In late November the Icelandic government passed a new Broadcasting Act proposing to cut by more than one billion Icelandic krona (€6.1 million) RUV’s budget level of 2008 and to severely restrict the broadcaster’s right to sell advertising and secure sponsorship from 2014, costing it another ISK 400 million annually (€2.25 million). In total, the cuts would represent ISK 500 million, a severe blow to the broadcaster that immediately decided to let go 22% of its staff or 60 people.
RUV’s General Director Páll Magnússon acknowledged that the cuts would ‘immediately affect RUV’s programming severely’. “The market in Iceland is in a slump, leading to an even greater decline in advertising revenues. We have no alternative at this time to meet the cuts demanded by the government but to let staff go and reduce our programming,” he said.
In reaction to this, the EBU which has 74 active broadcasting members (including 11 for the Nordic region) stated: “This [RUV drastic cut] is the latest in a series of similarly massive cuts that have been imposed in recent years on EBU Membership, which in many countries are now, as a consequence, struggling to fulfil the most essential parts of their remit.”
“The managements of public service media companies are making every effort to improve the efficiency of their organisations in consideration of the economic difficulties they face, but excessive budget cuts to public service media cannot serve as a quick fix to a nation’s economic woes; it is precisely at times of crisis that the public needs strong public service media to be an indispensable source of reliable, quality information.”
On Wednesday RUV staff members handed Iceland’s Minister of Culture and Education Illugi Gunnarsson a petition signed by more than 10,000 people, urging the government to review its planned budget cuts.
Other leading European pubcasters such as ZDF, RAI, the BBC, RTVE and France Television have been affected by budget reductions since 2008. In Norway, the new centre-right government proposed last month a smaller than expected increase to NRK’s licence fee for 2014, which reduced the Norwegian pubcaster’s estimated annual income for 2014 by NOK 28 million to NOK 85.5 million.