At the end of a meeting held with the Secretary of State Assistant to the Minister Assistant and for Parliamentary Affairs in Lisbon today, the Regional Secretary of the Presidency said that this meeting served to “reiterate the Government’s opposition to the measure that the Government of the Republic allegedly intends to implement with regard to the Radio and Television Public Service in the Azores and Madeira.” As it is of public knowledge, this measure “aims to limit the programming to a specific schedule in order to reduce operation costs.”

André Bradford added that for this meeting, the Government of the Azores, “went further in its position,” since it was in possession of “information collected in an independent study on public service costs in the Azores and according to which it was concluded that 9 million Euros is the correct amount and not 13 as the Minister had said.”

According to the Government official, the operation of RTP-Açores in the last three years “has evidenced an effort to reduce costs: 3 million Euros over three years of savings in staff, programming and operation costs.”
In this context, André Bradford revealed that “the State itself, through the concession agreement and the estimate of the compensation transfers to RTP, estimated a global amount over 10 million Euros for RTP-Açores.” By analysing the data collected, one may conclude that “RTP-Açores is neither a spender nor is in deficit as its estimated costs are below the forecast made by the State.”

“With regard to our studies, the Secretary of State did not make any comment; he merely listened to them. He did not mention any amount whatsoever.  In fact, the Secretary of State neither mentioned the reason that has led to the decision announced nor commented on the contents of the restructuring plan that has already been submitted to the Minister. He only provided the information concerning the intention of restructuring RTP nationwide, including Regional Centres, which will be put into practice,” stated the Regional Secretary. 

André Bradford concluded that “no significant progress was made at this meeting,” because, as he stressed, “we are not acquainted with the technical information that justified the measure proposed by the Administration Board, which the Government of the Republic intends to implement.”