However, BA chairman Joseph Said Pullicino said at a news conference yesterday that the financial element was “only one of the elements” that the BA considers when issuing a call for applications.
He said that this report was useful so that new applicants would proceed “with their eyes wide open”, since the financial risk is borne by themselves.
The BA will first analyse the report and then decide whether to issue a call for applications or not, said Dr Said Pullicino.
The BA had decided to conduct this study before issuing any new licences for nationwide radio and television stations. It was conducted by Kenneth A. Bonnici of Grant Thornton and media adviser Pierre Cassar.
BA chief executive Kevin Aquilina said there were 19 expressions of interest for nationwide radio stations (up from 11 in 2002) and seven for nationwide television stations.
Among those interested in having a nationwide radio station are the General Workers’ Union (GWU) and the Union Haddiema Maghqudin (UHM), as well as Where’s Everybody?.
There are also four community radio stations which have expressed an interest in having a nation-wide radio station – Fantasy Radio, Christian Light Foundation, Radju Tlett Ibliet and Deejays Radio.
A fifth community radio station which also intended to go national – Radju Marija Malta – has already achieved its objective after taking over Radio Calypso’s frequency last month.
As already known, the seven expressions of interest for television stations were by Grima Communications Co. Ltd, Fr John Baptist Farrugia, Front Maltin Inqumu, Techinvest Ltd, Alternattiva Demokratika, Where’s Everybody?, and Allied Newspapers Ltd.
Dr Said Pullicino also confirmed last Sunday’s report in The Malta Independent on Sunday that Telever had been allocated a TV frequency – channel 53 on the UHF band.
He said that the assignment of the frequency was made long ago, but since it was assigned to them, “they did not do anything on it. We have decided to write to Telever, asking them to tell us within the stipulated time whether they are still interested or not,” Dr Said Pullicino said. “The authority does not know whether Telever are still interested”.
VER Co. Ltd (the company promoting Telever) had been the sole applicant when the BA issued a call for applications for a terrestrial television licence in February 2001.
The promoter of the application was Qala Archpriest Fr Karm Refalo, who runs the community radio station Radju Lehen il-Qala.
According to the study, new entrants are unlikely to manage to generate sufficient revenue to sustain their operations. If new stations enter the scene, there will be more stations, with more losses.
Alternatively, in an attempt to survive, stations will try to operate on extremely low budgets and will be unable to meet the requirement for quality and diversity of scheduled programming.
The financial performance of existing stations, many of which are incurring heavy losses, is bound to be adversely impacted by new entrants and will, as a result, continue to deteriorate even further.
The three dominant players – Public Broadcasting Services (PBS), One Productions and Media.Link Communications – took more than three-quarters of the Lm4 advertising pie for broadcasting in 2002, leaving only around Lm800,000 for the other radio and television stations to survive.
The study shows that a radio station requires around Lm120,000 to Lm150,000 in revenue every year to be viable.
In 2002, the aggregate losses of nationwide radio and television stations (excluding PBS) reached more than half a million Liri.
The advertising market has remained constant over the last few years, even contracting slightly more recently.
It is doubtful whether audiences will benefit from the introduction of more radio and television stations in terms of their listening or viewing experience, the study shows. Most respondents in the survey conducted as part of the study did not see the need for more local radio and television stations.
They did, however, indicate a demand for certain types of programmes – such as films, comedies and documentaries – that are unlikely to be within the financial reach of local stations that have to operate within very tight budgets.
Indeed, the study shows that there has been a substantial increase in production costs for television stations over the past few years.
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