The Parliament held a discussion on the budget of Radio and Television of Slovakia (RTVS) for next year. The public broadcaster is asking for a definite answer on how much financial support it will receive from the state. Although, the main source of RTVS’s income are concessionary fees from citizens, this income cannot be predicted for the year 2014 now, as due to a new law, various groups have been lifted of the obligation to pay these fees.
Slovakia has the lowest concessionary fees in Europe and the amount received from those fees is decreasing long term, stated General Director of RTVS Vaclav Mika. RTVS plans to collect around €70 million from concessionary fees, however, also running an information campaign with the Slovak Post office, wanting to identify those citizens who are not paying their concessions despite their obligation to do so. In Parliament RTVS’s General Director Mika stated that if he is to preserve a certain level of technological development as well as development of the content of RTVS, he needs to know what finances he can count on. For the year 2014, RTVS is asking for €28 million, the same amount as it received last year.
Radio and Television of Slovakia will not be obliged to broadcast one film a week in English with Slovak subtitles. This is the ruling of the Parliament, reacting to the proposal of MPs Ján Mičovský and Jozef Viskupič from the Ordinary People’s party of Igor Matovič. “The aim of this proposal was to raise the English language proficiency among the general public and enable ordinary people to come into contact with the English language more frequently”, states the proposal adding that such as system has proven to be effective in countries like Norway, where very few TV programs are dubbed and thus English has become more known.
