9 - 15 December 1999

Report suggests PBS be replaced by a smaller corporation

by a staff reporter

A report on the state of Public Broadcasting recommends a new corporation should replace PBS and be called Malta Broadcasting Services. The report is aimed at redefining the role of public broadcasting in Malta, and was compiled by the Centre for Communication Technology at the University of Malta and commissioned by the Minister for Education Louis Galea.

The new corporation - MBS - should preferably have less than 85 full-time employees and in no case more than 100, the report says, and further suggests the setting up of a Media Commission and a National Institute for AudioVision (NIA).

With regards to the newly-appointed PBS board of directors, it should maintain current functionality to the greatest extent possible while effecting a gradual hand-over of functions and assets to Malta Broadcasting Services, the Media Commission and the National Institute for AudioVision - within an agreed timeframe.

The report was compiled by a team led Dr Joseph Cannataci, director of the law and information technology, Prof. Saviour Chircop, Dr Aaron Mifsud Bonnici and Dr Jeanne Mifsud Bonnici.

PBS Ltd gets close to Lm7,000 per day from public expenses yet it costs over Lm12,000 per employee to operate. In 1998, PBS employed 203 people and received more than Lm2.3m of public funds in the form of licence fees with a reported short-fall of Lm300,000 (which will be made up from public funding).

Without taking into consideration the Lm1.3m to Lm1.8m worth of private funding generated by PBS Ltd through advertising, the licence money translates into an average of Lm12,807 of public funds per PBS employee.

The report states this level of subsidy is not sustainable, especially since much of the company's activities could have been funded through its advertising revenue had the organisation been leaner and meaner. The report concludes there is a general awareness within and outside PBS Ltd that there is a problem and over 70 per cent of those contacted were sceptical about the viability of the company. Then again it was obvious that there was a wealth of experience, expertise and potential.

As to the running of the company, the report finds that over the past five years the running was characterised by two main approaches - sound fiscal management undertaken by Tony Mallia and increasing local productions undertaken by Albert Marshall.

Tight fiscal control gained Mr Mallia a reputation of being intransigent but he ended the year with a small profit. In an attempt to increase local productions, PBS was forced to farm out its programming.

The report states the local population is willing to support local production if this is deemed relevant. The local market is able to generate programmes to fulfil the needs of the local population.

However, it said the ideas to create and sell programmes have largely emerged from outside the organisation of the public broadcasting service.

The report suggested public broadcasting could be managed on, at least a break-even basis, and added not all programmes created locally had had the same standards and success.

It also states one examination of the service's accounts, it is clear too great a portion of public money was spent on administrative overheads and too little was making its way into non-commercially viable quality local productions.

It also stated the current system of ministerial appointments at board level, and changes after every election, did not help ward off political interference, real or perceived.

While the common perception of PBS Ltd was that over the years it had suffered from too much political interference, there was considerable agreement among the general managers of PBS Ltd that politicians did not directly intervene in the management.

PBS had suffered from inadequate investment over the years. The investment made at PBS over the past five to 10 years appears to be restricted to the news centre and the purchasing of digital broadcasting equipment.

Little, or no investment, seems to have been made in other modern equipment or any form of training. PBS is a top-heavy organisation with an excessive number of managing staff, the report finds, with the company employing 10 executive managers, nine managers and eight assistant managers.

The report team proposed several options:

The road ahead for public broadcasting in Malta may be one of several options. The options available include doing nothing, reforming PBS or else divesting PBS of its revenue-collecting, programme funding and archival functions and set up two smaller focused entities to handle these tasks. This also meant replacing PBS with a small leaner organisation.

The latter was the option endorsed by the report team for the following reasons.

The report suggested the government should take responsibility for the consequences of past political decisions and vote an ad hoc financial package which would reduce the number of employees in public broadcasting by half within a period of 12 to 18 months. Anything less drastic would threaten to kill or cripple the organisation.

It therefore suggested the setting up of Malta Broadcasting Services - which should focus on broadcasting, be modelled on the basis of other private sector companies, the operations department, the largest of all, would have five coordinators, one each for television, radio, news, productions and engineering. To do this, the government should draft, discuss and adopt a new law.

The report team also suggested a media commission should be appointed by the President of Malta after consultations with both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition.

Its functions will be to collect licence money, monitor the quality and quantity of content, make research results available to the BA and the public, apportion 15 to 25 per cent of net licence revenue to the preservation of Malta's audio-visual heritage.

It also suggested the setting up of a new National Institute for AudioVision with the purpose of collecting, cataloguing and archiving locally produced audio and visual materials, to become a national depository for local audio and visual productions and to develop a clear legal set-up for the re-use of audio and visual materials both locally and overseas.