 |
Maltasong succumbs to new PBS directors
By MaltaMedia News
Jun 5, 2008 - 2:54:24 PM
|
|
A new Board of Directors for the Public Broadcasting Services, headed by the seasoned university lecturer Dr. Clare Thake Vassallo, has just been appointed. On Wednesday, it was also revealed that the former Maltasong Board will not be re-appointed and that its duties will be passed on to the PBS board.
It is expected that the PBS directors’ first meeting will determine an operational structure by which these duties are to be assumed.
The new Board of Directors at PBS includes Dr. Vassallo, Joseph Bonello, Lara Tonna, Josef N. Grech and Isabelle Gatt. Vassallo has already served on the Board before between 2000 and 2004.
On Wednesday evening, during the television programme DISSETT it was also revealed that some €180,000 go into the Malta Song for Europe festival and Malta’s participation in the Eurovision Song Contest every year. This is bound to go down this year by virtue of the board’s assimilation within PBS.
MaltaMedia Creative Director Dr Toni Sant, who has been following the Eurovision Song Contest both as a former member of the Maltasong Board and as a performance scholar, has been repeatedly calling for a rethink in terms of whether the Maltasong Board should be replaced by something else.
Commenting on the decision to assimilate the Maltasong Board within PBS, Dr Sant said “I'm very pleased to see that the Minister for Education and Culture has seen the urgent need to remove the Maltasong Board completely from the Maltese music scene. It appears that PBS is now positioned to take on the full role of EBU broadcaster with Malta's entry to the Eurovision Song Contest, potentially eliminating non-professionals from the decision-making process.”
Malta has performed rather dismally in the last three years at the Eurovision Song Contest and pressures had been mounting on the Maltasong Board as voices from all sorts of different fronts questioned whether Malta should keep participating in this contest. While many asked what the hype with the Eurovision was all about and struggled to find a cultural justification for it, many others asked whether it was justifiable that Malta keeps pumping thousands of Euros from public funds into the contest.
These old questions will now be haunting the new directors at PBS whilst new ones (such as whether the Eurovision Song Contest can be used as a educational resource for tertiary level media students, amongst others) will emerge.
For more detailed information about Malta's participation in the
Eurovision
Song Contest see EurovisionMalta.com.
© Copyright 2008 by MaltaMedia.com
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
Top of Page
|
|
|
Latest update:
Jun 7, 2008 - 9:42:52 AM CET
|
