BRATISLAVA, February 11, (WEBNOVINY) – The situation in Radio and Television of Slovakia (RTVS) is critical and it will not be possible to resolve it without a helping hand of the state, said the newly elected RTVS head Miloslava Zemkova at a briefing on Friday. “The situation is really critical, a threat of execution due to the Omega Plus case is imminent […] and the threat is very acute,” said Zemkova, adding that this could hamper production of programs or even everyday operation of the institution. It is not only a problem of the television now, but of the radio as well. “We will need to act very, very quickly,” stated Zemkova. She informed last month that they face court ordered debt collection arising from a dispute with Omega Plus in the volume of EUR 5.918 million.
The RTVS management is therefore preparing meetings with Finance Minister Ivan Miklos and the Culture Minister Daniel Krajcer. The management also has to meet with the RTVS Council as soon as possible and arrange some further actions. Zemkova believes that Speaker of Parliament Richard Sulik will call the first Council meeting soon. “We weren’t created on the green field. We inherited many good things, but a vast amount of bad ones. Up to the date, the debt is 18 million euro. The losses that are reflected in technological, technical and human-resources insufficiency amount to some 43 million euro, excluding the losses of subsidiaries,” Zemkova commented on the current financial situation of the RTVS.
The first RTVS head announced that she would submit the budget to the RTVS Council immediately after it is finished. Until the Council approves it, RTVS will run with a provisional budget. The budget won’t be balanced at the beginning; it will be a crisis budget, considering the RTVS heritage after the former organizations. “I presume it should be perfectly clear within half a year, whether the state will help this institution with resolving its debt service and losses, or the institution will struggle with it for twenty years,” said Zemkova. She thinks that it is impossible to resolve the RTVS situation without help of the state, as both its losses and debt are too high. She also added that the staff should to be slimmed down to approximately 1,200 after two years of revitalizing and restructuring processes. RTVS currently has 1,600 employees on its payroll.
Zemkova said it is not clear yet, how RTVS will be financed. She does not know whether concessions will be abolished, or not. “Now we work with the alternative that we will be funded from the state budget. In such case, the institution needs to be managed in a completely different way and budget creation has to be adjusted,” said Zemkova, who considers the present model of financing from concessions, state coffers and ads to be a standard model in Europe. She is however ready to adapt to another alternative, but said that financing from the state budget has both its negatives and positives. Although she is getting ready for a discussion on removing ads from STV program, she believes that RTVS should be able to advertise its own programs and activities or charity and non-profit projects. The new RTVS head also said that broadcasting of the STV third sports channel Trojka will be brought to a halt after the World Ice Hockey Championship for maybe two or three years due to bad financial situation. Later the broadcasting should be restored.
SITA