The financial crisis has taken another victim in 2012: the Spanish public television station model. Two billion euros of debt accumulated by thirteen regional television stations and their 1.5 billion per year budgets have urged the Spanish government to open the door to their privatization in lieu of closing them down completely as a means of ending wasteful spending.
The biggest problem that regional governments will face is that the market has little interest in purchasing public television stations. The channels have extensive payrolls, and the fact that viewing is down to 10.4% from 11.3% year-to-year means that the project will be challenging if channels do not adapt their workforce. For this reason, sources from within the sector assure that instead of doing away with the channels completely, the most likely scenario is that regional governments clean up the companies at the exchequer's expense in order to try to sell the channels at a good price.
This step, which answers to demands from Madrid president Esperanza Aguirre, who privatized Madrid television over a year ago, will allow regional governments to sell their channels in an attempt to clean up their deficits, which are above 155 billion euros including figures from public companies.