TVP supervisory board votes against dismissing management<BR>

The vote was part of an ongoing effort by the right-leaning governing coalition, Solidarity Election Action (AWS), to purge TVP of its left-leaning management and supervisory boards. As part of that, AWS representatives have been trying to find fault with almost every aspect of TVP's business, from the amount of commercials it runs to its involvement in an upstart Polish digital television platform called Cyfra+. AWS is pushing for TVP's leaders to represent a more politically balanced structure.
Those efforts led the only AWS representative on the public broadcaster's supervisory board, Lech Jaworski, to push forward a vote on whether to dismiss TVP's management board. Not surprisingly, however, the supervisory board voted along political lines - five of the six representatives present at the meeting are sympathetic to the former socialist Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) government.
Therefore, the motion was struck down. What is a little absurd is that, even if the motion had passed, it would not have been valid.
According to the station's articles of incorporation, any changes to the managing board have to be voted on by at least seven members of TVP's supervisory board. However, the turnout at the last meeting amounted to six out of a total of nine - too few to make the results of the vote binding.
Why did the board decide to vote anyway, even though it did not have the quorum?
"Sometimes you submit a motion to vote it through, sometimes you submit it only for the sake of doing it," Witold Knychalski, president of the supervisory board told the Business Journal after the meeting.
But what was a no brainer for the left-leaning supervisory board became a matter of principle for the ruling Solidarity Election Action (AWS).
According to Tomasz Welnicki, deputy head of the Sejm's Culture and Media Committee, the fact that the supervisory body was voting on dismissing the board without the necessary quorum just represents another flagrant example of mismanagement. The supervisory board should have waited to have a quorum before taking the vote, he said.
"It's not even a question if they should or shouldn't dismiss the board," he said. "It's rather the fact that movers and shakers in TVP will do everything, including violating their own voting procedures, to make it all look more like (a Franz) Kafka piece. (It's) not effective management."
Going small
Two newcomers emerged on Warsaw's advertising scene over the last few weeks.
First, in late November the city welcomed a brand new ad agency targeting small to medium-sized advertisers, promising high-quality services at prices 20-35% less. The new firm, Communication Associates, is touting its principle of reducing "non-advertising costs," said Peter Stewart, former deputy managing director at DMB&B Warsaw, and Gerardo Ojeda-Ebert, a co-founder of the United Public Relations firm.
"Smaller advertisers are often neglected or underserved by traditional agencies," said Stewart, the current managing director of Communication Associates. "We've intentionally structured ourselves to provide these types of clients with superior advertising at extremely competitive prices."
Using what marketing geeks call the "competitive unbundling principle," the agency will use external suppliers, or freelancers, to provide each service. This will drastically reduce standard costs, and increasing the use of the internet, for example, will give the agency access to creative talent across borders.
According to Ojeda-Ebert, the duo has also formed strategic alliances with several Poland-based communication firms, allowing the agency to now offer public relations services.
Magyars bounce Canal
While the court case between Canal+ Polska and HBO is likely to take a long winter hibernation here, a Magyar court dismissed the long-standing and far-reaching legal argument two weeks ago. While in Poland the French-based pay-television station is suing HBO for uncompetitive practices (see the Business Journal, Feb. 23-March 1, 1998), in Hungary it took to court the company that beams out HBO's service - Central European Uplink (CEU). CEU uplinks HBO's satellite signal and then sends it separately to Hungarian, Polish and Czech households.
The Budapest City Court dismissed Canal+'s claim that CEU is operating illegally by beaming HBO's programming into Poland from a Hungary-based uplink.
"The judge dismissed the claim for its lack of merit," said George Douglas, managing director of CEU. "We feel that this proves what we've been saying all along, that the whole issue with Canal+ is strictly about competition in Poland."
The question surrounding HBO's operations - which bypasses the need to have a Polish broadcast license by sending in programming dedicated to this market from abroad - seems to have been settled in Hungary. But in Poland, the issue has not even found its official beginning in the court system.
"There is no date of the first hearing set yet," the Business Journal heard last week in the XVI Commercial Department of the Warsaw Provincial Court. The suit was filed in October - a year ago.
New year, more tax
Anybody who actually pays the television tax that funds public television and radio will have to shell out even more next year. Media watchdog the National Radio and Television Council (KRRiTV) is looking to raise some zl. 830.4 million ($237.25 million) through the tax next year. That means that each television owner will have to pay monthly zl. 10.60, up from zl. 9.60 now. That applies to everyone, even those who just watch CNN International.
And Merry Christmas to everybody.
- Agnes Csonka with the Budapest Business Journal contributed to this report.