Public, Private and Business Oriented!

There is nothing more fulfilling than exchanging ideas on how to help any given industry grow amongst colleagues. Recently, I was part of such a conversation with my fellow media fraternity.During that exchange, a colleague pointed out the need for our own industry to be ‘business oriented’; it seemed evident coming from someone in the private sector. What seemed less evident, however, was the follow up on that remark from a public sector colleague. According to him, the soon to be RBA (currently ORINFOR) was about to follow in the same path. I agreed in principle with the idea but voiced some reservations as to whether or not they understood that this had to be done without compromising the ‘public’ element of their mission. It should be clear in everyone’s mind that the private sector must put ‘profit’ as their priority, whereas the public sector has to put the interests of the ‘public’ first. Business orientation in the case of the private sector is indeed a matter of growth and survival; there are no subsidies to support our costs and budgets. However, public funding of the public broadcaster automatically gives it a number of obligations to the public it serves; turning a profit in their case should be about complementing their existing resources to reach their goals of innovation in the interest of the public. The private sector can choose to go for a ‘niche’ audience if such a choice means more profitability. The public broadcaster, however, must never falter on his mission to the public. It goes without saying that limitations would have to be established as to how much ‘private’ money’ should be allowed without compromise the integrity of the public broadcaster; this could be done internally or by the regulator. The last thing this industry needs is the unfair advantage of a public funded, business oriented broadcaster with limitless resources competing with a startup with hardly any funds and no subsidies. This reminds me of a call I received recently from a journalist seeking to interview me on sports matters. When I asked where he was calling from; much to my surprise, he said to be working for the ‘Parliament Radio’. In an attempt to better understand the logic of this, I engaged the journalist in a conversation on the matter. According to him, they (the Parliament Radio) saw it as their mission to entertain the public. Were they so short on material pertaining to the daily dealings of both chambers of Parliament? Is it the role of a Parliament broadcaster to entertain the masses? Are there not enough private broadcasters to do so? There is a definite need for the public broadcasters to educate the masses about matters of public interest. I will even go further to say that the packaging of it definitely needs to be more entertaining then what we have been accustomed to. That being said, we should make a clear distinction between our respective missions; full out entertainment is a matter better left in the able hands of the private broadcasters. Who will help us decide of those boundaries?The need for a new and improved regulating system seems to be in order. The next steps of the media reforms need to be driven by a vision that gives the needed tools to the regulator to accompany the different sectors with specific terms of reference; not only the difference between public and private but also the line between commercial and non commercial, community, religious and others... At the end of the day, we want plurality in our media landscape. Being in the early stages of this transition, we still have time to set things right… whether public or private and still business oriented.