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He is only 30 years old and has never worked in the media or public broadcasting. MaltaToday asked the new PBS Chairman, Andrew Agius Muscat, what kind of vision he has for the ailing national broadcasting service
For Investments Minister Austin Gatt, those who raise their eyebrows at his latest appointment of a 30-year-old man to the helm of Public Broadcasting Services after the unexplained dismissal of former Chairman Michael Mallia are “intellectual snobs” who just don’t get it.
“A small army of intellectual snobs pointed out that the government’s choice has no experience in broadcasting,” Gatt said after the appointment. “PBS employs around 50 broadcasters. What new insights can a chairman who is also a broadcaster by profession really be expected to contribute?”
Now that is misleading. After the restructuring process launched by Gatt himself, only a handful of broadcasters are left out of the remaining 60 workers, with twice as many workers redeployed somewhere else or given hefty golden handshakes.
His question, however, remains valid, and given that Andrew Agius Muscat is the “government’s choice” with “no experience in broadcasting,” it is now up to him to tell us what he can really be expected to contribute at the helm of our national television and radio station.
Sporting a scrupulously trimmed goatee, Gatt’s choice for PBS works at Chef’s Choice as a management consultant for the poultry and meat processing and retail business in Zabbar. He’s the son of former Nationalist MP Renato Agius Muscat.
Inside his office on top of the factory, he keeps two heavy Dorling Kindersley’s reference books on management; one about ‘Managing for Excellence’ and the other one an “essential” manager’s handbook. Indeed, he comes from the management school of thought; where sacking workers is called ‘restructuring’ and every problem is euphemised as a ‘challenge,’ where the client may always be right but the bottom-line is dogma.
So what can the management consultant contribute to PBS?
“I won’t manage on my own, not because I don’t have experience in public broadcasting, but because you can never succeed on your own, whatever the venture,” he says after admitting that even he was surprised that the minister chose him. “The trick is to have competent people around you, a multi-disciplinary team of experts who are not afraid to air their ideas. I don’t need yes-man around me. I want accountable people who have all the leeway to operate, even to make mistakes, as long as they remain accountable.”
Even his predecessor, Michael Mallia, was known to be anything but a yes-man, and the real reasons for the fallout with the minister are still unknown. Does Agius Muscat know why Mallia resigned?
“No, I don’t,” he replies. “I wasn’t following the coverage of the PBS restructuring process very closely. I mean it’s not exactly international news, so to speak.”
He goes on to add that resignations are “quite a normal thing” if one disagrees with one’s superiors or even for personal reasons.
“Resignations are a sign of professional maturity,” he says.
Yet, I tell him, with the resignation still clouded in mystery, how can we rest assured that there was no government interference in what is supposedly an autonomous national public broadcasting service?
“I didn’t join PBS to come out at 60,” Agius Muscat says, somehow avoiding the question to give an indication that he will either deliver or quit. “I hope I’ll be successful but if, for some reason or other, I don’t, I’ll just resign.”
Will he be a yes-man himself with the hawkish minister who had no qualms sacking two chairmen in a year and a half?
“Not at all. I never was a yes-man.”
True to his management worldview, he views his chairmanship at PBS as “a project” that has to be carried out. So what would the end-result of this project be?
“One of the most important things is to get PBS up to date in line with today’s developments. I won’t go into the technical aspects, but right now we’re facing the digital challenge. It’s not an option, the world has already decided for us and we’re already late. Now it’s a question of choosing how to go about it, devising a plan which is clear as opposed to that we have at present.”
His reference point, he says, is “always the client, the client is our compass.” In the case of PBS, the client is the public, which is also the sole shareholder of the station.
“I’m very conscious about the public because it is what distinguishes us from other commercial television stations,” he says. “Net and Super One have their respective Nationalist and Labourite grassroots clients who have to be constantly bombarded with indoctrination. We have the public and we’re obliged to cater for it, including minorities, even though it may not be commercially viable.”
Agreed, but how can PBS live up to its public service obligations – its own raison d’etre – with such a severely reduced workforce and enormous budget cuts?
“You don’t face a challenge with quantity but with the quality of what you have,” he replies in what must be a straight quote from one of Dorling Kindersley’s reference books. “In terms of human resources, you can do miracles with just three people. You may have a dozen workers and produce nothing. I am not impressed by numbers.”
What about the quality?
“I think we have to look into the quality of what’s being broadcast. There are some good-quality programmes, others who can improve and yet others who are cases of downright bad television.”
When it comes to the newsroom and current affairs, supposedly the flagship and pride of every public broadcasting station, PBS is a mere government and Opposition notice board, covering Department of Information events without ever breaking any news stories. What kind of public service is that?
“I have no problems saying it should be better. There should be more initiative. Broadcasting is a stage of creativity; it should be attracting the creative individuals. There may be different sources for this lack of initiative – it may be that journalists had no personal initiative, or that their hands were tied, or even because they don’t have enough resources.”
Let’s say their hands are tied because of direct Government and Opposition interference, what would his position be?
