Ministries taking over some of the funding, less news, more music, are just some of the ideas put forward by public broadcaster Polskie Radio, as it faces a massive shortfall in its budget. Poland’s Constitutional Court has ruled that old age pensioners and the unemployed are exempt from paying the TV and radio licence fee. Add the revenue loss that would mean to the rapidly dwindling amount of people paying the licence fee, and Poland’s public radio station, established in 1925, is facing a
deep financial crisis.
“The decision of the [Constitutional] Court [means] we lose more than 70 million zloty (17 million euro) of our revenue,” says Jaroslaw Hasiński, Acting President of Polskie Radio.
Revenue from the licence fee this year is already expected to plummet to just 130 million zlotys, two and a half times less than in previous years, after the uncertainty caused by the Polish government’s desire to radically change the way public media is funded in Poland and abolish the licence fee, altogether.
Public media chiefs, together with members of the National Broadcasting Council met to find ways out of the financial crisis.
“We can not afford to maintain our choirs and orchestras,” said President Hasiński. “We will ask the Ministry of Culture to fund those.“
President Hasiński also proposed changes in the way that Polish Radio's External Service, which broadcasts worldwide on shortwave, satellite, rebroadcasts and the internet, will be financed.
“The maintenance of the External Service would fall on the shoulders of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” he said.
Other ideas muted are the holding of a lottery prize for licence payers, where huge prizes could be won by people who do actually pay the fee. And news would only be created by the radio’s news agency, IAR.
Job cuts, as has been seen at Poland’s public television station, TVP, would be a last ditch measure, says the president, after all other ways of trying to get out of Polskie Radio’s financial crisis have been tried.
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