I'm sure this has to be a unique case.
My mother is the editor-in-chief at a BBC-like radio station, which is funded by the goverment, namely Radio 4. The radio station is oriented at the minorities of estonia, mainly russians. There are 340 000 russians, and other foreign people in estonia (our total population being 1.4 million). 180 000 listen to Radio 4. That makes R4 basically the highest rated radio station in estonia, by number of listeners from the orientation group (minorities aging 12-74). They've been doing that for 10 years now (all of which has my mother been in charge), with a yearly budget (or at least, what they get from the goverment) being 6,5 million EEK
. That's... 400 000 USD. They have kept the ratings that high, producing high-quality programme, for ten years. Eleventh years budget has been assigned 1 000 000 EEK
. that's 60 000 USD. For that money they cannot even afford firing the staff. And for what reason would the goverment cut the funding on the primary source of information on the minorities (polls have shown that 2% of minorities watch estonian television while 86% of minorities listen to estonian radio. Mainly R4). And for what reason would the leading party, who got 60% of their votes last time from minorities do such an act 4 months before the next elections.
Do you see the logic? I don't
