flowing and open communication with our subscribers and viewers.
The communication and quality service to a group made up of more than two million households has led Sogecable to deploying a whole range of tools with two aims: on the one hand, that of seeing to the requests, doubts and claims of our subscribers, and on the other, that of offering them all the information related to the Digital+ offer, as well as its different channels. Direct customer attention by telephone, the use of interactive screens, the http://www.plus.es/ web page and the Digital+ Magazine's edition are some of those tools.

The phone customer attention is centralised by means of a Telephone Customer Attention Centre (CAT), which attends to and deals with all of the requests made by our clients.

Moreover, the subscribers may access the Internet address clientes@digital-plus.net in order to get in touch with our digital platform.

Furthermore, Digital+ offers inquiry services to all of its subscribers through Internet with the plus.es service, with a wide range of information regarding the offer of contents related to the digital platform. It is an audiovisual web with a clear interactive vocation and service to the client, which has become a real commercial showcase.

Likewise, our CNN+, Viajar, 40TV and Caza y Pesca channels have their own web pages for consulting their contents.

We publish the Digital+ Magazine monthly, with detailed information about our programmes and services to our subscribers. The magazine, which is sent to our subscribers' addresses monthly, has become one of top ranking monthly magazines in Spain.

Among its contents, you may find thematic reports about the movies and sports, interviews with their main characters, as well as a schedule with the year's main sport events, all of the latter by means of a new and more attractive and pleasant format for our subscribers.

Our subscribers may access an interactive communications' service on the screen, which is accessed by means of the Pilot and Digital+ Guide keys on the remote control in a complementary way. Thanks to a menu, you may consult details regarding subscription bills, distributor networks, the hired contract's features, informational messages about prints, as well as the commercial packs that our Platform offers.

On the other hand, and aware of the importance of the external communication as an indispensable means of relating ourselves to our clients and as an essential tool for the development and establishment of a good brand image, we count on a Communications' Department, always open to different social agents, and more specifically, to the means of communication.

A yearly average of about 3,000 communications is sent out from the Communications' Department, and an average of 17,000 phone or e-mail requests is attended on a monthly basis. The company has also created a Press Box on its corporative web page that allows any network user to contact the company for information.

Programming accessible to disabled persons.
Digital+ has willingly implemented an accessibility plan to its programmes addressed at persons with sensory handicaps, by means of subtitling services in both new releases that Canal+ broadcasts, as well as in the rest of the movies' Box Offices, thus enabling the access to their contents to all the viewers.

Like this, both Canal+ and the Box Office have joined other channels of the Digital+ offer that already had this service, such as Cuatro, CNN+, Disney Channel, TVE1, TVE 2, Playhouse Disney and Boomerang.

Our clients' satisfaction.
In order to focus our programming contents on our subscribers' tastes and preferences and to know the general ratings and improvable features of our service, we periodically carry out satisfaction studies through telephone interviews.

The results of the last study that was carried out among a group of 2,809 subscribers, with more than three months of seniority in our Platform, show a good global rating of our service, with an average of 7.3 points over a maximum of 10.

Other features positively appreciated by our clients are:

Criteria	Rating(*)
Fidelity to Digital+	81%
Trust Digital+	80%
Would recommend Digital+ to their friends	75%

(*) Percentage of subscribers who responded positively.

Likewise, our subscribers positively value the lack of publicity spot interruptions in our broadcasts, the wide range of contents in our programming offer, as well as the ease with which they may use and handle our reception equipment.

 

Programming	Rating(**)
Lack of publicity spot interruptions	9.1
Child programming	8.4
Documentaries	8.3
Ease in the reception equipment's use	8.0
Sports	7.9

(**) 0 corresponds to the lowest rating and 10 to the highest one.

Guarantee of services and products.
A large part of our commitment with the clients and society is based on the compliance with the laws in force and on offering guarantees of equal treatment to all of those persons who trust our activities. Thus we make a special effort in fighting against fraudulent actions with the illegal reception and decoding of our digital signal, actions that may be punished by the Spanish Criminal Code.

All of our products, decoders, antennas, receptors, etc. count on the most sophisticated security technology, thus protecting our subscribers' rights. Likewise, all of the latter comply with the international law regarding information, labelling and security for the user. There have not been any sanctions as a consequence of the non-compliance with the latter.

Innovation to the service of our clients.
We are aware that the audiovisual sector's fast evolution is forcing us to identify the existing technological advances, in order to apply them to our products, thus improving the service to our millions of subscribers, TV viewers and Internet users. This is why we have the most sophisticated audiovisual resources, which have allowed us to be at the vanguard in the development of the Technologies of the Information and Communication (TIC) in our country.

• In 2003, as a consequence of the merger between Canal Satélite Digital's platform and Via Digital, we set up a joint access system to our decoders. Two years later we released the so-called iPlus, a new decoder with a hard disc that enables you to record up to 80 hours of programming and also may be used for receiving DTT and High Definition.

Since 2006, Digital+ has made the Multi+ digital service available to its clients, which allows one single subscriber to enjoy more than one of the platform's channels simultaneously at home.

Sogecable has a Data Processing Centre in its Headquarters of Tres Cantos, where the infrastructures necessary for giving the company's computer applications technical support are located. Furthermore, the company has a Contingency Centre with the capacity, should it be necessary, for re-establishing the most critical systems in a maximum time span of 6 hours and the others in a maximum time span of 72 hours. But moreover, there are such applications called Minimum Services, which allow giving the company's critical operations coverage within this time frame.

Evaluation and control of our chain of providers
We consider our providers as a fundamental element in the development of our activities. This is why we establish internal measures that allow us to periodically assess, control and follow-up the tasks they carry out with the companies our Group consists of.

Sogecable has norms and processes for the purchase of goods and services that guarantee a selection method of the providers and which adhere to the following principles:

• Openness: different competent areas of the company participate in all of the selection processes, thus guaranteeing the adherence to the norms during the whole purchasing procedure, in such a way that any process will be subject to an internal and external auditing revision.
• Advertising: the internal parties and the providers are accurately informed about the offers' conditions during all of the processes.
• Objectivity: the information that is offered to the providers will be the one necessary for a correct competition among them, in such a way that there may not be any divergences.
• Solvency: the selected providers are the ones whom we consider as possessing economic and financial guarantees for carrying out a correct intervention, favouring equal competitive conditions among all of the providers.
• Award to the best economic and technical offer: the providers compete in equal conditions, thus blending the offers' functional and economic contents.
• Motivation of the decisions: all of the relation decisions with the providers are motivated in accordance with the principles established in the norms and subject to professional criteria.
• No discrimination: all of the providers' proposals are assessed along with their documents, in accordance with the corresponding selection processes, inviting the latter in terms of technical and professional objective criteria.
• The current law: the purchasing procedures guarantee that all of the selected providers comply with the law in force with regard to:

- Social Security and Working Risks' Prevention.
- Taxes.
- Environment.
- Quality.
- Fulfilment of the workers' rights in accordance with the international statements.

• The corporative government: specifically the ones regarding operations related to companies or bodies of the group, significant shareholders of the company and administrators or directors of the company.

Our companies comply with all of the communitarian norms of application to its activities in terms of contents, coded services, telecommunications, free competition, intellectual property, as well as laws related to the protection of our subscribers' personal data, there not having been any incidents related to the latter in the last years.