Portugal

Portuguese public broadcaster RTP is, alongside Greek ERT, one of the two poorest public broadcasters in western Europe. This is mainly due to the fact that Portugal does not have a licence fee at all. Instead RTP is mainly financed by government payments and, only to a small extent, by advertising. Since the launch of commercial broadcasters like SIC in 1992 and TVI in 1993 RTP faces strong competition regarding to both, advertising income (which was nearly halfed for RTP although the total value of the advertising market has increased by over $ 100 million since 1991) and audience ratings.

In order to solve RTP's financial crisis, the economist Manuela Morgado had been appointed as RTP's president earlier this year. However, due to disagreement among top-level management, she resigned lately. In another attempt to change RTP's future to the better it has produced a new programme schedule for its two channels. It is intended to make a clear brake with the recent practice of imitating the commercial broadcasters and return to identification with the public service model instead.

TVI is also in financial difficulties as ratings remain disappointing (13.8 % compared to SIC's 41.5 % in 1995). Cutbacks in personnel were necessary recently. Under its new president Carlos Monjardino TVI is planning to launch an encrypted pay-TV channel in order to reverse TVI's poor financial performance. The Catholic church is the majority shareholder in TVI, but 6 % of the stock were floated at the stock exchange earlier this year and another 15 % were acquired by media group Lusomundo.

Portuguese film production funding is more more than doubled by subsidy body Instituto Portugues da Arte Cinematografica e Audiovisual (IPACA) to $ 9.1 million in 1996. The market share of Portuguese films is slightly growing in a booming film market with total box-office revenues of $ 45 million in 1995 (an increase of 21 % since 1993).

© October 1996 by Jens Barkemeyer