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the governments of those countries promoted the independence and neutrality of PSB in such critical junctures for their nations or have they followed
the tradition of clientelism that has characterized the State intervention in their media systems? In a clientelistic political system commitment to particu‑
laristic interests is stronger than the notion of the “common good”and permeates the logic of State intervention. Translated to media policy, it tends to be
associated, among other practices, with the instrumentalization of public media, primarily through appointments to their governing bodies and structures
made more on the basis of political loyalty than purely professional criteria. Being television the most important source of political information for the ma‑
jority of the population in the Southern European Mediterranean countries, those practices seek not only to distribute political spoils, but above all to gain
influence –when not control- over the editorial processes and positions of the public broadcasters. Together with the political context and culture, the PSB
governance model plays a significant role in preventing or enabling political interference in its editorial independence (Hanretty, 2011; Humphreys, 1996).
We will first examine the legislative changes affecting the PSB governance passed by Italy, Portugal and Spain since 2009. Greece closed down the national
public broadcaster (ERT) in June 2013, but soon after created a temporary television broadcaster, which was replaced by New Hellenic Radio, Internet, and
Television (NERIT) in May 2014. In 2015 the government led by Alexis Tsipras eventually restored ERT as the country’s public broadcaster. Secondly, we will
analyze the appointments made to the governing bodies and key senior editorial positions such as directors of channels and news services. We will also
consider existing complaints and reports about political interference in their news editorial processes. Finally, the detailed examination of all the aspects
to be taken into account will allow us to draw some conclusions about the dynamics of political interference in PSB in Southern European Mediterranean
countries.
PN 225 Managing Budgets and the Problem of Funding in Times of Crisis: The Mediterranean Case
A.I. Segovia1, I. Fernández Alonso2, A. Fernández Viso2
1 University Complutense of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
2 Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
This paper focuses on the situation and changes experienced by public service media (PSM) in the current crisis environment in terms of budget and funding.
We’ll study the case of some of the countries hit harder by the crisis; specifically Greece (ERT), Italy (RAI), Spain (RTVE) and Portugal (RTP). A number of inter‑
national documents put forward the need of a stable, sufficient and reasonable public funding in order to achieve its goals (UNESCO, 2006; Bron, 2010; EBU,
2015). The objective is to ask ourselves about the rationale of public service broadcasters, highlighting the risks of its mere existence in a crisis environment.
Firstly, we’ll summarize the transformations put into effect in the last few years in these countries, from the shutting down of ERT in Greece to the threat to
privatize RTP in Portugal, including the fulfilled change of funding model in RTVE and RTP (RAI has not implemented any change by now, but there have
been some talks about it). In every case, the reason was linked to the economic crisis and the need of cutting the state subsidies and the PSM overall budget
(according to EBU, the trend in EU countries has been a decreasing budget (-6.1%), where many PSM organizations have suffered budget cuts by their
governments or have received less income owing to frozen licence fees). The implication, moreover, is that funding and independence go hand in hand, that
changes in how PSM companies are funded, and the degrees to which they are funded must impact priorities (Lowe and Berg, 2013). Secondly, we’ll analyze
if the decreasing budgets have had an impact on the audience share. Is it true that the more funding PSM get, the better they perform on the radio and TV
markets and are able to attract audience? Last, we’ll consider the rationalization of the changes implemented, in order to determine if the economic pres‑
sure is a result of the market forces and the private broadcasters trying to take advantage of the crisis environment to damage the PSM rationale.This article
was written within the context of a research and development project entitled Las políticas de comunicación en la Europa mediterránea en el contexto de
la crisis financiera (2008–2015). Análisis del caso español [Communication policies in Mediterranean Europe in the context of the recession (2008–2015).
Analysis of the Spanish case] (ref. CSO2013–42523-P), funded by the government of Spain’s Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.
PN 226 Outsourcing Content Production in the Autonomous Public Television in Spain
J. Sánchez Martínez1, I. Sarabia Andugar1
1 Catholic University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain
Contract a service with an external provider is a very habitual practice for any business organization. Nevertheless, it is a very controversial phenomenon
in the area of the autonomous public television in Spain. Outsourcing consists of "transfer to specialized suppliers of a part of the activity of a company for
the development of the same one" (Espino and Padrón, 2004). Companies outsource their services for two reasons: for economic reasons -the company
seeks "to reduce fixed costs and benefit from economies of scale" (Martínez Sánchez, 2010)-; and for technological reasons -technological renewal is
essential in certain sectors. Many companies have no modern technical equipment to deal with the creation of new products and shorten production
times. In any case, the ultimate purpose of outsourcing is to improve the organization and make it more competitive (Mas Sabaté, 2000)-. Outsourcing has
become a common practice among national and regional public and private television, however, the implementation of this strategy has led to a newmodel
of regional television whose ownership is public, although the operation is put into the hands of the private initiative. Channel management is direct but
the execution of part or all of the programming is transferred to a company outside the institution. The aim of this paper is twofold: first, to find the reason
why the public television companies that offer autonomous coverage make use of contents production outsourcing; and second, to study the outsourcing
level that may result in a categorization of management models. The scientific bibliography on the object of study is not very extensive, therefore, the work
methodology is essentially analytical (analysis of official documents and of legislative texts), in addition to the consultations with the actors involved from
the different autonomous public television companies in Spain. The legal framework on public regional television in Spain consists of: Third Channel Law
1983, General Law on Audiovisual Communication 2010; Law Amending the General Law on Audiovisual Communication 2012. Regarding the results, we
can explain that some regional governments have opted for the outsourced production model since the birth of their regional public television.This decision
is made in order to avoid the situation of indebtedness that the third channel has generated in others regions which developed their project in the 80s