Radio Slovakia International saved

Last week, the public broadcaster announced its intention to close down its short-wave foreign language service and to downsize the staff of the radio station by 84 people. The management decided to take this radical step to cut costs. By this step it intended to compensate revenue shortfalls in concession payments and payments from the state budget. Due to the restrictive measures taken by general director of Slovak Radio Jaroslav Reznik, the Radio Council, a radio supervisory body, was summoned for a special meeting on Tuesday. Its members appointed by Parliament have agreed to bind the director to continue the shortwave broadcasting of Radio Slovakia International.

Shortwave broadcasting will not be stopped, Jaroslav Reznik confirmed for Radio Slovakia International. Nevertheless, he added he could not say for how long this status will be possible. According to him, it is now up to the state authorities to express clearly whether they are interested in a foreign broadcast service.

The supervisory body of Slovak radio agrees with the General Director in the point that the foreign service should be financed from the state budget not from the concession fees. That is why the financial sources should be provided by the government. Nevertheless, neither the Culture Ministry nor the Foreign Ministries seem to be interested in allocating sufficient means from their budgets. The European standard is to support a foreign radio broadcast from the budget of the Foreign Ministry.

The law dealing with Slovak radio states that finance should be provided from the state budget for foreign service broadcasting. However the current Culture Minister questions this part of the law.

Due to an allegedly unclear interpretation of lines defining financing foreign broadcasting, Culture Minister Frantisek Toth has initiated a legal analysis of the respective lines. The position of state authorities leaves the financing foreign broadcast on the reserves of the Slovak radio. Zuzana Mistrikova, the head of the media section at the Culture Ministry.

The Slovak Republic represented by the government thinks it is something that the Slovak Republic needs to have and to have it in high quality and then to decide how it will be financed and if it will be financed directly from the state budget or if the system of financing of Slovak Radio will be so well managed that it will be able to finance broadcasting like this.

Despite the fact that the foreign broadcast on short waves will not stop, there will be restrictive measures taken in Slovak Radio. According to the Radio Council, these cannot be affecting the production and broadcasting of the program. The supervisory body consists of members appointed by the parliament. The head of the council Michal Dzurjanin concluded that now they have to wait for Parliament and the Government to solve the current deficit of over EUR 8 million for the Radio.