Public media companies offer telling case studies of European economies. Except for Greece, which has almost completely closed its public television stations, other countries have chosen to cut staffing and programming. The United Kingdom has slashed its television budget by 20% and cut 2,000 workers. Germany is charging households 18 euros for television and radio stations while France plans to decrease public media payrolls by 1,200 employees.
The cutbacks resemble the ERE program that Valencia's public radio and television stations put in place in order to preserve state-sponsored programming. Following Valencia's move, most of Spain's public stations have adopted these kind of initiatives. Catalonia's TV3 is the exception. In the past three years it has received 839 million euros. In spite of this huge amount of financial aid, the public station continues to lose money. State funding will only be cut 27 million euros in 2013, and a tiny pre-retirement program will cut 225 workers.
Cataluyna Radio is in the most precarious position. It is operating in the red and on the verge of collapse. Its financial problems have snowballed, but Catalonian leader Artur Mas is too afraid to cut the station's cord.
It doesn't make sense that payrolls were only cut by a mere 1.83% in 2012 and that a proposed 7.5% salary cut has yet to be implemented. Not to mention the number of other network channels that the company is keeping intact. Mas needs to take the bull by the horns and enact deep spending its so that the Catalonian government does not run up its deficit further.
