BRATISLAVA, February 10, (WEBNOVINY) – Miloslava Zemkova will be the Director General of the public service broadcaster Radio and Television of Slovakia (RTVS). Parliamentary deputies elected her to the post on Thursday in the repeated vote. Zemkova received eighty votes of 137 lawmakers present, one voted against her and nobody refrained from voting. In addition to votes of coalition deputies, two independent deputies Igor Matovic and Andrej Durkovsky and also opposition SNS deputy Rudolf Pucik gave their votes to Zemkova. Her opponent, the incumbent head of the state-run news wire TASR Jaroslav Reznik got one vote while 56 deputies were against his election and 24 refrained from voting. SNS deputies did not take part in the vote at all.
RTVS originated on January 1 of this year by merger of the public-service Slovak Television and Slovak Radio. Following the election of the new super-broadcaster’s head, Culture Minister Daniel Krajcer wants to open a broader discussion on transformation of public service media, including their contents, more precise definition of public service function and public interest, as well as a new funding model. The role of the new director general will be to stabilize television broadcasting. She is also to prepare conditions for its operation as of 2012, when its funding is to be changed. The so-called listener and viewer fees are to be canceled and replaced with an annual one-off contribution from the state budget.
SITA