Public Broadcasting Services Limited (PBS) is the

public broadcaster Public broadcasting (or public service broadcasting) is radio, television, and other electronic media outlets whose primary mission is public service with a commitment to avoiding political and commercial influence. Public broadcasters receive ...

Malta Malta, officially the Republic of Malta, is an island country in Southern Europe located in the Mediterranean Sea, between Sicily and North Africa. It consists of an archipelago south of Italy, east of Tunisia, and north of Libya. The two ...

. PBS is funded by government grants and the sale of commercial airtime. Its TVM channel is Malta's most watched television channel, and its radio station Magic Malta enjoys huge popularity among local and foreign listeners. Each year on 13 December, PBS hosts an open day, where the public takes a visit in the building and have a look at the sets of the channels and radios.

History

PBS was founded on 11 November 1975 as Xandir Malta and became joint member of the

European Broadcasting Union The European Broadcasting Union (EBU; , UER) is an alliance of Public broadcasting, public service media organisations in countries within the European Broadcasting Area (EBA) or who are member states of the Council of Europe, members of the ...

(EBU) together with the Maltese Broadcasting Authority (MBA). The latter was previously admitted as a full, active member, as Malta Television Service Ltd already has been, in 1970. Since 2003, PBS is the sole Maltese member of EBU. Prior to Xandir Malta, Rediffusion broadcast television programmes in Malta under the name The Malta Television Service Ltd. The service was run by

Rediffusion Rediffusion was a business that distributed radio and TV signals through wired relay networks. The business gave rise to a number of other companies, including Associated-Rediffusion, later known as Rediffusion London, the first ITV (TV network ...

, a London-based independent broadcaster. Transmissions in Malta started from Hamrun on 11 November 1935 under the name of "Broadcast Relay Service Malta Ltd." Charles Whotcroft and George Powler were the first manager and chief engineer respectively. On 29 September 1962 Rediffusion (Malta) Ltd. inaugurated a television service covering the Maltese islands.''Public Service Broadcasting in the Age of Globalization''
Indrajit Banerjee, Kalinga Seneviratne, AMIC, 2006, page 245 On 14 February 1975 the employees of the Rediffusion (Malta) Ltd staged a sit-in strike at the company's premises in Malta and even started to run the company. On 30 July 1975 an agreement was reached between Rediffusion Group of Companies and the Labour government of Malta for the transfer of all Rediffusion's assets in Malta to the Maltese government. Following the transition to

digital television Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using Digital signal, digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an ...

using the

DVB-T DVB-T, short for Digital Video Broadcasting – Terrestrial, is the DVB European-based consortium standard for the broadcast transmission of digital terrestrial television that was first published in 1997 and first broadcast in Singapore in Fe ...

standard in October 2011, all licensed terrestrial channels in Malta are distributed through a network of transmitters operated by PBS. These transmitters are located in Delimara, Nadur, Mellieħa, Mtarfa, Naxxar and Portomaso. PBS is managed by a board of directors. The current non-executive chairperson is Anna Bonett. Keith Chetcuti is the chief executive officer and Engelbert Grech is the chairperson of the PBS Editorial Board. In 2021, PBS announced that their TV channels would change their channel logo branding and a channel name change as well with TVM2 changing its name to TVMNews+ (now known as TVM+), these changes were met with criticism and in 2023, PBS quietly updated its logo branding on their TV and radio services.

Services

Radio

PBS' radio services consist of the Radju Malta, Radju Malta 2 and Magic Malta radio stations. For a short period between 1975 and 1976 it also had an

Italian-language Italian (, , or , ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family. It evolved from the colloquial Latin of the Roman Empire. Italian is the least divergent language from Latin, together with Sardinian language, Sardinian. It is ...

station, called ; the news was read by Anna Bonanno.

Television

PBS' television services consist of the TVM, TVM+ and TVMSport+ television channels. It also operates the Parliament TV service under an agreement with the

Parliament of Malta The Parliament of Malta () is the constitutional legislative body in Malta, located in Valletta. The parliament is unicameral, with a democratically elected House of Representatives and the president of Malta. By constitutional law, all gover ...

References

External links

* {{Coord, 35, 53, 31, N, 14, 29, 32, E, region:MT, display=title Television in Malta European Broadcasting Union members Multilingual broadcasters Television channels and stations established in 1975 State media Publicly funded English language broadcasters