Spain public broadcasting (as Flanders one) are partially financed by publicity gains and partially subsidized by the State. But in Spain this situation will finish since 1st of January of 2010. They want to save this public space witch aim to provide quality contents and impartial information.

Spain will modify the system of the public broadcasting (RTVE), by abolishing advertising and other commercial activities of RTVE and replacing this source of income by newly introduced taxes on private television and telecommunications operators. Private TVs will pay to TVE 3% of their incomes, and telecommunications operators, 0,9%. The European Commission has opened a formal investigation under the EU state aid rules into the new tax based funding system for RTVE.

The new funding scheme is accompanied by restrictions on how RTVE spends the money, as the government of the prime minister, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, tries to turn it away from commercial programming towards more public service broadcasting. RTVE must limit its purchase of new films and cannot spend more than 10% of its annual budget on sports rights.

1-1-2010. Since this day Spanish public TV won´t be the same as there will be no more adverts and the contend will change: more films and documentals, more time for the news and less gossip programs. I am specially curious about witch sport will be the last one of the year (just before 24:00). In 2008 was one of the bank “La Caixa” and cost 700,000 euros! Now I understand why they call it “the gold minute”! (Here you can see the last 3 adverts of 2007 in TVE).

Where is the quality television?

If we took RTVE away you would probably end up with a kind of big black cultural hole. I can´t imagine a television without all the exclusive contents that RTVE offers: science programs (”Redes”), documentaries (”Grandes Documentales”), historical series (“Cuéntame”), Spanish films (”Cine de madrugada” or “Días de cine”)… Public space is independent space in which everyone should get a fair hearing. Is a place where to allow freedom of expression, This is why RTVE strives so hard to achieve impartiality.

It doesn´t matter where the founding comes from, the most important issue is to save the public broadcasting. We cannot permit that RTVE dissapears or that its quality contents became rubbish (as most of the private broadcastings are now).

Sources:
Deep explanation about the situation
The guardian´s report
Wall Street Journal´s report
Spanish Public Broadcasting (RTVE)

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