Xarabank tops popularity stakes despite `boycott`

The team behind Xarabank are reconsidering their plans to change the format of the programme, following the findings of last week`s, Broadcasting Authority survey, the programme`s presenter, Peppi Azzopardi, said yesterday.

Xarabank has once again been voted the most popular TV programme in Malta, with some 174,000 people saying they watched the programme. This means that 88 per cent of people watching television on Friday evening watch Xarabank.

"The temptation is to do something different, but surveys show that it has grown in popularity and Public Broadcasting Services want Xarabank," he said.

Mr Azzopardi said it was likely that Xarabank would feature again in PBS`s schedule for next year.

"Everyone knows that next year will be a crucial one because of the EU referendum and general election and Xarabank wants to be one of the main fora where important discussions can take place in language ordinary people can understand," Mr Azzopardi said.

Xarabank has been running for five consecutive years; during all this time a total of over 30,000 people have been in the audience.

The results of the survey shows that no programme comes close to Xarabank`s viewership. The closest is Il-Madonna tac-Coqqa, shown on Super One, with 82,000 viewers, less than half Xarabank`s audience.

"At 11 p.m., Xarabank is still the most popular programme with 152,000 viewers," Mr Azzopardi said.

Asked if the increasing popularity was surprising, especially given the fact that the MLP has boycotted it, Mr Azzopardi said he was not at all surprised as Xarabank`s own surveys showed they had an increasing audience.

"I always believed that people are able to choose and no one can tell them what to see and not to see. We give people balanced information and entertainment. Our loyalty is to our viewers and viewers have likewise remained loyal to us," he said.

Asked what Xarabank could do for the boycott to be lifted, Mr Azzopardi said: "We cannot do anything as we did nothing wrong in the first place.

"The boycott was declared for no valid reason. Where`s Everybody (the company which produces Xarabank) has been asking the MLP to produce a single shred of evidence to show that we have been the government`s mouthpiece, but they failed to produce anything as such proof simply does not exist," he said.

Mr Azzopardi said during its first two years, Xarabank was critical of the Labour government while during the past three years, it has been critical of the Nationalist government.

"And that is the way it should be. We shall always be critical of whoever is in government. In spite of the boycott, we continue to invite the MLP to attend, but they always decline. The main problem in Malta is that political parties think there can be no discussion unless they are involved.

"This stereotyped mentality is long gone. There are more than two opinions on the same topic and ironically, we had the hottest discussions when the boycott was on," he said.

"If a party or institution does not want to participate and manages to stop a programme from going ahead, this means they would be dictating what one can discuss," Mr Azzopardi said.

Mr Azzopardi said it appeared that some MLP spokesmen did not want to appear on Xarabank as they did not want to have to reply to the kind of questions which were asked in the programmes.

"Before the boycott, we dedicated a programme to explain what the Switzerland in the Mediterranean concept means. The MLP failed to participate. Why?" he asked.