Report on public media exec salaries moves forward
The resignation of Telewizja Polska (TVP) management board member Walter Chelstowski (see related story, WBJ May 1-7) might be the least of TVP's problems these days, as the Supreme Board of Inspection (NIK) puts the final touches on its report revealing public media employees' salaries.
"The report should be ready by the end of June or the beginning of July," said NIK spokesman Przemyslaw Szustakiewicz last week.
While the head of TVP's press office, Pawel Sosnowski, said the public broadcaster's management is unfazed by the prospect of such a report, NIK's audit might finally dispel rumors about the apparently legendary salaries of TVP board members. "We had access to all kinds of information, so if there is a need for it we will make TVP's payroll details public," Szustakiewicz said.
Until now, TVP's board has kept secret the remuneration of its top executive. Even TVP's official owner, the Treasury Ministry, did not know what TVP's management is paid. If there is any truth to unconfirmed speculations, it is not only the size of the monthly allowances, but also the enormity of the executive severance packages that could shock public opinion.
The storm over the salaries of state-owned companies' executives began with the January dismissal of two Polskie Radio management board members affiliated with the Polish Peasants Party (PSL). According to media reports, each received severance packages of nearly zl. 500,000, despite the public radio station being in serious debt.
Remuneration also seemed to be the driving force behind Chelstowski's decision. A management board member and the public broadcaster's chief reformer, he revealed after resigning that his departure was impelled by a salary-cutting law aimed at treasury companies due to come into effect Aug. 1. Although Chelstowski wouldn't provide details on his severance package, resigning before the new law is implemented means he could keep what his contract guaranteed.
Tomasz Welnicki, deputy head of Parliament's media and culture committee, said he expected more TVP resignations for the same reason. "It might well turn out that TVP's executives will not be eager to work for less than they used to and they will all go," he said.
But Sosnowski said he hasn't heard anything about further resignations, either officially or off the record. "The atmosphere here is tense, but it's not because there is something to fear from the NIK report," Sosnowski said. "One of the management board members left and the annual TVP report will be discussed by the supervisory board. That's why the atmosphere is tense." TVP is controlled by NIK and has the right to appeal the report results, making the process of producing a final public report take even longer.
Last Monday, the producers of "Quo Vadis," a movie based on Henryk Sienkiewicz's Nobel Prize winning novel, gathered in Tunisia to shoot the first scene. The $12 million film, directed by Jerzy Kawalerowicz, will be the biggest Polish movie production since Jerzy Hoffman's similarly Sienkiewicz-indebted "With Fire and Sword." The production will eventually move from Tunisia to France and finally to Warsaw, where the construction of a fake Roman aqueduct is already in progress.
Pop culture monthly Machina is celebrating its 50th issue this month. Machina is targeted at the youth market by virtue of the fact that, unlike others of its kind, it still exists. Machina, which is published by Machina Press and directed at men less than 35 years old, was the first Polish pop culture magazine when it appeared in 1996.
Bogna Swiatkowska, Machina's editor in chief, said the magazine is interested in all pop-culture related subjects but also "doesn't turn back from so-called 'high' culture." The magazine has succeeded because "it has original graphics and also presents pop culture in a very accessible way," Swiatkowska said. "Over the last four years we became more established on the market and above all we survived."
Going by the number of casualties, survival on the market isn't easy. The youth-targeted Brum and Plastik closed down, and the future of the music-oriented XL is uncertain, Swiatkowska said. "Max, which had the closest profile to ours, was also shut down," Swiatkowska said. Machina had a readership of 365,690 in the first quarter of 2000, according to a recent survey by readership research institute Polskie Badania Czytelnictwa (PBC). "Considering our circulation of 80,000, this is a good result," Swiatkowska said. Machina's No. 1 goal for the future is to stay in business, to follow all the trends on the market and cause a stir."
A Reuters report on May 4 that a possible merger of two competing digital platforms is again in the works caused a ruckus on the media market.
Reuters quoted an official of French pay-television group Canal Plus as saying that the company is ready to discuss merging its Polish digital TV platform Cyfra+ with its direct competitor, Wizja TV, owned by Amsterdam-based United Pan-Europe Communications (UPC). Such a possibility had been discussed and speculated on when Wizja was still owned by @Entertainment, which UPC acquired in 1991. The subject has been revived several times lately, but negotiations between the two companies haven't come to any conclusion. The May 4 report also appears to be a false alarm. "There are no negotiations of that kind," said Dorota Zawadzka, UPC's PR director in Poland. "Besides, as a rule, the two sides in these kinds of negotiations, if they are in progress, are obliged not to comment on them anyway."
Justyna Wrobel contributed to this report
