Where's Everybody, producers of the programmes Xarabank and Bondi+ said yesterday that their productions were taking up just 1.8 per cent of the schedule on Public Broadcasting Services.

In a statement, Peppi Azzopardi, Lou Bondi and P.J. Vassallo said the two programmes occupied just three hours of PBS's weekly schedule.

The company was reacting a day after Broadcasting Authority chairman Joseph Said Pullicino called upon PBS to produce more in-house current affairs programmes.

WE said it was not the only company to produce current affairs and discussion programmes on PBS.

Apart from the daily news bulletin, PBS journalists produce programmes such as Lenti, Ekonomija and l-Ghodwa t-Tajba.

Programmes likes Reporter and the financial report are produced by other production houses. Yet the BA chairman chose to cite only the programmes Bondi+ and Xarabank to make his argument, WE said.

This was ironic since the BA had selected the two programmes as the best investigative and discussion programmes.

On another level, WE said that Bondi+ and Xarabank have never been accused of being partial or imbalanced in their content, let alone guilty of political imbalance.

Surveys carried out by the BA have confirmed the popularity of the programmes produced by WE.