Salaries increased at TVR on the last working day of director Dan Turturică. As he explains

Adriana Săftoiu, the new president of TVR noticed the increases and raised on Thursday in the Board of Directors of TVR, according to the information obtained by HotNews.

TVR has around 2,100 employees, and 80% of the amount allocated from the budget goes to pay salaries, according to Dan Turturică, former president and general director of the institution. The TVR budget comes mostly from the state, the amount being almost 450 million lei annually.

Small audiences

Audiences for shows on TVR stations are often “below 0.5, sometimes close to 0.0”, according to data provided by the institutions that measure the audience, with a plus for TVR 2 or days when public television broadcasts major sports competitions.

“It's a subject that hurts me, it hurts us, I and my colleagues from the Board of Directors have a responsibility for this decrease in numbers… To say that you don't have to have an audience would be sinister craziness, but we have to calibrate expectations… We lack the money”, said Dan Turturică, on the G4Media podcast with the theme “TVR is needed”, on November 21.

“Enlargements, but not in the editorial area”

“Dozens of employees, over 50, received significant raises in mid-November, even before Dan Turturică left TVR. There are no salary increases in the editorial area, for reporters, but the departments that benefited from the salary increase are from audit, technical, legal or human resources. The bosses received more money. Some received 5,000, 6,000 lei in addition to their salary, given that TVR has problems with the salary for the month of December. There are departments where the salaries were high anyway”, sources from the institution told HotNews.ro.

Săftoiu notified

According to other sources in the institution, the increase is considered “a custom when a president-general manager ends his term”.

The problem was raised, today, in the meeting of the Board of Directors by the new president-general manager, Adriana Săftoiu.

Săftoiu asked the responsible departments to explain why the salary increase was necessary, when it was achieved and who were the people who benefited from the extra money.

“The Court of Accounts could be notified because of these increases made only for some, at least that's what Adriana Săftoiu said in today's meeting”, sources from the institution told HotNews.

Adriana Săftoiu, on TVR's internal group: I asked for my salary to be reduced by 10%

Also in today's meeting was discussed the possibility of reducing TVR's PDG salary by 10%. The information was sent by Adriana Săftoiu on the intranet group of TVR, according to sources from the public television. The Board of Directors did not take a decision on the reduction because “the legal formula was not found”.

If at public radio the salary of the president of the institution is almost 29,000 lei, at TVR the amount exceeds 36,000 gross lei.

A new discussion about Adriana Săftoiu's salary will take place on Friday.

Dan Turturică: “We increased salaries as a reward for the effort”

The former CEO of TVR, Dan Turturică, stated for HotNews that he always increased employees' salaries for several reasons: “reward for the effort put in, motivation to continue working in the future at least as much and as well, an additional argument not to leave the institution”.

“Unfortunately, TVR is often criticized for underperforming compared to private broadcasters, but never mentioned are the many barriers that stand in its way that private companies do not have. Just one example, the employees of the Commercial department cannot be bonused based on the volume of advertising sales they achieve, because the current legal restrictions do not allow it. How would private media companies cope with such a restriction?! Would they still sell as much? No money enough, would it still have enough quality content?”, was the position of Dan Turturică for HotNews.

The former president and director general of the public station stated that the impact of the salary increases in November on the total expenses of TVR in the salary chapter is 0.005%. The concrete amount is almost 150,000 lei (30,000 euros) per month, 1.8 million lei annually.

Turturică: TVR is underfunded

Turturică insisted on the subject of underfunding that public television suffers from.

“The solution for TVR to return to what it was is for these people to be paid adequately and to benefit from the financial and technical resources corresponding to a television of the year 2025. Unfortunately, in the four years at the head of TVR, I could do something, quite a bit, only regarding the first need. The state must take care of the second, financial and technical resources”, added the former director of TVR.

In an analysis of the cost of public media services per capita, Dan Turturică claims that Romania allocates less money than Bosnia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia or Poland.

“What do all these countries know and the Romanian state does not know? That you cannot have strong, independent, credible public media services if you do not finance them properly”, is the conclusion of Dan Turturică in his reaction to HotNews.ro.

Cîțu: The abolition of TVR and SRR would bring savings of one billion lei

The former prime minister, Florin Cîțu, drew a parallel between the budget received by TVR and Public Radio and the dismissal of 13,000 people from the administration.

“The abolition or sale of TVR and SRR would permanently reduce budget expenditures by approximately 1 billion lei,” Cîțu wrote on Facebook on November 19.

In Europe, public media are pressured to spend, but respected as a mission

Public broadcasters are also under cost pressures in other European countries such as the UK or Germany. But, in general, the European consensus is that the public media has a democratic role that could hardly be replaced by the commercial media.

Parliament voted last week on the new Board of Directors of TVR, and the new Board elected the president-general manager.

• Adriana Săftoiu – president of the CA (proposed by the Government)
• Anderco Aliz-Timea (from UDMR)
• Stelian Bărăgan (from the PSD)
• Radu Carp (from PNL)
• Camelia Corchiș (from PSD)
• Monica Ghiurco (from AUR)
• Cristinel Godinac (on behalf of SRTV employees)
• Narcisa Manciu (on behalf of the President of Romania)
• Nicoleta Amalia Matei (from PSD)
• Cristina Pocora (from PNL)
• Sorin Torică (on behalf of TVR employees)
• Paula Trofin (from USR)
• Borislav Velimirovic (from the national minorities)