NEWS | Wednesday, 21 January 2009

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Raphael Vassallo
The Broadcasting Authority yesterday filed a counter judicial protest in reply to action brought against the Authority by Reverend Gwann Farrugia, owner of UTV, after television station licence was not renewed for 2009.
UTV was launched in July 2007 on the personal initiative of Rev. Farrugia, with a declared socio-religious mission to ‘re-Christianise’ Malta. Originally it was broadcast on Go’s digital platform, but problems of a technical and qualitative nature quickly arose and its licence was soon revoked by the Broadcasting Authority.
UTV was later served with a temporary licence, but this was withdrawn in 2008. Represented by lawyer Dr Emmy Bezzina of the Alpha Liberal Party, Farrugia filed a judicial protest that same month, and staged a press conference on the steps of the Law Courts in which he accused the BA of trampling on his human rights.
Farrugia also held the authority’s chairman and CEO, together with GO plc, the Malta Communications Authority, the prime minister, the opposition leader and the Infrastructure and Transport minister, responsible for financial damages incurred by his company.
Yesterday, however, the BA gave its own side of the story, arguing that the decision not to renew UTV’s licence had been taken after reports of numerous breaches of the original licence conditions.
The authority observed that up until it received the renewal application, UTV was still experiencing severe technical problems, and as a result failed on a consistent basis to abide by its programming schedule, as stipulated in the licence conditions.
The BA also made reference to monitoring reports which “suggest serious breaches of broadcasting law.”
After considering a proposal by UTV’s legal representative to issue a provisional licence for three months, the Authority concluded that such an initiative might jeopardise its own credibility, and consequently turned it down.
The BA’s counter judicial protest was presented in court by Prof. Ian Refalo.

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