For the eighth consecutive year, public broadcaster TV3 has won the annual TV ratings battle in Catalonia. And it has achieved this in conditions that have not been easy: subjected to the continuous discrediting of its professionals by a significant part of the unionist parties, in particular Citizens and the Popular Party. Working under these conditions, which in part also affect Catalunya Ràdio and especially the director and host of the morning programme, Monica Terribas, it's not an easy venture. It ends up turning into a high-risk job, since the political powers try to make decisions on headlines, details and news angles as part of the implementation of article 155. This article of the Spanish constitution has become a general tool to be used for anything that helps steamroll Catalan self-government.
Since TV3 is too important - a 13% share of viewers annually - and an opponent couldn't simply close it down overnight, as the PP did to the regional television channel in Valencia, the Spanish government has adopted a tactic which is just as deadly but more medium-term. They are strangling it economically through the Treasury Ministry of Cristóbal Montoro, who is demanding 167 million euros in VAT payments on the Catalan government's subsidies to TV3 between 2015 and 2017. In order to achieve the cure without the medicine being noted.
Let’s see if they manage to reduce TV3 to the status of a minor network in Catalonia! The truth is that, although the task is difficult, the Spanish government and the unionist parties have never put so much effort into a public communications medium. If just a part of this energy was used on the Spanish public network, TVE, who knows if the news watchdog committee would stop reporting manipulation in the channel's news?
In recent days we have learned that, for example, at a media moment so important as midnight on New Year's Eve, the regional television in Castilla y León achieved an historic milestone: 0.0% share of audience, and zero viewers, at exactly 12 midnight. It was not the only one: 7TV in Murcia promised a different approach to the New Year's Eve bells and obtained a zero in everything: audience share and viewers. And how did TV3 rate at the same time? A 40.5% share.
Of course they want to close it down!