Albanian TV in Deadlock Over New Chief

The board of the Albanian Public Broadcaster has failed to appoint a new director, avoiding the vote on Wednesday when the topic was excluded from the formal meeting agenda.

RTSH, which is financed by Albanian taxpayers, failed to appoint a top manager after three previous attempts failed in the last four years.

The mandate of the former director of RTSH ended in November 2011. Since then, the managing directors have all been temporary appointees.  

The election of a new manager is required by the OSCE office in Tirana as a precondition for starting its transformation into a "sustainable, independent and credible public broadcaster".

Addressing criticism that RTSH's reporting is biased in favour of governments, the two main parties in Albania adopted a new Law on Audiovisual Media on April 2013.

The law, pushed by the the OSCE and the European Commission offices in Tirana, requires a qualitative majority of the RTSH steering board to elect a new, consensual director, uninfluenced by political parties.

Under the media law, the 11-member RTSH steering board received a mandate from the parliament to elect the much-anticipated TV chief.

Years on, it appears impossible for the board to elect a director with a qualified majority.

During a visit to Tirana in May, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Dunja Mijatovic, urged the TV board to appoint the new director as soon as possible, to open the way for required structural reforms in the media outlet.

"The newly established steering board should now use the positive developments by appointing a director and moving ahead with much-needed structural reforms to strengthen the functioning and independence of the public service...