Spanish telcos criticize alternative funding of RTVE
Thursday, June 18th, 2009Advertising will disappear on RTVE in a few months. Spanish government proposed a new model to fill this gap, taken from the French model. This model is based on five sources of income :
- Government’s grant : 45%
- Telecommunications companies : 24%
- Radio : 20%
- Private : 10%
- Marketing of RTVE products : 1%
Obviously, Telcos totally disagree with this draft. Operators will pay 0.9% of their income to reach the tax charge of 24% of the total funding cost.
Miguel Canalejo, executive of Redtel, the Spanish Association of Telecom Operators said “This is unfair because the sector will in no way benefit from the elimination of advertising on public television“. He added that this tax would finance 50% of RTVE and not 24%, so the new charge is disproportionate.