Who are these people?

Above: Corner of ul. Sikorskiego and Sobieskiego. Cycling past this, which must be Warsaw's largest billboard (the fence along the bottom is nearly two metres high, and the billboard goes round both corners), I realise how out of touch with Polish TV culture I am. I cannot name a single one of the people advertising TVN's autumn schedule, headed by dreary talent shows. Come on Poland! Don't spend your weekends comatose in front of the box! Read a book! Go for a walk! Spend time talking to your children!

I do miss quality British TV though. Decent documentaries, comedies, current affairs, BBC2, Channel 4...

The reason that Polish TV is of poor quality compared to that in the UK is directly linked to the hybrid status of state broadcaster TVP. On the one hand, like the BBC, TVP receives a licence fee from viewers. On the other, like the ITV, it takes in advertising. This bizarre system means that the 'true cost of broadcasting' is unknown; TVP can sell ads to make up for shortfalls in licence revenues (paying the fee is not universal, as it is in the UK, many Poles don't bother). But licence revenue shortfalls can be made up for by selling airtime at low, low prices. This means that private TV stations, like TVN and Polsat - and indeed the press - have to compete with a subsidised broadcaster that charges arbitrary prices for advertising. Reaching 1,000 consumers is cheaper via TV than via the press! This means that quality suffers.

Poland needs to adopt either the British model - state broadcaster, no advertising, everyone paying a highish licence fee, but in return for unbiased broadcasting excellence - or the American model - no licence fees, no state broadcasters. I must say I favour the latter; Poland still lacks the political maturity to do the former. The current hybrid model (which the French and Italians have - hardly paragons of quality viewing) hurts and distorts the entire Polish media market.

And TVP is as political as can be. Currently run by a former neo-fascist called Farfala, it's 'public mission' is God knows what. Whenever there's a change of government, the entire management board of public TV and radio is changed. Out go 'their people', in come 'our people'. (Can you imagine the BBC's Board of Governors, Chairman and Director General, as well as the board of OFCOM, all being changed when the nice David Cameron becomes PM?)

Poland's previous government was a coalition of Law and Justice (PiS - reasonably sensible party), with two silly parties - Samoobrona (populist potato-throwers) and LPR - the League of Polish Families (Oi!). Part of PiS's coalition deal was to hand LPR and Samoobrona control of the public media. Which is why an LPR chappy with a very dodgy past is now running TVP. It's in PO's interests to leave him there - the situation is so messy, so political, that many Poles say - "To hell with public (read: party) TV and radio - I'm not paying my licence fee."

And this is why TV (public and private) is mediocre in comparison with Britain. In any case, TV is a medium in decline; Moni and Eddie and their contemporaries at school rather consider TV as something watched by dziady (a Polish word implying both poverty and old age).

UPDATE: October 2009. Frafala and his Populist-Nationalist mateys have been expelled from state TV and replaced by a bizarre alliance of people with links to the ex-communists and the Catholic-conservative Law and Justice party. In sweeping out the old order, financial irregularities were discovered, TV funds going to cronies and cronies' foundations etc.