An agreement has been reached to ensure that every Maltese and Gozitan citizen has free access to basic television services, the Culture Ministry – which is responsible for the broadcasting sector – has announced.

During a press conference, an agreement was signed between PBS Ltd and GO plc to support and extend transmission services through aerial to ensure that Maltese and Gozitan families can continue to enjoy this right.

By means of this agreement, GO plc will continue to provide the technical infrastructure for this service for the next 10 years, with an investment of €1.5 million.

This comes after a recent qualitative research exercise to establish the current use of the traditional ‘aerial’ service by various families and individuals in order to eventually create a long-term plan for the coming years, which is being realised through this agreement.

There were more than 4,000 families who, during the recent qualitative research exercise, stated that they make use of the aerial service to watch free to air channels. More than half of these reported that they make use of the aerial service together with other services.

Minister for the National Heritage, the Arts and Local Government Owen Bonnici stated that the ‘free-to-air' service is important as it continues to provide access to news, information, programmes and entertainment from local ‘free-to-air’ channels to individuals who do not have access to other services.

Minister Bonnici stated that the Government believes it should support this public service, which provides a guarantee of universal access for everyone without exclusion and with a diversity of local station programming.

PBS Ltd will remain as the operator for this ‘free-to-air’ service on UHF Channel 43, which requires local station ‘multiplex’ service and there are a total of eight local stations. In recent weeks, changes have been made in the existing network to ensure the sustainability of the service in the coming years without interruption.