PBS not using outside broadcasting unit for live events

A substantial number of Public Broadcasting Services employees boycotted the launch of the autumn schedule which took place on Friday, 6 September, at the €3.1 million Creativity Hub in Gwardamangia.

Sources close to PBS informed MaltaToday that a number of employees at PBS, including technicians, camerapersons and journalists boycotted the event in protest at being kept in the dark over their lack of involvement in the Television Malta schedule which starts at the end of the month.

As one employee who spoke to MaltaToday said, "workers feel they are being treated as some sort of 'second-class' employees... last week we were irritated at the fact that the station's CEO did not inform us on the station's plans for the autumn schedule."

This was denied by the station's chief executive Anton Attard, who in comments to MaltaToday replied "not at all", when asked whether he could confirm whether this 'boycott' took place.

The event was held at the national broadcaster's Creativity Hub and the equipment used at the costly event was hired from Nexos & Co Ltd, formerly owned by the home affairs minister's chief of staff, Silvio Scerri, sources said.

The Home Affairs Ministry is also responsible for public broadcasting.

Anton Attard, formerly a Nationalist Party strategist and media guru, also confirmed that his former colleague at the PN-owned Net Television, John Bundy, had been axed from the new TVM schedule after the station picked TVM journalist Norma Saliba and lawyer Joe Mifsud to present the station's breakfast show.

Saliba was seconded to the TVM newsroom in a transfer from her previous employment at the Malta-EU Steering Action Committee. She had formerly been a TVM journalist before moving to Favourite Channel, where her partner Manuel Micallef took up the post of head of news. Micallef, a former trade unionist who was also a Labour candidate for the general elections, today is head of news at the Labour Party's One TV.

While Joe Mifsud was until earlier this year one of the hosts of TVM's breakfast show 'TVAM', Saliba is a newcomer to the format.

Sources close to PBS also told MaltaToday that recent events such as the Maltese football national team's matches against Denmark and Bulgaria and yesterday's Rockestra concert were not being broadcast using the PBS's outside broadcasting unit.

In recent months PBS purchased three HD cameras for its outside broadcasting unit, costing a total of €140,000, apart from other equipment in order to have a fully functional unit which could broadcast live events.

However, the unit was recently dismantled, and the HD cameras were set up in the Creativity Hub's Studio 2, from where a number of programmes in the new TVM schedule will be broadcast.

This decision meant that the station had to rent out an OBU belonging to a private company.

But Anton Attard denied this to MaltaToday: "The outside broadcasting unit for the events mentioned are contracted by third parties, and not by PBS."

Asked to reveal the name of the company from whom the national station is renting the OBU to replace its own, and how much PBS was paying for this service, Attard said: "PBS is not contracting any OB van for the events mentioned. These are contracted by third parties."