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- Directors insist on recording 11pm news
Karl Schembri
The PBS newsroom is on a collision course with the station’s board of directors after its proposal for a weekly current affairs programme has been reduced by half and slotted at a later time to make way for commercial programmes, MaltaToday has learnt.
Also, the PBS journalists are resisting attempts by the management to broadcast a recorded news bulletin at 11pm, instead of broadcasting it live, to cut down on expenses.
According to the TVM October schedule presented last Monday, the newsroom will be producing a 25-minute current affairs programme on Monday starting at 10.35pm.
But journalists are determined not to start the programme after their proposal for a 45-minute programme to be broadcast at 9.30pm or latest at 10.15pm were virtually ignored because of air time sold to commercial companies.
“Originally the programme was going to be broadcast on Thuarsdays, but because of commercial requirements we were given an alternative time slot that is not acceptable, given the efforts that go into producing the programme,” PBS News Manager Sylvana Cristina said.
In its application, the newsroom had proposed broadcasting the weekly programme at 9.30pm, in line with the editorial board’s suggestion to break prime-time into two time tiers (seconda serata) and having shorter programmes. Eventually it was meant to be broadcast on Thursday 10.15pm but finally Tista’ Tkun Int won over the whole evening.
PBS insiders say that apart from exposing for the umpteenth time the stark divide of vision between the editorial board and the board of directors, the latest standoff also exposes the bleak future for PBS in-house productions competing with commercial air time.
The acting chairman of the PBS editorial board, Dominic Fenech, expressed his disagreement with the directors’ decision to cut down the programme and broadcast it late on Monday.
“I am personally very disappointed that the current affairs programme has been squeezed in this way, because financial considerations have won over the editorial ideals,” Prof. Fenech said yesterday night.
Asked about the journalists’ insistence on not producing the programme as decided by the directors, Prof. Fenech said he still hoped they would produce current affairs.
“I believe we need more in-house current affairs programmes, because despite the decimated newsroom it is still better than all the other newsrooms,” Prof. Fenech said.
Boasting the highest audience levels among TV stations for its 8pm bulletin, the PBS newsroom insists that its current affairs programmes should be recognised as part of the station’s news service and should be given the importance they deserve. But the newsroom’s scant resources mean that journalists have to work on their off days to produce a weekly current affairs programme.
The journalists are also resisting an imminent decision to cut the live broadcasts of the 11pm new bulletin – a move that they fear would expose their newsroom to ridicule.
Sources say that if the directors insist with their stand, the newsroom is more likely to cut the 11pm service altogether than go for a recorded version that would seriously compromise its credibility.
According to a confidential PriceWaterhouseCoopers audit report revealed by MaltaToday last November, the station is unable to produce its own programmes and has been left with no alternative to outsourcing productions.
The report also states that the PBS technology is “becoming outdated”, the “TV picture quality is poor when compared to local and foreign” stations, and that “PBS lacks basic equipment and facilities that one would expect to find within a TV and broadcasting station.”
“In reality it (PBS) does not have the facility to produce its own programmes and has no alternative but to source local programmes from the relatively limited pool of local ‘talent’ available on selling/sharing airtime with producers,” the report states.
kschembri@mediatoday.com.mt
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