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Where’s Everybody? flagship programmes Xarabank and Bondiplus top the list of the most costly productions on PBS, amounting to Lm294,000. This covers the period October 2004 until mid-July 2005 and the information is based on a confidential report by PricewaterhouseCoopers seen by MaltaToday. The remuneration for Xarabank and for Bondiplus during this period work out at Lm5,000 and Lm2,000 for every programme produced. The station was expected to take on an additional fixed cost for both programmes totalling Lm89,000.
According to the report, Xarabank and Bondiplus would be the only loss making programmes, together with Monday drama. The latter is estimated to make a loss of Lm27,000 and will cost the station Lm47,000 to buy and Lm30,000 in fixed costs.
The report called “Revenue maximisation of the programme schedule” submitted to the PBS board last February shows that Where’s Everybody? was paid Lm210,000 last year for Xarabank and Lm84,000 for Bondiplus.
The programmes also had a fixed cost of Lm48,000 for Xarabank and Lm41,000 for Bondiplus for the public broadcasting company, which should leave the station with a Lm13,000 and Lm23,000 loss respectively for the two programmes, although they were also the two most programmes to generate net revenue at Lm245,000 and Lm102,000 respectively.
The confidential report covers 42 weeks between October 2004 and mid July this year. PBS sources told MaltaToday that for the present 2006 schedule Where’s Everybody? are being paid less.
“From the current main programming, losses are budgeted on Xarabank, Bondiplus and Monday drama – other major programmes all show a budgeted profit,” the report states.
The station is also expected to make huge losses on programmes listed under “other programming”, including imported films and sports programmes.
According to the audit report, “there is a major mismatch between budgeted revenue – Lm21,000 and budgeted programming costs – Lm181,000. This programming is absorbing fixed costs of Lm0.26 million on the basis of transmission hours resulting in a budgeted loss of Lm0.42 million which is being partially funded by an allocation of Lm0.35 million from the government subvention”.
The report shows PBS’s gross advertising income for 2004 was estimated to have increased by Lm0.25 million to Lm1.4 million. PBS budgeted Lm930,000 in programming costs this year, including Lm450,000 on outsourced programmes. It spent Lm600,000 in payroll costs, Lm135,000 of which went for newsroom staff, and Lm360,000 on transmission and operation costs.
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