Media economics and TV in Malta

Provoked by The Times' interesting focus on the broadcast media (Weekender, January 11), may I browse a little further in search of elusive answers to inevitable questions one has to address when attempting a critical analysis of the situation.

Most of what was reported makes a lot of sense and many a time, in my opinion, hits the nail on the head. There is more.

After 34 years of active participation in the industry, I cannot help but ruminate over the blight of the future of the media industry, and not just the broadcast one if one were to put it into an unavoidable international context.

Against a landscape of globalisation, we seem to be standing, perhaps literally, on our own in more senses than one. World-wide the media today have become a product of economics. Transnational mergers and cross-media ownership during the last decade were brought about by a surge in new economic interest (sometimes to save a declining segment), by deregulation, and/or political power.

As a consequence the industry was pushed into a higher economic profile in Europe, notably in the UK and Germany and to a lesser degree in France and Italy, with the obvious consequence of a bigger media debate and its role in the democratic development of society.

Indirectly this situation is helping the newspaper industry out of its decline while exploiting broadcast television to its profit-making maximum.

In spite of the new media, global mergers with front-runners like Murdoch, Messier and Bertelsmann have penetrated practically all national frontiers and today form a major international force with the latest breakthrough registered by News Corporation (Murdoch) going national in China. Debatable as it may be, evidence is strongly showing a number of advantages in merging vertical and cross-media operations in producing cheaper outputs and better quality. Size, it seems, matters.

In Malta the nearest we get to such vertical and cross-media experiments has been with the political parties' media empires and, to a certain extent, the Church's media and some independent companies.

As a result of pluralism the major political parties run national newspapers, radio and television stations as well as publish books.

Though each one of them does share certain marginal costs - common newsrooms and central management - they have not saved enough to improve the quality of their outputs to admirable heights, most probably because they are not able to maximise their profits.

PBS, costlier as it is, suffers from endemic historical constraints known to all and, in spite of its higher income, suffers on quality because of spending priorities.

Independent entry attempts to the market, with these three local "giants" on the scene, are difficult. Survival, as evident in the recent demise of one television station and two radio ones, is, to say the least, hard.

Pluralism, as rightly pointed out by Prof. S. Chircop in the above-mentioned article, resulted in a dilution of quality. Filling some 70 hours a day of good quality transmission is very costly and almost impossible with our limited resources.

In Malta regulation and politics seem to have put the broadcast media in a stranglehold that renders media commercial development, and therefore produce better consumer items, less exciting.

On the contrary were it not for the licence fees and marathon efforts by the political stations, such a situation could hardly be sustained.

Shorn of window selling (resale and reuse of a transmitted programme), media products in Malta, because of size and the restriction of the local language, attracts very limited revenues. Television remains mainly dependent on advertising. Contrary to developments elsewhere, foremost in the US and Europe, broadcast media have not yet succeeded to attract noticeable new budgets from advertisers. The print media, in decline everywhere else, seem to enjoy the better sales.

Again, because of a history of ownership, no prospects of any mergers are in sight and there is little hope of any marriages - outside strict political arenas and inter-marriages for that - that may expand or diversify the present economic situation.

Strangely enough, it appears that all players are "satisfied" with the status quo, except, unfortunately, the consumers who, in a democratic environment, should always get the best.

What else might be inhibiting the attainment of quality? A long list, but I dwell on just a few.

Very often, television stations are not interested in investing in new genres or ideas that carry higher costs resulting in our evening schedules looking very similar with peak hours full of discussions, i.e., the cheapest form of production as it resembles radio with cameras in the studio.

A look at a week's evening fare brings to mind debates, discussions, talk-shows about sports, politics (this is a special year), emotional upheavals and an array of subjects that cost little or nothing to research.

Investigation, many a time, stops at phone-ins, vox pops and other very often cheap-to-produce interviews with experts or victims.

Many times such programmes have marathon proportions and higher points are scored when tempers rise. To make things worse, surveys and, consequently, advertisers support popular programmes sending a message to the stations to invest further in the same genre.

Variety, besides quality, suffers. Even with local drama, justifiably popular, this year a point has been reached where the last autumn schedules featured some nine weekly series with the inevitable stretch of resources from concept to talent. Very few obtained quality.

Since a national conference on the redefinition of broadcasting in Malta was held four years ago, very little has changed. Almost 12 years after the introduction of pluralism democracy has been served on the waves but at a price.

The political stations are balancing each other out; PBS maintains a strong position but cannot exploit itself commercially any further since it retains all its operations public; "creative" deregulation is nowhere in sight. Critics accuse large corporate conglomerates as having "nothing to tell, but plenty to sell" (George Gerbner); our media seem to be doing the opposite.

In any case, what is the future of the Maltese media?

In an age of falling frontiers, could we be swallowed by global giants or are we risking becoming irrelevant in our own country?

The sole harbingers of change in the broadcast media remain the politicians. Can we get out of a rut and start buying and selling... more? I mean sales of all kinds: ideas, programmes, shares and, who knows, stations too? Could media economics find the elusive desired answers?