As Malta celebrates Roberta Metsola’s historic triumph to the post of European Parliament President, national broadcaster PBS demoted coverage of the event to its secondary channel.
While PBS’ secondary channel TVMnews+ was set up specifically to cover news, this splitting of the roles within the national broadcaster meant that TVM had to ignore this momentous moment in Maltese politics.
Indeed, while TVMnews+ delivered a live broadcast of Metsola’s election and subsequent speech, TVM broadcast an episode of Għaddi s’Hawn while all this was happening.
Meanwhile, TVM’s website had Metsola’s election as their second story, behind an article about traffic fines.
Launched last year as part of a landmark shake-up in national broadcasting, TVMnews+ was set up to focus mainly on news, current events, sports, culture and art programmes.
Meanwhile, TVM is focusing mainly on entertainment.
However, a recent Broadcasting Authority survey found that TVMnews+ is extremely unpopular, with only 2.9% of respondents rating it as their favourite channel, a lower score than the independent and family-run TV station F Living.
Prime Minister Robert Abela recently insisted that people need to give the new channel more time before assessing whether it was a failure or not.
Cover photo: Left: Coverage on TVM, Right: Coverage on TVMnews+
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