Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Sorry Tim the money is being spent

Fascinating press release hits my desk today.
"EuroNews chosen by the European Union to provide better info about Europe"

Interestingly the contract that they have won is, I understand for approximately 28 million euros, and is to last for 5 years. Nice cash if you can get it. But hold on their, what's this in the small print ?
"Notice of contract "Production and multilingual simultaneous broadcasting of television news programmes about the European Union (negotiated procedure PN/2004-55/B)"

It also claims that the contract was won under "a competitive procedure". Now given that the Commission propaganda vehicle is the only broadcaster that is involved in "simultaneous broadcasting of television news programmes about the European Union" then I would love to know who wrote the tender, how many people were involved in the competitive nature of the tender process, and what they regard as value for money?
They claim that they are "the number one international news channel in Europe, with eight million viewers daily". I would like to see the figures for CNN and BBC World, I suspect that they can accurately claim to best those figures. Dammit Fox news probably has higher figures.

The only people who watch EuroNews are people stuck in faceless hotel rooms, I have never heard a single case of somebody deliberately watching the ruddy channel.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Come along, we can do better than that?

Who is on the board of directors of EuroNews? Who are the main shareholders? What access do they have to the eurinals who make the decision? Do any of them, for example, share a holiday villa in Tuscany?

These might useful lines of inquiry...

Gawain Towler said...

Hew
Fair point, I will see if I can find anything out.

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