PN media employees who were last week made redundant have been handed a lifeline by former party media chief Pierre Portelli, who expressed his willingness to take some of them on at his own media company.
Mr Portelli yesterday posted a statement on his Facebook account urging all former Media.link employees, the PN’s media company, to register their interest to work with Watermelon Media by sending their CV.
The decision to lay off part-time employees at the PN’s Net Television is part of a restructuring process which aims to make the party’s commercial entities financially viable.
Following last March’s landslide defeat, the party has struggled to make ends meet to the point that its employees are not being paid on time. Mr Portelli, who is now managing director at Watermelon Media, started his career in journalism with the PN media in the late 1990s and quickly rose through the ranks.
During his spell at Net he served as broadcast editor and news editor before moving on to focus exclusively on his private company which was formed in 2004.
Mr Portelli yesterday told Times of Malta that his intention was to have a register of all persons interested in joining the company.
Though he declined to give the number of available vacancies, he said that two former Media.Link employees had already joined, with a number of others being interviewed in the coming days.
Mr Portelli found the situation rather ironic, since up to some time ago, he claimed, PN employees were being discouraged from offering their freelance services to his company.
“On one occasion we were filming an advert for a series called Divided which is produced by the internationally-renowned company Endemol, when on the same day none of the Net TV employees who were contracted to work for us in their free time turned up. Eventually we got to know that they were following instructions from above,” he claimed.
Watermelon Media will this year be producing the fourth season of the quiz Puree, as well as a new drama series called Iċ-Ċaqqufa which will be aired at prime time on TVM on Tuesdays.
Meanwhile, Mr Portelli said he had not yet learned whether he will still be co-presenting TVM’s breakfast show TVAM. The current affairs show has been on air for the last two years between September and June.