Charter submissions, channel closures, referendum rejection

UK: BBC calls for funding and governance reform

The BBC has called for “bold choices” in its response to the Charter Review consultation, and said there should be radical funding and governance reform. 

The government published the Green Paper for the Charter in December. The Charter is updated every ten years, and provides the constitutional basis for the BBC’s mission. In its response, published on 5 March, the BBC said the charter renewal was an “urgent opportunity for the UK to secure the world’s leading public service media organisation”. It laid out three key elements the Charter should look to reform: 

1. Changing how appointments are made at board level, and bringing in a permanent charter. 
2. Creating a new funding model that allows the BBC to remain universal, plus full government funding for the World Service.
3. Updating regulatory frameworks to allow the BBC to adapt to the pace of the media world. 

There were several radical proposals put forward by the BBC which shows it trying to provide solutions to major problems. For example, it suggests its OTT platform, iPlayer, could host content from other UK PSBs to create a rival streaming app to the US giants. It also said platforms like Netflix or YouTube could inform audiences when they require a TV licence to watch their content. Currently, the BBC is used by 94 percent of UK citizens, but only 80 percent of households pay the licence fee.

In its submission, the Welsh-language public service broadcaster S4C said its position must be safeguarded. It said the decisions made in the charter renewal process would have an impact on its position. 

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The Public Media Alliance’s submission can be found here. Testimonies on the value of the BBC from our global membership can be found here.

Switzerland: Swiss people rejected the halving of public broadcaster’s funding

Swiss citizens have resoundingly rejected the popular initiative which sought to dramatically shrink the licence fee which funds the country’s public media system. 

The proposal, supported by the Swiss People’s Party, called for a drastic reduction of the annual licence fee to 200 CHF – almost a half of the current licence fee (335 CHF). The initiators of the initiative argued cuts had to be made at the public broadcaster given the rising living costs and questioned the SRG’s operations efficiency. However, the public broadcaster found a strong source of support in the government and other parties, who argued SRG SSR’s role was essential to support the country’s multilingual representation and must be properly funded to fulfill such a mission. 

62 percent of the voters rejected the initiative, when the vote took place on Sunday 8 March. While the results are a short-term relief for the public media, and prevents an immediate catastrophe, the public broadcaster is still undergoing a major structural transformation. In addition, the broadcaster still faces cuts: the licence fee will be gradually reduced to 300 CHF by 2029. 

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New Zealand: TVNZ’s editorial independence under scrutiny

The independence of TVNZ has come under the microscope, after it emerged the public broadcaster’s chair, Andrew Barclay, spoke with broadcasting minister Paul Goldsmith about a news story. The story highlighted the growing number of gang members in New Zealand, but drew the ire of the government, as it appeared on the same day the government released crime statistics. The news story did not feature these statistics. 

In the aftermath, Goldsmith phoned up the journalist, which was then followed by a call between Barclay and Goldsmith. Five days later, TVNZ ran a subsequent story framing the issue using the government crime statistics. Goldsmith said he engaged in a “very short call” on a “range of matters”, but that the gang story only came up incidentally. A TVNZ spokesperson said after an internal review, an editorial decision was made to run a follow-up story, “incorporating those figures to ensure balanced coverage and to aid audience understanding around the use of differing crime statistics”.

However, the situation has sparked concern over editorial interference from the government, and questions remain over who spoke to who between the government and the broadcaster, and what was said. The Newsroom co-editor Tim Murphy said that Barclay should have been acutely aware of the “twilight zone of politics and media and journalism ethics”. Goldsmith said he knew it wasn’t “appropriate” to be discussing editorial matters, “and I haven’t”. While the TVNZ board said “editorial independence is of paramount importance to us.” 

Meanwhile, TVNZ has reported a plunge in revenue, prompted largely by a vast fall in advertising income. Despite a revenue collapse by 12% to $134 million, the public broadcaster has assured its audience that they are investing in the future of TVNZ as the leading media outlet for New Zealanders, which comes with “planned short-term costs” that are intended to increase the broadcaster’s “long-term value”.

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Germany: Three channels closed down in major shakeup

Three public service television channels will be closed down at the end of the year, amid a massive shakeup to the future structure of German public service television programming. The decision was made jointly by ARD and ZDF, following the commencement of the Interstate Broadcasting Treaty in December, which instructed the public broadcasters to close three linear channels, and to cooperate more closely. 

Shutting down will be the entertainment channel, One, the news channel, tagesschau 24, and the educational channel, alpha – all of which are operated by ARD. Three channels will remain, which will now become joint enterprises of ARD and ZDF: the news channel, Phoenix, neo, the channel targeting young adults, and Info, a documentary channel. 

Both ARD and ZDF newsrooms will feed into the programming for Phoenix, while neo is to become “the launchpad into the digital world,” said Florian Hager, ARD Chair, in an interview with the media outlet, DWDL. However, many of the details are still to be thrashed out over programming, coordination and workflows. 

“We asked ourselves what the most far-reaching and promising offerings are for the respective target groups,” said ZDF Director General, Norbert Himmler. “We selected the channels together, regardless of who had previously operated them. Three brands – phoenix, neo, and info – now form the foundation that we are jointly expanding and redesigning. To achieve this, we are combining the best of both our worlds.” 

The stations 3sat, KiKA, funk and ARTE will continue, as they are already jointly operated by ARD and ZDF. The changes will come into effect at the beginning of 2027. 

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