According to the proposal, presented on Thursday, the financing for public service will change. SVT's CEO Anne Lagercrantz believes that the proposal may lead to extensive cutbacks.
SVT gets an extended and expensive assignment for Swedish preparedness, but it is not financed. It will lead to rationalizations. It's about so much that we will have to review the whole company. We try to protect the audience, but it may affect the program offerings, she says.
Gabriel Byström, chief of staff at Sveriges Radio, tells Journalisten that savings "in this order of magnitude correspond to 300-400 positions now".
It will be a different Sveriges Radio, he says to the newspaper.
Dismantling
The criticism is shared by UR's CEO Kalle Sandhammar, who in a press release demands a "more realistic financing". Even SR's CEO Cilla Benkö is critical of the proposed financing model.
It will imply a step-by-step dismantling of Sveriges Radio, she says and continues:
In relation to the cost development, we will lack about 400 million kronor on an annual basis. To understand the size, it corresponds to the entire Ekot and four local channels.
In the proposal, it appears that the government believes that SVT and SR should primarily produce audio and moving images, not text.
We at SVT have a focus on moving images. I am glad for the journey that SVT has made towards video focus and I am glad that the investigation and politics appreciate that journey, says Lagercrantz.
"Arm's length distance"
Cilla Benkö turns against one of the details, the one about illuminating the condition of impartiality.
One leaves the attitude one has had for a very long time, to keep an arm's length distance politically. Now one should order political investigations during the ongoing license period. But what should one use the investigations for? How should they be converted into practical action?
