Finland’s government is freezing public broadcaster YLE’s annual revenues. The government blames the economic situation.

The government says that YLE should also be saving money by buying in more foreign – and thus cheaper – programming. It also says that YLE should become a customer of Finnish domestic news agency Suomen Tietotoimisto. The government is also proposing to restructure the YLE supervisory Administrative Council.

The freeze will extend through 2018, and in the autumn of 2018 the government will look again at the economic situation and decide whether an inflation-linked rise could go ahead.  After 2020, says the government, a standard index-linked process should be applied.

A parliamentary Working Group is assessing the structure of YLE’s Administrative Council and one of the proposals is that each parliamentary party with at least 3 members of parliament should be represented on the Administrative Council.

Other changes cover the percentage of domestic vs foreign programmes aired, as well as boosting the number of domestic productions that come from Finland’s independent programme makers.

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