The RTVG revision passed before the people with a razor-thin majority: The urgently needed discussion about public service in the state media is tolerated once. Nothing is to be expected from Parliament - even the SRG supporters say - in this regard.
“We have averted the risk of an unpleasant discussion,” says SP President Christian Levrat, analysing the super-close yes to the revised RTVG. Levrat is even talking about a victory for the entire country and its cohesion.
He who, at the end of an unexpectedly emotional reconciliation battle, did not shy away from tearing open the roasting trench and openly threatening that Switzerland could break apart if SRG were weakened.
You can like the rustic campaign of the trade association or not: It at least had the result that the political class must also address the question of the scope of the so-called “public service.” The oft-invoked abolition of “Tagesschau” or French-Swiss television is of course not imminent.
But the question of how many programs are needed for which regional regions and what of the current SRG offering could also be carried out by private individuals is more than justified.
It is about political power
But not much is to be expected from Parliament in this regard, SRG megaphones Christophe Darbellay and Christian Levrat rejoice: “We have discussed SRG's public service four times in recent years and it has done nothing,” says Levrat succinctly. Darbellay goes one step further and immediately calls on SRG itself to think about the scope of its services.
The idea that SRG would actually ever think critically about its own scope of services is a joke. This question is not just about broadcast minutes and frequency distributions, entertainment shows or sports broadcasts.
It involves a lot of money and a great deal of political power, for SRG and its representatives.
The risk of unpleasant discussion
Anyone who has ever had to stand up against the power apparatus SRG editorially, commercially or politically knows how brutally the state media monopoly enforces its self-defined claims at all levels.
SRG has excellent political connections. Beyond the left half of the Council, it has strategically distributed its prestigious mandates across almost all parties. For this purpose, representatives of peripheral regions are orchestrated, who are led to believe that simply asking about the scope of public service would automatically weaken minorities in the language regions.
The journalistic and therefore political market power of the dozens of radio stations, TV programs and Internet platforms does the rest.
Christian Levrat would like to completely eliminate the “risk of unpleasant discussion.” For him, you can't even discuss SRG.
However, almost 50% no to the current state of the state media is almost a task for politicians, but also for the population, to discuss this fourth power in the state very thoroughly in the truest sense of the word.
At SRG, however, no one wants to burn their fingers; politicians are not monitoring the development of the power apparatus. Although SRG received a resounding slap in the face today, there is little hope of a change in the current situation. SRG remains a sacred cow.