Time To Turn Off The TV?: IB3

In Valencia at the end of last week, several thousand people demonstrated against a regional government announcement that the government-funded RTVV (Radio Televisión Valenciana) was to close. The decision to shut the broadcaster down was one taken, according to the government, because of a need to choose between it and spend on health and education. Those calling for the decision to be reconsidered argue the closure constitutes an attack on democracy and on the Valencian economy; apart from those at the broadcaster who will lose their jobs, over 100 media and production companies employing some 3,000 people may well be forced to close as well.


In the Balearics, there were protests two years ago when the decision was taken to close TV Mallorca. There were similar objections to those now being made in Valencia. Among them were claims that Mallorca's audiovisual industry would be hit hard and that some 2,000 employees could find themselves at risk of losing their jobs. The final transmission was in December 2011 and a year later a further decision by the Council of Mallorca, which had been the body that had closed TV Mallorca, was greeted as representing a potentially fatal blow to the local AV industry; this was the decision to close the Mallorca Film Commission.

The AV industry also criticised cuts to budgets at IB3, the other Mallorca government-funded broadcaster. When these cuts were added to the closure of TV Mallorca and of the film commission, they together amounted to a major threat to an industry which, in no small part, has been at the forefront of a drive towards a stronger technology-based economy on the island.

While lack of funding has been used as the justification for closure, there has also been a heavy dose of politics. TV Mallorca, a company created by the then Unió Mallorquina-led Council of Mallorca, received backing from organisations such as GOB, the environmental group, and the OCB, the promoters of Catalan culture, when the by now Partido Popular-led Council took its decision to close the station. IB3, in the meantime, has become a broadcaster firmly under the control of the PP. The likes of GOB, so it has been alleged, are all but barred, while there was criticism of IB3's lack of coverage of the massive demonstration against the regional government's trilingual teaching policy.

Against a background of an inference that IB3 is being used as a government mouthpiece, there now comes a revelation as to quite how much IB3 has been costing. Since it was launched by the Jaume Matas PP government in 2005, it is said to have cost 650 million euros. Though its budget has been cut over the past four years, in 2012 it still received funding of almost 45 million euros (roughly speaking, public funds amount to 95% of its operating revenue). Based on the cost per head of population, IB3 is the second most expensive regional broadcaster in Spain.

The 2012 budget did, however, have to be supplemented. Had it not been, IB3 might have been forced to shut down. And it would appear that ever since its launch, the initial annual budgets have always been supplemented, occasionally in an astronomical fashion. Meantime, the total of 650 million euros has contributed to sustaining a broadcaster which attracts slightly less than 6% of audience share. By comparison, for example, TV3 in Catalonia has a 13.6% audience share, one pulled from a vastly greater population. Valencia's Channel 9 (RTVV) has a lower share, but it also has a larger population to draw on.

Local broadcasting should, in theory, be a "good thing". It is a very good thing if the funds it receives from government and taxpayers then translate into new businesses, more jobs and technological innovation. It is also a very good thing if it advances local culture and is a force for social good. But it is not a very good thing if it is viewed by comparatively small audiences, costs a fortune and becomes a political tool. If IB3 were to close tomorrow, few people, other than those whose jobs depend on it, would do much weeping.

IB3 has also been dogged with suspicions. Those to do with some of that funding. Little more than three years into its existence, the police had started to snoop around, asking questions about payments for studio sets which were some 20% higher than tenders from companies which had missed out.

The regional government, aware of the protests in Valencia, has said that it has no intention of following Valencia's lead in closing IB3. There again, if it is serving a useful purpose for the government, then why would it? And why would it privatise IB3, as has been suggested, if privatisation meant broadcaster independence? But then who would want to buy it? 6% audience share? No thanks.

Ghosts Of Tourism Past: Adapt to survive

You know those little tubs of butter you get, the ones that might typically be served with a full or less-than-full English and which are, if only just out of the fridge, rock hard and cause your toast to crumble as you desperately struggle to spread their solid but very mini mass. Do you know how much they cost? Not to you as a punter but to a bar owner? It would probably depend upon supplier and probably also on any "arrangements" that exist, but the regular cost is eight centimos. Only a few years ago, seven or eight years ago perhaps, the cost was less. The little tubs then cost two centimos.

Fortunately, not all costs have risen as dramatically as the little tubs of butter have. But the increase in their cost acts as a reminder of the saying that if you look after the pennies, the pounds will look after themselves. For the bar owner, the added six centimos over the past few years, multiplied by the number of little tubs that have found themselves on the ends of knives of customers trying hard to extract their content, will amount to a pretty penny or several.

The increased cost will be factored in and either absorbed or added to the price of the breakfast, and if it is the latter, then the mumblings begin. Things aren't as cheap as they used to be. The bar owner, however, has to look after the pennies (or the centimos). Were he not to, then the pounds (or the euros) would not look after themselves.

Strangely enough, things aren't as cheap as they used to be, but things not being as cheap as they once were or as cheap as some might wish them to be is of course one of the regularly voiced reasons for why there is a malaise that afflicts Mallorca's tourism.

Despite the headlining good news, or apparent good news, that comes from the summer's high occupancy rates and high air passenger numbers, there is a refusal to believe the good news, and one reason for not believing it is that tourists don't spend as they did because everything is so expensive, a perception that does really require defining, as being expensive (or cheap) is all relative.

The only thing that needs to be known is that everything did indeed used to be cheaper. Had everything not been cheap, then there would not now be the tourism that Mallorca has. It was tourism founded on low cost, on dirt cheapness. It allowed there to be what there is today.

