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Privatization allowed for Spain’s regional public channels

Iñaki Ferreras ©RapidTVNews

| 30-04-2012

Valencia, Madrid and Castilla-La Mancha have announced their intention to use new regulations regarding regional TV channels to privatize their public TV channels, while Catalonia, Extremadura, Andalusia and Galicia have announced that they will maintain governance.

At the Council of Ministers on 20 April, the Government approved a modification of the Audiovisual Communication Act that allows regional governments to choose to privatize regional public television or continue to manage them themselves.

Currently, Spain has a total of 13 regional television stations, which broadcast in Galicia, Valencia, Catalonia, Basque Country, Canary Islands, Madrid, Castilla-La Mancha, Andalusia, Baleares, Murcia, Asturias, Aragon and Extremadura.

ETB (Basque Country), TV3 (Catalonia), TVG (Galician), TVV (Valencia) and Canal Sur (Andalucia) generally have the biggest budgets and are more expensive for viewers, according to V Economic Report on Public Television in Spain to Deloitte UTECA. Telemadrid began broadcasting in 1989 and is one of the cheapest for viewers (€49 per household, according to Deloitte), while Aragon, which began broadcasting in 2006, has a net cost per household of €126, as does the Balearic Islands channel, which started late in 2005.

The size of the workforce, the accumulated debt and the management of public television differs in each region, and even before the Government reform, at least four regions (Aragón, Baleares, Murcia and the Canary Islands) were already delegating the production of their information services to private companies to varying degrees.

So far, at least three communities (Valencia, Madrid, Castilla-La Mancha) have announced their intention to privatize their TV channels. Speaking about the adoption of the Government reform by the Council of Ministers, the President of the Community and the PP in Madrid, Esperanza Aguirre, justified the need to privatize Telemadrid saying that television was better left in the hands of professionals rather than politicians.

In the case of Valencia, whose public television faces a record of employment regulation (ERE) that affects over 1,000 workers, the Valencian Government wants to keep the public administration but use private companies to commission the production of news programmes to save money. Vice President and Minister of the Presidency of the Generalitat Valenciana, José Císcar, explained that the future law on Radio Television Valenciana (RTVV), which presented the draft regional government, will enable the body to remain a public service through which information content and the promotions of the Valencian language, culture and traditions are provided direct, but where production is outsourced through a process of public-private partnership.

At least four regions (Catalonia, Extremadura, Andalusia and Galicia) have shown their intention to keep the governance of their television stations. The spokesman for the Generalitat, Francesc Homs, said that it hadn’t crossed his mind to privatize the Catalan Broadcasting Corporation (CTE), which incorporates TV3 and Catalunya Radio. “In the case of Catalonia, the public media of the CCMA must remain public. We want to make that clear from the outset,” said Homs.

The president of Extremadura, Jose Antonio Monagas, has also ruled out privatizing the Extremadura regional television because he said that there is no deficiency within the station and that its accounts were in order.

Meanwhile, Acting Minister of Presidency of the Government of Andalusia, Mar Moreno, emphasized the defence of the “public character” of Radio Television of Andalusia (RTVA) and pointed out that there is a commitment by the Andalusian PSOE and united left to defend the public nature of the RTVA. For his part, the Secretary General Media Xunta de Galicia, Alfonso Cabaleiro, assured that the Galician Executive is committed to maintain a public Television de Galicia (TVG) and indicated that the “greatest proof” of this commitment is the fact that it recently passed a law to regulate Galician public transport – with the votes of PPdeG and PsdeG.