News • January 04 2004

Reform at PBS: will Gatt’s blueprint weaken state TV?

Matthew Vella

There are murmurs of discontent at Television House in Gwardamangia as the Public Broadcasting Services faces its biggest ever onslaught from the PN government’s ‘no-nonsense’ minister. IT and Investments Minister Austin Gatt’s rationalisation scalpel threatens radical changes in a reform plan to revert PBS’s loss-making trend. But is PBS’s national-popular agenda about to be given the chop as well?
The move to turn PBS in a viable television station has prompted fears of an attack on TVM’s broadcasting product and on the sedate middle-of-the-road news agenda. Austin Gatt has already gone on record saying PBS lacks flexibility, has a management structure that doesn’t make sense and outdated work practices. But the first inklings of reforms, such as reducing staff from 150 to 50 including cuts in the PBS newsroom, leaves many in the dark as to what kind of product PBS will be churning out in the future.
Cutting down the current Lm1.5 million wage bill at PBS is however fundamental to the Gatt blueprint, which sees PBS generate a possible Lm2 million a year, with the help of a Lm500,000 government subsidy. Farming out programmes, a practice first initiated by the Super One and NET oligarchy, is also expected to become big on the future agenda of PBS. Also expected will be a clamping down on bureaucratic work practices which critics say renders PBS akin to a government department.
The General Workers’ Union has already warned against the hefty job cuts, quoting a MIMCOL report that decrees PBS’s minimum manning level at 80. However, little or nothing has been said from within the other unions and political parties on the very future of national broadcasting and the quality of broadcasting Maltese audiences can expect from PBS.
Gorg Peresso, a staple of the PBS atelier, is sceptic of the changes facing state TV and believes the problem is outdated political obligations, rather than work practices: "Work practices are subject to modern tendencies and utilities, both technically and creatively, which are the core of competence and survival. The future is for those who are two or three steps ahead.
"It transpires that PBS is aiming at something more drastic than the proposed cuts in workforce, and there are plans to change its raison d'etre, as stipulated by the laws governing the Broadcasting Authority. If this happens, why should we continue to consider PBS as a national broadcaster or as a public service? Let's start calling it a chiffonier."
Veteran broadcaster Charles Flores fears the loss of the concept of public broadcasting is slowly evident even here in Malta. Citing as an example the recent onslaught on Italian leftfield public station RAITRE by the Berlusconi administration, Flores said Italy had displayed a strong need for public broadcasting to be present.
Asked what he made of the silence on both sides of the political spectrum, Flores said the silence on the future of PBS was a comfortable lull for the political parties: "This is no problem for the political parties. If there is to be no PBS there will always be their own TV stations. One would expect certain political voices to be vociferous about the planned reforms. But public broadcasting is a reality which we cannot escape from."

matthew@newsworksltd.com