Swiss quality assured for radio and TV

Michael Hedges February 17, 2009

Radio and television licenses, granting access to public airwaves, typically come with a wide range of requirements. Always included is technical competence, sometimes financial well-being. But most regulators shy away from interfering with management and programming content. This makes sense because regulators tend to be lawyers, accountants and engineers. And, despite protestations to the contrary, executives of these regulatory agencies tend to be political appointees.

Swiss broadcast and telecom regulator BAKOM is pushing forward management and program evaluation, approving independent companies, organizations, institutes or individuals competent to make bi-annual reviews, required by law. All 41 privately owned radio stations and 13 regional television stations must, beginning later this year, engage one of the approved experts for that evaluation. The public broadcaster SSR-SRG is under no such requirement.

According to BAKOM documents, the evaluation is centered on journalism, journalists and training thereof. 

“The management systems evaluation for quality journalism in the private electronic mediaserves to focus on the development and optimization of the processes in place,” said the BAKOM instructions for applicants to perform the evaluations (September 14, 2008). The evaluation will assess “procedures laid down in writing to check regularly whether objectives, in terms of quality, have been achieved, namely the mechanisms of prevention or design maintain or improve the program quality.”

Four concessionaires have been approved by BAKOM (February 17) to make the assessments, which broadcasters must contract. Other experts may also be approved.

Last year the regulator rejected a renewal application for a Geneva private local radio station, citing too few journalists and too little news output. The station – One FM – has been the top rated private local station in the Geneva concession zone. (Read description here) The regulator faced criticism and public consternation for the decision, leading to a rather bizarre set of events resulting in the station keeping its license.

Across Europe there are no accepted standards for broadcast management. Regulators have tended to keep arms length from issues outside their competence. In most countries, owners of private broadcasting stations are not required to pass a test for management skills or anything else. This, according to several regulators contacted, is causing problems.

While regulators, mostly, resist the temptation to pass judgment on management and, less rarely, programming the nature of licensing private sector broadcasters can lend itself to an unintended consequence. Sometimes they fail…like, well, banks. When licensing regimes are established with requirements to serve local, sometimes small areas with a level of news and information that failure…as with banks…affects the local communities.

Sensitivity to this predicament varies among regulators and governments. The Swiss government has, correctly, taken the step of ‘top slicing’ the public broadcasting licensee fee tax to give the most vulnerable broadcasters a level of financial support. With that in mind – and with banks in mind – there is genuine logic to the government regularly checking whether or not the broadcasters know what they are doing.

The quandary, though, becomes whether or not the prescribed solution – from the governments point of view – speaks the right language. Often the language used derives from State broadcasting, which can enjoy political refuge. The all too cozy relationship among regulators, politicians and public broadcasters has led to permanent minority status for private sector broadcasters. A stronger voice for media consumers – often left out of these evaluations – is a benefit to plurality in media.

(Ed. Note): As it would happen UK media analyst Grant Goddard posted his thoughts (February 17) on local media and the failure of regulation in the UK. (See it here)