A friend recently e-mailed me the press release together with the annual report which the editorial board of Public Broadcasting Services had issued.

I confess, I thought that this 50-page or so (inclusive of statistics) report would have made interest reading. Unfortunately, this was not the case. The press release itself offered no motivation whatsoever to encourage one to dig into the main document. This notwithstanding, I made an effort to proceed with the reading of the report but again I could not go any further than the first half-a-dozen pages.

The document contains, literally, nothing new or, should I say, more of the same. Even the style of the presentation of this report is identical to an earlier report prepared by the then task force which the government had appointed a few years back to make proposals for the restructuring of the national broadcasting station.

As was the case in the task force report, the emphasis was centred on the hard work the editorial board had been through these previous seven months and the even harder times awaiting the board members in the coming months. Surely, no effort was wasted to endeavour to impress both the media and/or the people that matter. The signatories to the report also declare that the road to success is long, little appreciating that any road could be as long as it benefits one to drag on.

Lest one forgets, these same people have been at it for years – yet they seem to have got nowhere. Those concerned seem to be, once again, hinting at extending the deadline to the restructuring exercise at the expense of the tax paying public. The same, more or less, was the case with the task force recommendations.

The editorial board’s report says that a study (another study I mean) will shortly be carried out to see whether the government’s annual subsidy of Lm500,000 is adequate to operate the national station. This notwithstanding Minister’s Gatt strong declaration, prior to the commencement of the restructuring, that the government was determined not to allocate an additional penny, in subsidy, to the national station. Will the minister concerned succumb to these further demands for more money, despite his earlier bullying? One has to wait and see.

The editorial board was aware of the government’s commitment to the electorate on its financial grant to public broadcasting. If the subsidy offered was considered to be inadequate, the so-called experts in the business should have either demanded more financial help in the first instance, or else refuse the appointment. Why did they accept the appointment, then? Was it a case where, perhaps, they wanted to secure the post first and argue later?

No member of the board can deny the fact that the station had very serious problems, can they? After all, those involved in the proposed restructuring had been consultants at Guardamangia for some time.

But does the board honestly believe that the restructuring truly brought about a change in the quality of programming for both radio and TV, as is stated by these people? Or is the editorial board trying to blow its own trumpet in a poor attempt to justify its existence and its cost to the tax-payers? The members of the editorial board seem to have a very short memory or, perhaps, prefer to pretend to forget that, not so long ago, PBS already had an editorial board which also failed in its mission.

In fact, prior to the setting up of the new editorial board with sufficient powers to practically render the board of directors of the state broadcasting company toothless, and, hence quasi superfluous, there existed another editorial board which, notwithstanding the experts that sat on it, failed to upgrade the news bulletins from a mere political parties’ notice board.

The difference between these boards is that the original board was subjected to the board of directors whereas today’s “super” board appears to have been given the upper hand over the board of directors. Can the company afford this extravaganza of having a, sort of, two boards to manage PBS Ltd, particularly now that the staff has been down-sized to a third of what it was prior to reorganisation? Can the state afford this waste of public money, Mr Minister? Is the country in financial dire straits or not?

We are now being told that today’s news bulletins contain less political items than previously – yet we are still inundated with political news/propaganda. Why? Does it take years for such a mighty editorial board to implement its new culture on what really makes news value? Who is responsible of the political bias that the newsroom of PBS is so often accused of?

The board now seems to be having second thoughts on local productions and is recommending the reintroduction of the importation of foreign productions.

If only the board truly had a minimum of standard in its quality programming and some respect to viewers, it would never have scheduled programmes like L-Ghodwa it-Tajba, where mediocrity hits rock bottom. Neither would it have permitted so much tasteless and exhaustive promotions of the so-called quality programming for both Radio and TV, nor would it have transmitted so many repeats, so many cooking programmes, so many teleshopping and so many senseless games/quizzes.

Where is the creativity the board boasts about? Why should Radio Malta and Campus FM connect simultaneously to BBC? Why should Euronews transmissions be interrupted half way through a news item to reconnect with the local transmission, generally to promote local programmes?

As if the editorial board is not dominant enough, it is now seeking to put its nose into the business of the station’s finance committee. Isn’t it already a farce to have two members of management, recommending programmes to the finance committee and then sit on this same committee to evaluate their own recommendations? As the board of directors does not seem to have the power to remove the two permanent members of the management team from the editorial board, I urge the minister to take the matter in hand and eliminate this anomaly without further delay.

The editorial board has to understand that programmes which have passed their sell-by date need to be removed, notwithstanding their popularity. We have had too much of the same now. It is high time that those in the business put on their thinking caps once again and come up with something fresh.

At the end of the day a public broadcasting service station should never permit itself to be carried away with programmes because they score high ratings, especially when such programmes do well in ratings as a result of sensationalism and/or hefty financial awards.

Mr Michael Grade, the BBC chairman, says that if those responsible for public broadcasting services want to be credible in building public values, they have to keep broadcasting honest, they have to be honest with themselves and about themselves.

Are those responsible for our public broadcasting services in line with the BBC’s principles? I leave your readers to pass judgment.