This is the major problem with Malta’s PBS: the top bosses of the station, including, but especially so, the board of directors, never seem to come over as listening to the programmes on their own station.

‘Fake’ news: it is not true that the Malta Broadcasting Authority will be giving a special award at its next ceremony to the presenter of the daily morning PBS programme Familja waħda, namely the station’s most assiduous clock watcher. I counted no fewer than 30 “ħaffifli għax baqagħli x minuti” (let’s move on as there are x minutes left) chidings in one of her recent programmes to both those calling via phone and also to invited guests in her studios.

Her programme has now been next to totally taken over by a set of perpetual moaners repeatedly ringing in to the exclusion of so many potential others.

She simply doesn’t know how to handle them or, indeed, a programme of that nature. She is only adept at making appointments with guests who are, when invited, never allowed to expose what they, not those calling via phone, would have planned. Indeed, her programme-management skills are next to zero.

Like Xarabank, this programme is turning Radio Malta into a charade. Her programme on May 12 (in which she simply put her one-sided foot into it by only inviting a strong, popular and highly knowledgeable local feminist) was an absolute chaos.

When PBS comes round to accepting that no programme presenter should ever have an endless right to permanence on their schedule, then, yes, we may start to hope for some seriousness in this national station.