Slovak News Back to the news
STV and SRo to Merge, Radio and Television Slovakia on Airwaves Jan. 1
Tuesday 30 November 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, November 30 (TASR) - Public-service Slovak Television (STV) and Slovak Radio (Sro) will merge into a brand new public broadcaster Radio and Television Slovakia (RTS) as of the beginning of 2011, as 77 MPs backed the respective proposal at a parliamentary session on Tuesday.
The initiative, submitted by Culture Minister Daniel Krajcer (Freedom and Solidarity/SaS), is designed to resolve the financial woes plaguing the broadcaster in particular as well as to boost the quality of programmes aired by both media.
A new general director will be elected by Parliament, along with a nine-person Council. The monthly salary of RTS head will stand at nine times the average monthly salary in Slovakia (about €6,700).
The new chief will be tasked with consolidating broadcasting and prepare the conditions for running the institution as of 2012. As of the beginning of that year, the broadcaster will receive a single allocation from the state budget. Licence fees will be abolished.
If no RTS general director is appointed by the time RTS emerges, Parliamentary Chairman Richard Sulik will select between current STV and SRo heads - Stefan Niznansky and Miloslava Zemkova, respectively - with one of them then becoming RTS's interim statutory representative.
Amidst a two-hour debate on the proposal, leading Opposition Smer-SD party MP Dusan Jarjabek slammed Krajcer for what he called a 'sheer political initiative'.
Krajcer conceded that the solution to STV's financial woes is unusual but defended his bill by saying that the situation in which STV has found itself is unusual and disastrous, and that "such situations call for swift and resolute solutions."
All rights reserved. Any publishing or further dissemination of press releases and photographs from TASR's resources without TASR's prior written approval constitutes a violation of the Copyrights Act.
