MTVA’s chief stresses serving the whole of society – Interview

Budapest, January 10 (MTI) – Much has changed in Hungarian public service media over the recent past, Miklos Vaszily, director-general of public-service media provider MTVA, said in an interview to MTI.

Vaszily, a former head of news portals Index and Origo who has headed MTVA since last August after a stint as deputy managing-director in charge of operations, said he came to public service media with the task of streamlining the organisation and making efficiency gains, and there is a still a way to go in this direction.

He noted that MTVA operates two new television stations, the M1 rolling news channel and sport on M4. Broadening the palette must be done within the existing budget framework, he said. Part of the efficiency drive involves renegotiating contracts with content suppliers, he added.

“We’re far from the point at which we can say that the transformation is complete, but we are making progress in creating a modern organisation from the market’s viewpoint,” Vaszily said.

MTVA’s annual budget totals 80 billion forints (EUR 254m), of which the state contributes just under 70 billion. At the same time, 37 billion forints must be paid back to the state budget and state sector in various forms, he noted. The budget is average in international comparison, though significantly lower than public media budgets in other countries of the region, he said.

“The media world has changed, and public service must adapt. But at the same time there are various services we provide which no one else undertakes,” he said, citing programmes for minorities and people with disabilities, as well as maintaining the Radio Children’s Choir and Symphony Orchestra. Further costs include managing various archives and technical developments such as HD. It would be misleading to compare MTVA’s budget with those of commercial broadcasters, he added.

“We’re not competing with commercial channels,” Vaszily insisted, adding that viewers and listeners expect different kinds of programmes when they tune into, say, Kossuth Radio, the main talk-based broadcaster. And people get this content, including news supplied by news agency MTI, free of charge. “We serve the whole of the media market.”

The director-general noted that the four public media companies MTV, Duna TV, MTI and Magyar Radio, were folded into a single company, Duna Zrt., last June, making it cheaper to run. Duna prepares public-media strategy and orders and receives content, while MTVA produces this content. Previously, there had been tensions between the various companies but now public service is running on a single track, Vaszily said.