María Jesús Cañizares. 3 May 2021
The PSC’s proposals to end the “radicalized independence movement” of TV3
The Socialists present a document with 12 measures to guarantee the “political, cultural and linguistic plurality” of the Catalan media, as well as their competitiveness.
Members of Junts per Catalunya break into TV3’s ‘FAQs’ program to embrace President Quim Torra / JxCAT
“The last decade of the Corporación Catalana de Medios de Comunicación (CCMA) is characterized by a progressive conversion of public television and radio into a speaker of increasingly radicalized pro-independence content, in contrast to the fundamental principle of plurality, inherent to the audiovisual public service”. This is stated by the PSC in the document Refound the CCMA, debated today in the party’s executive [can be read in this link], where it details the past, present and future of the Catalan public media.
Under this premise, the Socialists summarize in 12 proposals their recipe to re-launch TV3 and Catalunya Ràdio. And not only to guarantee the political pluralism of both media, but to make them competitive. The detailed report confirms that, definitively, ending the ideological bias of these channels is one of the objectives of the new stage of the party led by Salvador Illa, as he explained in an interview with Crónica Global.
European funds
In this sense, the PSC is inspired by the British BBC and ensures that European Next Generation funds are a good opportunity. It also advocates a “federal vision” of Catalan channels in which synergies are established with other Spanish television channels.
The Catalan Socialists will preside over the CCMA control commission in the Parliament and their votes will be decisive in the election of the positions of TV3 and Catalunya Ràdio. In the document made public, they summarize the objectives to be met in order to undertake a new stage in the management and content of the Catalan media, after denouncing that the Corporation “has shunned its responsibility of public media to project social, cultural, linguistic, territorial plurality, On the contrary, they have created a pro-sovereignty symbolic universe with an endogamous star system that does not correspond to the Catalan social majority, which is much more plural and complex.
Political, social and cultural pluralism
In the first place, they propose to reestablish the public service missions that the Catalan Audiovisual Communication Law entrusts to the CCMA and, in particular, the specific missions established in its article 26.3 to effectively guarantee “the transmission of truthful, objective and balanced, respectful with political, social and cultural pluralism, and also with territorial balance”. In the current context, as established by law, “it is necessary to use all languages, formats and discourses that, while respecting and paying attention to diversity and pluralism, allow dialogue, understanding and cohesion between the various options, and between the various areas of the territory of Catalonia”. This objective “corresponds to the governing bodies of the CCMA. The Consejo Audiovisual de Catalunya (CAC) must ensure its compliance and inform the Parliament”.
Second, PSC advocates “renewing the governing bodies of the CCMA and the CAC. New Governing Council, election of the directors of the public media: Television of Catalonia and Catalonia Radio and the councilors of the CAC, scrupulously respecting the procedures established by law 7/2019, of November 14, modifying the Law 2/2000, of the Catalan Audiovisual Council, and Law 11/2007, of the CCMA”.
Digital transition
The document also includes the elaboration of “a comprehensive strategic plan that can give rise to the action plans to be developed in the CCMA to assume its digital transition, recover its public communication service missions, and be a driving force in the audiovisual industry”.
Drafting and approval of the contract-program of the CCMA “with a vocation for consensus, with achievable objectives that allow the fulfillment of public service missions and multi-year financing that gives stability to public media” is another of the objectives, as well as “To rebuild the bonds of trust with the whole of Catalan society. The CCMA must have public media everywhere and for everyone. “Access to” truthful and trustworthy information must be at the center of any strategy that allows progress in the three axes of the public service programming offer: informational and current content, entertainment programming and educational formats. An offer that must integrate all the CCMA media with a digital, trans-media and multiplatform proposal”.
Analysis of structural and labor costs
The Socialists believe that an organizational restructuring is necessary to allow “the culmination of the CCMA-Digital. The analysis of structural and labor costs, levels of efficiency and productivity, as well as the concentration of our activity on the nuclear functions of the public environment”. Synergies and outsourcing of services with specialized sector companies “are key to promoting the new audiovisual ecosystem, which will give us more agility and greater dynamism”.
The re-founding of TV3 and Catalunya Ràdio also involves technical and operational issues. “This restructuring must be done with the ambition of adapting the entire value chain of public media to the new communication environments, which require greater flexibility and agility. This will necessarily entail the integration of the media and thinking in a digital key, centralizing the production of all news and current affairs content in a single newsroom”.
The BBC model
The Socialists are inspired by the British public channel BBC to “implement strategies that allow concentrating efforts to respond to an increasingly dynamic and competitive market”. The British Corporation “has aligned the BBC with the rest of the country’s industry, integrating the production, sales and distribution of programs into a single entity, creating BBC Studios to empower all value chains”.
Within the framework of the process of digitization and convergence of the media, the CCMA “must firmly bet on the construction of an Over The Top (OTT) service platform, with the participation of all public operators in the State. A platform with the capacity to configure a linear offer and a catalog of VoD (video on demand) content, which shows the wealth of the peoples of Spain and allows us to deepen the federal vision of the State (RTVE, FORTA and local media)”.
Commercialization
Reactivating the marketing capacity of the CCMA, both by increasing advertising revenue, as well as by the sale of rights and internationalization of production, are also part of the PSC proposal, which also alludes to the need for the CCMA to be “A key piece for the construction of the new Audiovisual Hub of Barcelona, the audiovisual hub of southern Europe”. The weight of the current CCMA in the local market “should also serve as a lever to consolidate from the Hub, an audiovisual ecosystem that brings together and amplifies the capabilities of audiovisual producers, creators, developers, data analysts, video game companies, agencies of marketing and advertising, audiovisual media, fairs, festivals, universities, creative industries, research centers …, with the capacity to respond to a highly dynamic and competitive market”.
The Next Generation program, in this sense “is an opportunity to carry out this transformation and consolidate an industrial sector capable of attracting capital and talent, and becoming one of the engines of the Catalan economy”. Finally, they are committed to improving the control and evaluation mechanisms.
Control mechanisms
“It is essential to recover the sense of the existing control mechanisms, both the internal ones: the Content and Programming Advisory Council, the contract-program, and the CCMA Style Book, as well as the evaluation mechanisms. It is a trap to continue to base evaluation on partial reports and / or audience measurements of only quantitative value. Measures that are being overcome by the new digital scenario and that do not take into account the qualitative values of the services, the degree of fulfillment of the public service missions and the level of satisfaction of the citizens”, indicates the party document.
The PSC is inspired by other European public media organizations “that are following the recommendations of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which in its 2012 declaration, proposes the values of public services”. Those values that Catalan public media must recover in its re-foundation.
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