LUSA 10/31/2024

Lusa - Business News - Portugal: Government only changing source of 9% of RTP's funding - minister

Lisbon, Oct. 30, 2024 (Lusa) - Portugal's minister of parliamentary affairs said on Wednesday that the "only thing" the government is changing is the "source of funding for 9% of RTP's revenue", the weight of which has been decreasing.

Pedro Duarte was speaking at the parliamentary committee on Culture, Communication, Youth and Sport, in the context of requests from the Left Bloc (BE), PCP, PS, Chega and Livre on the Media Action Plan announced by the government.

The end of advertising on RTP will be gradual over the next three years, with a reduction of two minutes/hour in 2025 and 2026, with an estimated total cost of €20 million and a reduction in revenue of around €6.6 million per year.

In response to the PS, the minister said that the fact that "there is a decapitalisation plan, a plan to break up [RTP] is manifestly exaggerated, not to say misplaced".

This is because "the only thing we're changing is the source of funding of 9% of RTP's revenues, 9% that even if we do nothing, maybe next year it will be 8% and then it will be 7%," the minister continued.

"Funding from commercial advertising has fallen sharply at RTP over the years," Pedro Duarte pointed out, citing that it was recently written that in 1993 “it was worth 73% of the budget” of the public media group.

"Today, it's worth 9%; even if we didn't do anything, that revenue would probably end; we're accelerating that end," insisted the government official.

"By compensating RTP in other ways and freeing RTP, as is the case, for example, with the BBC, with TVE, with most Nordic public broadcasters that don't have commercial advertising and are very important in their country," he said.

Given this, "it's like living in a world of absolutely delusional fiction, and I acknowledge that only the temptation to oppose for the sake of opposing can lead to not thinking calmly and serenely" about the measures that are being proposed, he said.

Pedro Duarte said that the government is proposing, "and this is what is essential", to "strengthen RTP's role" in society.

Also in response to Socialist MP Mara Lagriminha, who said that RTP is a company that doesn't give the state any problems, the government official countered: "But I think it does".

"I'm not talking from a financial point of view, or about its management, I'm saying it because I think that RTP only makes sense to exist if it really does provide the public media service that society needs today," he emphasised.

And "it gives me a lot of headaches because I know what the future holds. It's not about RTP today, it's about RTP tomorrow," the minister added.

If "we don't do anything, believe me, we can all have the best intentions, the best managers at the head of RTP, the best journalists, but if we don't provide the conditions" for the company to modernise and adapt to new audiences and new times, "RTP will tend towards irrelevance," he said, noting that this "applies to any television" and throughout Europe.

He pointed out that RTP's audiences are lower than the government would like and warned that they are also older.

According to Pedro Duarte, 64% of RTP1's audience is over 65, while between the ages of 15 and 35 this percentage is “just over 5%”.

The Media Action Plan contains 30 measures and foresees the end of advertising on RTP in 2027.

ALU/ADB // ADB.

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