After 14 years without a programmatic agreement, the Catalan Corporation for Audiovisual Media (CCMA) once again has a four-year program contract that will mean an investment of 1,347 million from this 2024 to 2027. The Department of the Presidency will this year a contribution of 330.5 million euros, in 2025 it will be 335.5 million, and in 2026 and 2027, 340.5 million each year.
In reality, the figure is higher due to a contribution from the departments of Culture, Education and the Presidency of 11.2 million euros in 2024. Therefore, the total figure rises to 341.7 million, which means 66.2 million more than in 2023, when the public contribution was 275.5 million. An increase of 24%.
The program contract establishes the funding commitments by the Government to the CCMA and the commitments and objectives that the corporation acquires in exchange for this funding. In the latest program contract, which was formalized on February 20 in an institutional event at the Palau de la Generalitat and to which La Vanguardia has had access, most of the commitments made at the CCMA are practically the same as those achieved in 2022 and in many cases they are below the current ones.
For example, one of the indicators is the CCMA’s commitment to TV3 being the leader, a goal it has achieved in the annual ranking for 14 years. Another says that the CCMA’s digital media coverage is higher than 42%, when in 2022 this figure was already exceeded with 42.30%.
One of the most surprising points is the one that refers to the monthly reproductions of the 3Cat platform. The set goal is to reach 15.75 million reproductions in 2027, when in 2022, with TV3alacarta, they already exceeded 15 million. Interestingly, the CCMA already reported that 3Cat had exceeded 16.8 million reproductions this January.
More indicators along these lines: the goal is for 3Cat registered users to reach 300,000 in 2027, compared to the 186,000 that TV3alacarta had in 2022. CCMA itself already reported that in January it had reached 790,000 users.
With regard to content aimed at children (SX3), 6,800 hours are to be made in 2027, when 5,800 were made in 2022. It is only an increase of 17%. And in content aimed at young audiences (EVA), we start from zero to reach 11,000 minutes in four years. That’s 183 hours a year, 15 hours a month, 30 minutes a day. A very small goal compared to the contribution made which, according to the transparency portal, was 1.5 million euros in the period September-December 2023.
Another indicator is the number of titles dubbed into Catalan for films and series (target of 4,000 in 2027, when in 2022 there were already 3,430) and the number of subtitled hours (target of 23,000 in 2027, compared to 21,024 in 2022). As for Catalunya Ràdio, the objective is to keep the number of monthly listeners practically the same in the EGM study.
According to the CCMA, these indicators are indicative and what will be evaluated in the program contract is the development of the strategic plan. “The program contract responds to the need to guarantee the deployment of the strategic plan and the digital transformation of the public media”, affirm the sources, who add that, with this agreement, “the investment deficit and the cuts suffered in the media are reversed public for the last 14 years”.
“The new program contract must allow the social use of Catalan to be promoted in a digital environment in which our language has a minimal presence and is clearly in decline. The economic boost will therefore guarantee the production of new and more quality content in Catalan in an increasingly globalized digital environment in which Catalan is very much in the minority”, argues the CCMA.
Another controversial point of the program contract is the bet on podcasts. The forecast is to go from 45 in 2022 to 80 in 2024, with budgets ranging from modest figures that exceed 1,200 euros to others that are close to 150,000 euros. But the number of downloads and listeners they have and, therefore, their impact is not disclosed.
At this point, the CCMA alleges that in the platform sector, unlike radio and television, there is no agreed upon objective metric that makes it possible to determine exactly how many users have seen or listened to 3Cat’s content.