The Ministry of Culture and Tourism plans to shakeup the way public TV (Slovenska Televizia) and radio (Slovensky Rozhlas) are financed. The plans should be effected by the end of next year and has been marked as one of the ministry’s priorities.
The plans will include the abolition of licence fees, being funded instead from the state budget. Culture minister Daniel Krajcer said that an efficient model is required about how much money goes on what and that if things were left to deteriorate further, especially for Slovak television, there would be massive pressure in two years time to abolish the institutions, which is the reason behind his reforms.
He feels it is the content that is important in this respect, so that they provide a genuine public service for the money. “This is important for me, and their content will have to be laid down by law”, said Krajcer, who believes that setting out rules for content by law will minimise political influence on operations and the funding of public-service media.