Malawi's public broadcasters going commercial
Government announced in September last year that it was toying with an idea to commercialise its two broadcasters after the opposition dominated parliament mockingly gave the two institutions US14c to run its programs in the 2007/2008 financial year.
Finance Minister Goodall Gondwe said the idea is to make the TVM and the MBC self-financing so that they can rid themselves of political pressure from the opposition, which wants to dictate how the institutions should conduct business.
On January 4, MBC's Controller of Programs Geoffrey Kazembe announced that due to commercial pressure it has dropped some programs that it was running as a social obligation.
In reaction, Malawi's BBC Correspondent Raphael Tenthani wrote in his Sunday Column of January 6, 2007 that by law MBC has no business making money, saying, “It has a national duty to educate, entertain, and inform; turning MBC into a money-spinner is actually illegal”.
MBC's Deputy Director General, Bright Malopa, had warned after Parliament's decision that the social responsibility which the broadcasters render to the public will also suffer.
“Our operations are riddled with social responsibilities which are too expensive to run and aired to the public through 43-program footage a week,” he said.
Initially, the National Assembly vowed never to pass the votes that would give the two institutions its annual budgetary allocations because ‘they are biased towards the government and the ruling party' and in the 2006/07 budget, opposition parliamentarians cut budgetary allocations for the two broadcasters by half.
Gondwe said had the two institutions commercialised all this would have been “Water under the bridge as consequently there would be no reason for the opposition to reject budgetary allocations to MBC and TVM” but when asked how the commercialization tenders will be carried out, Gondwe said ‘it has not reached that stage yet'.
Leader of Opposition United Democratic Front in parliament George Mtafu said the issue of the two national broadcasters is very simple.
“The onus is on government to find a way forward. All we want is professionalism at MBC and TVM; they should stop demonising opposition leaders through and through,” he said.
The National Media Institute of Southern Africa (NAMISA) said commercialisation would not be a good solution.
“The best option is to turn the two state broadcasters into public broadcasters with an independent board,” suggested NAMISA chairperson, Martines Namingha.
He said commercialising the two institutions would compromise their editorial policies as advertisers would have a major influence.
During MISA's 2007 AGM in Blantyre, the body's Regional Governing Council chairperson Thabo Thakalekoala called on government to stop abusing TVM and MBC.
He urged the Malawi government to transform the institutions into public service broadcasters if they are to effectively contribute to national development.
“Throughout the region, nurturing of vibrant, free and independent media that effectively contributes to national development is being stifled by increasingly overt attempts to regulate and control the media through statutory bodies,” he said.
Thakalekoala also asked the Malawi opposition to give enough resources to the public media.
Malopa had also warned that commercialising the broadcasters would in a way mean massive retrenchment.
He said MBC would part ways with 300 employees out of its 1,500 work force. No one has yet been fired.
MBC and TVM inform the public, provide information and amusement, generate ideas, mobilise political, economic developmental and social action groups.
