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Super One and Net television owe it to politics if they have a license to operate. But nowadays it is business, which dictates politics, and this is reflected in the political stations, which have now become televised flea markets, where quality is rare and rubbish is everywhere.
The norm nowadays is not to plan and produce new programes but to sell the airtime. What is so unfortunate about this is that the sale is made without any restrictions on quality and content. Money is the order of the day and as long as the contractor is paying for the airtime, little matters if the programmes are good in content. They tell us that this is the only way that they can be viable, but this is cheap talk. Both political stations know that they are very far from someday becoming economically viable.
If you go through their audited accounts, you will realize that they are in the red by hundreds of thousands of liri. However, what surprises me most is that whereas the political stations do not manage to make money, those who buy airtime are getting rich quick! On the Maltese newspapers it is not the first time that you read, for example, an advert urging the advertisers not to leave to the last minute to advertise on this or that programme. Those
who buy the airtime manage to find the sponsors and not only that, they have developed a lucrative enterprise.
For me this is a mystery and I cannot understand how this happens. We all know that those who buy the airtime are all doing very well – the Bonaci’s have conquered Super One and PBS, Alfred Zammit, Eileen Montesin, Where’s Everybody?, Rachel of Tista’ tkun Int – they are all a success story in the airtime business. I have actually enquired as to how can this happen. It is true that they work very hard for their money but I was also told that they use many of the facilities and staff of the station for free.
Somebody who is in the business also told me that in the long run television stations are making a loss and not a profit when they sell airtime. I found this difficult to digest but then he explained how the system works: the contractors engage staff from the station; the station gives them leave and their replacement comes at a high cost because overtime comes into play. Another thing is that the research, archives, editing is mainly done at the station at no extra cost.
So when you add all this up, you will find that the television stations do not really make a profit when they sell the airtime. It is so unfortunate that they have embarked on this common trend of selling or rather giving airtime with the pretext that this is the only system which keeps the station floating. The system is not only confusing but it is confusing the viewers. Nowadays we can no longer associate a person with a particular station because the presenters roam from one station to the other. Viewers at times tend to think that they are watching the wrong channel when they see somebody who is known to be of the ‘other’ political party.
On Super One television this is becoming very common. Nowadays little do we see Labourites conducting programmes on the station. In effect many faithful followers of the station are now starting to believe that these presenters are now with Labour. They find no other explanation as to how ‘X’ who was campaigning against the party before the elections or the referendum now has a series of programmes on the party’s station. It is difficult to explain to them that when the station sells airtime, it has no control on who is the presenter and the guests of the programme.
The sad thing about it is that the system is being emulated by PBS which is supposed to be above politics representing the interests of us all. Content is poor, advertising galore and culture is nowhere to be seen or heard. Always the same faces, the same format and no new ideas. Hopping from Net to PBS and from PBS to Net is common and every schedule leaves much to be desired. Cookery, ganutell, gardening, make-up, and fashion are the order of the day in all three stations as if this is all that the Maltese woman’s mind can carry!
And yet in all this scenario there is supposed to be a board of directors, composed of men and women, which is supposed to supervise the contents of the programmes. The accounts also fall under their responsibility, but so far no Board has managed to bring in any profits and funnily enough, except for PBS, none of them has made any structural adjustment so that they can someday start seeing any profit.
Unfortunately, the awards of the Broadcasting Authority have helped with the mediocrity of the television programmes. The awards were given on the basis of audience and not on content. In the past, even the United Nations used to measure the economic development of the countries by their GDP, but then it realised that it is not the development of a country which makes a human being, but it is the development of the human being, both physically and intellectually, which makes a developed country.
Consequently the Human Development Index was born. The Broadcasting Authority was always after numbers rather than content and this induced the producers to rush for more sponsorships to attract more audiences by awarding them gifts for watching their programmes.
Nowadays we have unashamedly molded our viewers in such a way that a good programme is calculated by the number of prizes that it gives. Even fund-raising on television has been rendered a gambling experience. Viewership is low in cultural programmes because they get little sponsorships and they do not ‘pay’ their audience for watching the programme. If you notice, the only cultural programme available in Malta is Meander on PBS, and needless to say, the Broadcasting Authority makes no effort to oblige each station to have, at least, one cultural programme.
This is a big shame indeed especially now that we are in the European Union. The other countries that have joined with us may not have many people who wear designer labels, but they have many people who can distinguish Mozart from Wagner, Kafka from Hemingway, and La Scala from Covent Garden. What we can distinguish is Kalamita from Kollox ma’ Kollox!
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