“If a political party tries to influence or try to use PBS to its own advantage it is going to lose in the end. The audience today does not want partisan politics. Whoever tries to go down that path will lose political mileage.”
But will he, as chairman, let anyone interfere with the responsibilities of the PBS newsroom?
“The pressure I have is from the government to make PBS commercially viable, while at the same time fulfilling the station’s public service obligations. At the end of the day we have to offer journalism which makes sense. As long as what we do is ethical we should have no problems to achieve that.”
The pressure to go commercial… it’s the bottom-line again. The imperative of commercial viability is anathema for advocates of public broadcasting. They say commercial profit should not be the priority of a station whose raison d’etre is to offer the kind of public service private stations are not interested in giving.
“The policy is clear in stating that PBS has a dual role; to cater for the social and public broadcasting needs of society in a commercially viable way. I think that makes sense.”
About the failed attempts to fill the vacant news manager hot seat at PBS, he says don’t even view it as a problem.
“The more fuss we make about it the more complicated it will become,” he said. “I don’t think it’s such a big problem, in the sense that the first thing we should do is to consolidate management and once that’s in place I will be able to take decisions wisely to solve this issue. It’s not even a problem, it’s a situation. You don’t always find suitable candidates to fill your vacancies, but that’s not the end of the world. Not to choose candidates is always an option.”
Media coverage of the PBS restructuring process has “put a lot of unfair pressure which may be scaring away good journalists who would otherwise apply for the job” of news manager, he says, but when told that maybe good journalists believe they cannot do a good job there because of political interference he said it all boiled down to self-confidence.
“That’s lack of self-confidence. Had I thought that way I wouldn’t have accepted to become chairman. If one believes he is up to the job and can make a difference, one should go for it.”
Speaking about “unfair pressure,” Agius Muscat says that even he felt a lot of “unnecessary pressure” before accepting his post. He seems rather surprised by the interest shown by the press in the PBS restructuring process and in Mallia’s resignation, and starts harping on about the difference between “reporting facts” and “sensationalism,” much to my protests about the meekness of Maltese journalism.
Actually, I tell him, chairing PBS means he is bound to face much more pressure from Parties and other institutions. How will he react to it?
“I will listen,” he says. “One always has to listen to the client, who might be right after all. I will evaluate criticism and react accordingly.”
But it’s not about the client that we’re talking about here. Does he give his assurance that he will never accept orders from any minister, MPs and Parties?
“Listen, I have a sense of professionalism. It’s not a question of giving assurances. My sense of professional duty has to be respected and if I was entrusted with carrying out a job nobody should expect me to be a yes-man.”
Asked if he will be pushing for an aggressive newsroom which asks the incisive questions to Government and Opposition and does not shy away from controversy, Agius Muscat once again resorts to his distinction between “giving truthful information – PBS’s first priority” and “being sensational.”
But forget sensationalism for a while. Will he insist that PBS give “truthful information” even when it contradicts the government?
“It’s our duty, to say things as they are,” he replies.
Asked how much PBS forked out in golden handshakes in its restructuring process, Agius Muscat said he still had to look at the company’s financial situation, but adds that the re-employment of retired workers “has to stop.”
He says the first thing that struck him as he entered the building for the first time last week was “the idea of the chairman as the centre of everything.”
“The chairman decides what happens when and how, the chairman negotiates programmes, etc. I want to change that culture. The chairman is responsible for the strategy while the management is responsible for running of the station. Programmes should be negotiated by competent managers, for example.”
Granted, but the restructuring process meant that while most of the shop floor staff was given the sack, the managers remain the same. What kind of restructuring is that, when PBS was well-known for its lack of effective management?
“These managers have gone through a selection process; they were selected after applying for these posts, and that has to be respected. The selection is the passport; it isn’t the end of the voyage (back to Dorling Kindersley’s reference book again, I’m afraid). The real interview starts when you start working, when you start delivering. That’s when you can really judge someone, and I will hold everyone accountable from top to bottom.”
He also declares that he will be assessing PBS workers’ and managers’ performance at the station.
“It’s the principle behind every efficient organisation,” he says about the idea of sacking whoever does not deliver.
“I want to give each worker the opportunity to develop,” he adds immediately. “That’s part of the culture change that I would like to see.”
What kind of relationship will he have with the minister from now on?
“Government sets the policy, because at the end of the day, it’s the government that is representing the people who voted for it. So that’s where I’ll sit with the minister to see how to go about fulfilling our public service commitments. But I won’t discuss politics or anything to do with political parties. Editorial policy is independent from the ministry and even from the board of directors. We discuss, of course, communication is essential between all the stakeholders.”
His appointment will remain effective until 20 July next year - the date when the board of directors will be dissolved - giving him eight months of probation before the minister decides whether to reappoint him or not.
“I won’t make miracles before July, but I’m not concerned about safeguarding my job as chairman,” he says. “I’ll do my best so that my successors will have something to build on, as much as I can build on the good left by my predecessors.”
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