ZAGREB, July 11 (Hina) - The Croatian Sabor on Thursday discussed a report on the activities of the Administrative Board of Croatian Radio Television (HRT) for last year and MPs warned on the lateness of the implementation of the Law
on HRT which regulates the division of the Radio from Television.
ZAGREB, July 11 (Hina) - The Croatian Sabor on Thursday discussed a
report on the activities of the Administrative Board of Croatian
Radio Television (HRT) for last year and MPs warned on the lateness
of the implementation of the Law on HRT which regulates the division
of the Radio from Television. #L#
HRT Director Mirko Galic pointed out that last year's main
directives were to stabilise the business activities of the house
and to develop values attributed to public television.
He said that revenue in HRT last year increased by nine per cent
while expenditure grew by seven per cent.
The number of employees was decreased, salaries grew and based on
stable business activities achieved this year's profits are
forecast at 560 thousand euros, Galic said.
Developing values attributed to public television according to
Galic is evident in the representation of civil society in the make
up of the HRT Council and some of the breaks in ties between HRT and
politics.
The influence of politics in the wider and narrower sense on our
programmes are under any level that would render us a service for
the government, that is, state, Galic claimed, warning that
institutional ties with the state were still contentious - as it was
still the owner of HRT.
On behalf of the Croatian Democratic Union's (HDZ) party bench,
Jadranka Kosor said that as of July 1, HRT had acted illegally
because that was the deadline to divide the Radio from Television.
Even though the intention of legislator was to depoliticise the HRT
Council and even though members of the council are not politicians
they nevertheless express their political views, Kosor said.
She proposed that a monitoring group should once again be set up to
follow how often individual political parties were presented on
current affairs programmes.
Ante Kovacevic of the bench of Croatian Party of Rights (HSP) and
Croatian Christian Democratic Union (HKDU) estimated that
presentations of Croats from Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Diaspora
was too little.
MP for national minorities Tibor Santo advocated that greater
presentation time should be given to specialised programmes
dealing with problems faced by national minorities.
Josip Leko of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) party bench pointed
out that HRT's revenue last year amounted to 164 million euros while
the structure of this revenue is unfavourable seeing that even 51
per cent of that revenue came from subscription fees.
The report does not detail revenue gained from the sale of the HRT's
programmes, Leko said, advocating that more focus should be placed
on the HRT's own production.
(hina) sp ms