Reforms to the European regional minority-language television corporations in the current context of crisis

Abstract

The European economic crisis has motivated the reform of some of the most important European regional television corporations, like Scotland’s BBC Alba, Wales’s S4C and Ireland’s TG4. This article analyses the situation of these regional TV operators, the fulfillment of their public service mission, funding, and governance, and then offers a comparison between these TV systems and Spain’s regional minority-language TV corporations: EITB, CCMA, RTVG, RTVA and IB3. The initial hypothesis of the study is that the reform of the Spanish system of regional television corporations should only adopt some aspects of the European regional television corporations, because the size and the public service mission of the former is greater those of the latter.