Bogdan Zdrojewski, the minister of culture, has recently said that subscription, one of the main sources of TVP revenues would be substituted by a fund. This would adversely affect the public TV broadcaster.
“I have no partner in the government. I cannot count that somebody will try
to solve the subscription problem, taking into account EU and Polish law. New
regulations must be notified at the European Commission. The whole process will
last a dozen months while the new law should come into force in January. Instead
of developing TVP, I will have to make up for the giant loss in the budget
amounting to PLN 300m. I’ll be working like a dog to repair all this”, Andrzej
Urbanski said.
In his opinion, TV Polonia, TVP Kultura and TVP Historia
require PLN 100m annually.
“PO is murdering this part of TVP. But I will fight to rescue these programs. TVP1 and TVP2 will have to earn additional funds”, the CEO added.
Public TV will raise commercial price, will show commercials during programs and lay off employers.
“GRP price may be raised. We are analyzing the situation”, Andrzej Urbanski said.
TVP has half of the whole commercial market so each decision of the giant strongly affects the others. TPV commercials will be more expensive and will be shown more often. The law does not allow for TVP to break programs with commercials. There are ways to avoid it, however, including splitting programs into two parts.
“I may change policy and buy shorter films. Or cut movies, the way we did with ‘Dances with wolves”, Andrzej Urbanski said.
The CEO will also look for savings by firing the people. TVP employs four times more people than the whole TVN group and eight times more people than Polsat.
“The situation today is worse than two years ago when people talked about firing 1,000 people”, Andrzej Urbanski believed.
(PLN 1 = EUR 0.310)