Public broadcasters look to boost license fee payments
Proposals are being put forward for a change in the media subscription law in a move that many in the industry hope will help clamp down on the mass evasion of TV and radio license payments.
With as many as half of all TV owners failing to pay their license fees, Tomasz Welnicki, a Solidarity Election Action (AWS) deputy, said last week that an amendment to the media law could begin solving the problem.
"We should assume that people who have electricity at home (also) have a television or a radio, so license fees should be collected with payments for electricity and gas," Welnicki said. He added that if someone doesn't have a radio or TV set, that person will have to sign a document declaring their refusal to pay.
Under the present law, the national post office, Poczta Polska, registers and collects a zl. 12.60 monthly payment from owners of TVs and radios. The revenue is then distributed to public broadcasters Telewizja Polska (TVP) and Polskie Radio (PR) by the National Television and Radio Council (KRRiTV), the media watchdog.
But according to Welnicki, monitoring payments is almost impossible. "The proposed changes could greatly improve the collection of license fees, which in turn will make public broadcasters independent of commercial income." Appropriate legislation should be ready in January, Welnicki said. While the finances of foreign broadcasting companies such as the BBC are mostly based on public funding, the budgets of TVP and PR are based on revenue from license fees and advertising.
"If the execution of payments was improved, (public) radio could base its funding entirely on license fees," said Andrzej Siezieniewski, PR's deputy president.
"We should implement our mission as a public broadcaster and that is not always attractive to advertisers." Currently, 82% of PR's budget is financed from license fees. "We (PR's managing board) assessed the amendment project and I think that it's a good idea because a person who is faced with a necessity to sign a declaration, usually states the truth," Siezieniewski said.
However, critics such as TVP spokesman Janusz Cieliszak said the proposed amendment is unrealistic.
"An accurate calculation is needed because practice shows that the collection rate and thus revenue from license fees have been decreasing from year to year in Poland," he said. "If thanks to some miracle it can be changed, that would be great. But we have to talk about facts and not dreams. Under current conditions, it's impossible."
Poles who have a TV or radio are required by law to register them and pay a license fee regardless of which TV stations they watch. But the collection rate is low. In 1999 it plunged to 51%. As a result of the poor collection rate, the pace of TVP's revenue growth from license fees has been lower than inflationary growth over the past few years. Revenue from license fees dropped from zl. 560 million ($200 million) in 1996 to a projected zl. 487.1 million ($111 million) in 2000. According to TVP estimates, last year's license fee payments, which unlike the U.K.'s are not tax exempt, fulfilled only 20% of the budget. The remaining 80% was to be covered by ad revenue. According to TVP President Robert Kwiatkowski, who has been accused of permitting public broadcasting to become commercialized, the extent to which TVP will be able to implement its public mission depends on the level of funding, which is based on license fees.
"In Poland, the fee collection rate is the lowest among European public broadcasters, but we spend three times as much as we get from license fees," Cieliszak said. Last year, German public stations ARD and ZDF collected 98% of fees due, while French TV stations F2 and F3 tallied 95%, according to estimates by the European Audio-Visual Observer (EOA), based in Strasbourg. "TVP passed the free market exam," Cieliszak said. "It's not that we want ad revenue, we have to have it."
While Welnicki said that fee collection could improve significantly and that public funding should be sufficient to run both public radio and television, TVP is wary about giving up ad revenue. According to the broadcaster's press office, a 95% collection rate would only provide enough cash to support one of its two national channels and satellite channel TV Polonia.
"If it turns out that all we can spend are funds from license fees, we might end up doing public television with the budget of some regional station," Cieliszak said.
According to Welnicki, public funding will be sufficient to sustain radio and television if saving schemes are introduced. "They should introduce a reasonable reform, but not one that only provides (pay) raises for top managers," he said. "Public media, especially TVP, is affected by commercialization. I think that relying entirely on license fee funding could change that."
Meanwhile, legislators said the amendment should be ready in two weeks' time, though the details remain fuzzy.
"It may well be that a bid to select a collector will become necessary," Welnicki said. "The easiest thing to do is combine the license fee payment with the electricity bill. A collector comes regularly to your house and collects (money for) the bill."
Putting a new system into practice could be difficult, however. Warsaw-based energy distributor Stoen, one of 33 such distributors around Poland, no longer uses the services of professional collectors. "We send bills; all collectors can do is to check counters at customers' homes, but collecting cash would be dangerous and we don't do it anymore," said Stefan Szczeplek, a spokesman for Stoen.
