As part of its austerity package Portugal’s government is to make dramatic changes to the nation’s pair of public channels. It will cease supporting RTP2 completely and close the network down.

RTP1 will likely be ‘privatised’ but in the style of the UK’s Channel 4, whereby the public ‘own’ the channel but it is licensed to the management of RTP1 for a period – of as yet undecided – 15 or 25 years. The same will apply to the national radio frequencies.

In other words the state/public ownership is maintained but the government saves around €240 million of subsidy.

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