Malta Unites As Broadcasting Authority Opens World Cup Finals

Maltese football fans have been in despair for weeks over deeply felt injustice: a cable TV company purchased the broadcast rights and created a special premium channel for sports, meaning an additional fee. Despair, as it does, turned to outrage. The stage following public outrage is, of course, government meetings.

The Malta Broadcasting Authority (BA) met and decided. Invoking the European Commission (EC) Television Without Frontiers Directive (TVWF) the BA ordered the cable company – Melita Cable – to make available “final stages” of the 2006 World Cup to free-to-air TV as part of their public service obligation. Exactly which free-to-air channel or channels to broadcast some or part of the football finals is yet to be determined. Maltese are even wondering what is meant by “final stages.”

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Malta adopted TVWF in 2000 as part of its accession treaty with the European Union. In its rule making the Broadcasting Authority advised the EC that World Cup football matches are events of national importance, as they are in virtually all Member States. Invoking these rules, the BA explained that exclusive broadcast rights holders – in this case Melita Cable – must respect all obligations under law, meaning that a substantial portion of the public cannot be denied the event – in this case World Cup football finals.

The BA intends the ruling to create “a reasonable balance between the interests of the televiewers and today’s economic realities resulting from a harsher competition in the distribution of television rights”.

Maltese TV is rather unique. There are five free-to-air channels; one is owned and operated by the Church, two owned and operated by the leading political parties, one is a commercial channel – Smash TV – and one is the public service channel.

PBS – the public channel – took the blunt edge of early criticism when the public (read:license fee payers) asked why it did not buy the rights. That softened when it was revealed that PSB could not match the Melita Cable bid for the rights. Last week PBS dropped EuroNews for financial reasons. One observer referred to PBS as “insolvent.”

All of this has led to unusual unity of the two major political parties – the Nationalists and Labour – for football on free-to-air TV. The Nationalists, editorializing in the Times of Malta, dump squarely on the European Union: “This is happening after Malta joined the EU when standards were supposed to continue rising and when the ways of bygone eras would be gone forever.”

But it was Labour Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Joseph Muscat, speaking in Strasbourg, who placed the larger issue squarely in front: “So far digital television has practically only meant that consumers are made to pay for services that were up to now available for free.”