This hasn’t been the best of years for some of Central and Eastern Europe’s public broadcasters.
The financial plight of two in particular – Romania’s TVR and BHRT in Bosnia & Herzegovina – has barely been out of the news in the last few months. At the same time, the controversial changes imposed at Poland’s TVP at the beginning of the year still continue to draw criticism.
There was a glimmer of hope earlier this week for BHRT when the EBU announced it had reached a last-minute agreement with the broadcaster that will allow it show Euro 2016. Although this will effectively allow BHRT to stay on air until the end of the tournament on July 10, question marks as to its future remain.
Indeed, prior to the agreement it had announced it would cease broadcasting at the end of this month due to its financial difficulties. These have seen it run up debts of over CHF6 million to the EBU alone.
Meanwhile, in Romania TVR seems to lurch from crisis to crisis. Its financial woes led to the EBU taking the extraordinary step two months ago of withdrawing member services for the non-payment of debts of CHF16 million. Since then, the EBU has taken a pro-active role in trying to resolve the situation, talking to both the broadcaster and Romanian government.
It now appears that a solution of sorts may be in sight for TVR, with the government set to adopt an Emergency Ordinance in order to provide it with more money and ultimately help clear its debts.
As to TVP, the focus was initially on the changes introduced by the new PiS government at the beginning of this year. They include the replacement of senior management and were condemned both within and outside the country for being politically motivated.
Since then, the government has set in a motion a legislative process that will see a major restructuring of public service broadcasting in Poland. However, its plans received a setback earlier this week when the deputy minister of culture revealed that the necessary legislation could not be enacted in time and would instead be replaced by other measures.
This has been interpreted as a financial blow for TVP, which would have seen a new and what was hoped would be more efficient method of funding – audiovisual tax, included in utility bills –introduced at the beginning of next year.
