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HISTORY

Five years after the Maltese started receiving television signals from Italy, Malta Television, also run by Rediffusion Ltd. was inaugurated in September 1962 but not before the setting up of the Broadcasting Authority on September 29, 1961, established through Ordinance XX of 1961.  The independence of the Broadcasting Authority was then further safeguarded through a number of constitutional provisions when Malta became independent in 1964.

The Labour Government elected in 1971 proceeded to nationalise local broadcasting services by taking a number of measures including the setting up of a competing terrestrial radio station run by the Broadcasting Authority.  Following a sit-in by workers in 1975, government irself assumed responsibility for broadcasting which became part of Telemalta Corporation – a parastatal entity then responsible for telecommunications.  This was a paradigm shift from a commercial company running public service broadcasting under the guidance of a regulator, to an organisation called Xandir Malta that was totally owned and controlled by Government.

The Nationalist Government elected in 1987 promised the introduction of pluralism in broadcasting.  Infact, in 1991, Xandir Malta was hived off from Telemalta Corporation, and was set up as a limited liability company in preparation for the introduction of pluralism in broadcasting. So, until 1991, sound and television broadcasting was the monopoly of the state owned national broadcaster, regulated by the Broadcasting Authority set up in 1961, with Malta Television Services Ltd. being its only contractor.  The public service obligation of the national broadcaster included the obligation to offer a full range of programming within the categories of information, education and entertainment while transmitting on three radio networks and on one television channel.

A new Broadcasting Act was passed through Parliament in 1991 (Act XII of 1991) and the first private radio stations went on the air in the summer of 1991 – Super One Radio in August and Radio 101 a month later – each separately owned by the two major political parties.

Cable Television, run by Melita Cable p.l.c., was introduced in 1992 resulting in a limited level of pluralism in the field of TV broadcasts – there were on cable an Educational Channel run by the Ministry of Education and a Community Channel run by the Broadcasting Authority besides the retransmission of both analogue and satellite stations.

To-date, there are fourteen nationwide radio and seven TV broadcasting stations, a cable operator, while forty-eight licences were issued during that year for community radio stations (twenty-seven of which were on a continuous basis and the rest for a period not exceeding four weeks).

On January 01, 2001, the Malta Communications Authority was set up to liberalise and regulate telecommunication services – while the onus of broadcast content remained the prerogative of the Broadcasting Authority, telecommunication licences including those for radio frequencies in the UHF Band and digital terrestrial television broadcasting had to be endorsed by the Malta Communications Authority which took over the operations of the Wireless and Telegraphy Department.

 
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