BA in critical financial situation, facing new responsibilities

The Broadcasting Authority has said its financial situation was now becoming critical and, for the first time in many years, it had registered a deficit, albeit a modest one. This was making it difficult to take on new broadcasting initiatives.

Chairman Joseph Scicluna wrote in the authority's annual report for 2008 that this was mainly due to the impact of the current collective agreement (based on public-service salary scales) and a government budgetary allocation that had remained practically unchanged for the last 10 years.

As a result, the authority was already finding it practically impossible to take on new broadcasting initiatives, including those intended to enhance the competency of local broadcasters and producers and the quality of broadcasting.

The report states that with the potential for additional carrying capacity on the existing cable and digital terrestrial television networks, it was not unlikely that in the coming months the authority would be required to appraise other applications for new commercial television broadcasting licences. In that event, the authority would need to strike a balance between the objective of further enhancing pluralism in the local broadcasting sector and the need to ensure that licensed broadcasting stations, especially in the context of the local small-scale and highly-competitive media market, were sustainable in the longer term and in a position to maintain an acceptable minimum of quality standards.

Looking ahead, Mr Scicluna writes that in 2009 the responsibilities of the Broadcasting Authority are likely to continue to increase as a result of developments that have been in the pipeline for some time, but which are now reaching implementation stage. One of these developments is the transposition into Maltese law of the new EU Audiovisual Media Services Directive which has to be transposed and implemented by member states by December 19, 2009.

If the recommendations made by a working group were accepted, they would entail significant amendments to the Broadcasting Act and the BA would, inter alia, have to assume a new responsibility for the regulation of "non-linear" media content, which refers to "TV-like" on-demand services and which has hitherto not been regulated. Another development was the recent ministerial announcement of government policy, including an implementation strategy, on digital broadcasting that meets general interest objectives (GIO).

This policy was a follow-up to an earlier government decision establishing the end of December 2010 as a target for the turn-off of analogue broadcasting, and will likely entail significant amendments to the Broadcasting Act and new responsibilities for the authority. This would include the establishment of detailed GIO selection criteria and the conduct of the GIO selection and allotment process.