Looking to the past is instructive in explaining how we get to a position in the present, but the constant reflection on the past gets us only so far. The standard complaints about how Mallorca's tourism model operates today have been with us for years; these complaints being prices, low spend, shorter summer seasons, lack of winter tourism, all-inclusives. Yet somehow the past suggests that they are all relatively new phenomena, when none of them are. The past conjures up some golden age, the vision of which has to be tempered by, among other things, the fact that total tourism was significantly lower. (It should be noted, for example, that between 1993 and 2008 the total number of tourists arriving in Mallorca rose by 85%.)

There are occasions when I feel as though I am winter-tourismed-out, all-inclusived-out, lower-spent-out. Just on all-inclusives, and as an example, over seven years ago (in July 2006), I concluded an article on all-inclusives by saying: "The AI has changed the nature of the market. It is for the market to make an adjustment to it. Ultimately, if the AI and other factors (such as lower spend) cause a fall in demand, then the supply (of out-of-hotel facilities) has to alter. If this means less, then so be it. This is a harsh appraisal, but I think it is a realistic one."

The image of a tourism past keeps getting in the way. It is one in which there were no all-inclusives (and there weren't - not as we know them - until the '90s) and in which everywhere was supposedly packed, but with very many fewer tourists than today. Tourism's present is not like its past and nor will its future be like its past. Though obstacles to remedies are great, there may be remedies to alleviate the absence of current winter tourism, one which, in sheer numbers, has been greater this century than in the mythical golden age. But otherwise tourism present and tourism future has to forget the past and to adapt. The day before I was told about the cost of the little tubs of butter, I spoke with a partner in a tourist business which has had a highly successful summer. The reasons why? Many, but key are marketing, service and listening to the customer and changing accordingly.

Round And Round We Go

Where do you think the first roundabout in Spain was built? Madrid? Barcelona? Valencia? None of these. It was in Mallorca. Palmanova to be precise. The year was 1976. So a mere 67 years after the claim to the first roundabout having been built - in Letchworth (actually, Paris lays claim to having had one in 1907) - Spanish roads finally entered the modern era of motoring. Since that time, roundabouts have been built with a fervour and a fever that would leave breathless even the motorists of Swindon and Hemel Hempstead (two towns with more surreal and simply more roundabouts than most other places).

In pre-1976 film footage for Palma there are what look like roundabouts but which weren't. They were just obstacles in the middle of the road that motorists went past; obstacles created by some old landmark or other. In fact, it had been common enough in cities and towns in different countries to construct something, be it say artistic or a garden, at road intersections. Or, for purely aesthetic reasons, in the middle of old, primitive roads. Artistic creations in the middle of roads, on roundabouts, have since then acquired a whole new lease of life, as can be seen by the numerous examples of roundabout furniture in Mallorca.

The island's roundabouts, indeed Spain's roundabouts, are the stuff of great debate. Party to this debate are environmentalists, road designers and engineers, urban planners, artists and sometimes even motorists. Roundabouts are by no means universally popular, and this lack of popularity stems from different perspectives.

The environmentally conscious road design lobby against roundabouts helped to bring about a report in 2005. This contrasted Spain's roundabouts with its traffic light junctions. On cost alone, there was much to be said for the latter. Roundabouts, obviously of a certain size, cost on average 120,000 euros to build plus any cost of expropriation. Traffic-light junctions cost a mere 25,000 euros and took up far less space. The report also highlighted the costs in terms of energy consumption, the result of all the braking and accelerating demanded by  roundabouts, if they were as regular as many now are. A conclusion of the report was that, generally speaking, roundabouts should only be built at entry points into towns and not within or through them. The report was clearly ignored. Playa de Muro and Can Picafort are just two places that have seen several, small roundabouts placed along the main road in recent years.

A further report, of 2009, by researchers at the department of geography at the Independent University of Madrid, considered the "public art" of roundabouts, all those sculptures that are now to be typically seen. Or not seen. One of the researchers' arguments against all this art was that it was pointless as motorists don't see it. Indeed, you would hope they probably don't, as they should be concentrating on something else. Or maybe they are seeing, hence the accidents at roundabouts. For the most part, the researchers were unimpressed; this public art was of limited cultural merit and had little to do with its location.

What they didn't delve into was what it all cost. Just as an example, though, in 2010 Calvià town hall put out to tender work for three new "ornamental objects" for roundabouts in Santa Ponsa. They were to cost 53,000 euros in total, which may have represented a nice earner for a local artist, even if Balearics artists as a collective have been less than enthusiastic about roundabout art, partly because no one knows who the artist is and partly because they reckon that much if it has been rubbish.

Traffic circulation is obviously the reason for the rapid expansion that there has been in the number of roundabouts in Mallorca. I say obviously, but I am far from convinced that they have helped. Roundabout fever has, at times, seemed to have been designed to alleviate Trafico's boredom and enhance the quality of their worklife: increase the number of roundabouts, and there is a greater choice for where they can stand around plus a greater choice of scenery. The growth in roundabouts may offer more variety when it comes to traffic controls, but do the cops ever bother to advise motorists on their roundabout etiquette?

There are people who claim to know what the rules are at roundabouts. Some of them are probably with Trafico or are driving instructors. But this still doesn't stop articles appearing, at least once a year, in the local Spanish papers which discuss the "chaos" at roundabouts. The truth is that no one seems to know for sure, and even if they do know, then they ignore the rules anyway. Either that, or they're admiring the artwork.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

MALLORCA TODAY - Cost of rubber ducks in Can Picafort

The town hall in Santa Margalida has slashed the amount spent on rubber ducks for the annual duck throwing (which occurs on Monday). Last year's spend of 7000 euros has been reduced to 1600 euros.