By Baek Byung-yeul
KBS won a battle in its attempt to make television viewers pay more for its services, with the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) approving the hike after a heated debate last week.
But its real fight is with lawmakers, who are fully aware that the majority of viewers are unwilling to pay a penny more to a state-run broadcaster that continues to face questions about its impartiality and competitiveness.
KBS has been lobbying furiously to elevate the compulsory license fee, currently attached to the electricity bills of households that own TVs, which it claims is critical in maintaining its journalistic integrity in face of declining advertisement revenue.
At a full meeting last Friday, the KCC voted 3-2 in favor of raising the fee from the current 2,500 won to 4,000 won a month.
The outcome was predictable as the three members who voted in favor were nominated by the party of President Park Geun-hye, while the opposition is represented by one less member on the commission.
In exchange for the increased fees, the KCC required KBS to halt advertising by 2019.
The KCC decision is contingent upon approval by the National Assembly. The license fee has been fixed at 2,500 won since 1981. Lawmakers rejected the last two proposals for a rise in 2007 and 2010.
“We passed the bill presented by KBS’s board because we recognized the problems of a state-owned broadcaster being financially dependent on advertisements, which account for 41 percent of its revenue. That is 3 percent more than KBS gets in license fees,” KCC Chairman Lee Kyoung-jae told reporters after the meeting.
However, Kim Chung-sik, the opposition-picked KCC vice president who voted against the hike, accused the network of greed.
Despite calling for an elevated license fee, KBS has been reluctant to increase the share of revenue that goes to smaller state-run networks, such as the education channel EBS.
Currently, KBS allocates 3 percent of its license fee to EBS. If the fee is raised to 4,000 won, the KCC required KBS to raise EBS’s cut to 7 percent.
Kim, however, raised concerns that the increased share won’t be enough as EBS has been highly dependent on advertising revenue, which the government now plans to stop.
“If KBS and other state-run broadcasters are prevented from earning money through private advertisements in 2019, smaller broadcasters like EBS, which are only promised a paltry share of the license fee, will be irrevocably damaged,” he said.
The KCC decision in support of the fee hike touched off criticism from opposition parties and civic groups, which questioned why the regulator is backing KBS when the network is struggling to justify the increase.
With an average annual salary of 100 million won, KBS reporters are among the country’s highest-paid journalists. The company’s future business plans, which it submitted to the KCC prior to the meeting, did not include promises about cost reduction and lacked in detail on how it will lessen its reliance on advertisements.
It’s hard to say that 4,000 won a month would qualify as a crippling financial burden for households above the low-income bracket.
However, there is significant resistance toward the potential fee hike as critics have been questioning the network’s efforts to maintain its autonomy from government interference.
Under the conservative governments of Park and former President Lee Myung-bak, KBS has been constantly accused of promoting conservative political positions and biased reporting.
Cheong Wa Dae’s recent decision to name Min Kyung-wook, a longtime KBS news host, as its new spokesman also raised a few eyebrows as the presidential office announced the appointment before Min even notified the network about his intentions to leave.
Choi Min-hee, a lawmaker from the opposition Democratic Party, claimed that the hike would never win support from her party.
“The hike is an extension of the government plans to maintain stronger control over the media. KBS has been unabashedly pro-government in its reports and its disregard for impartiality makes it impossible to justify a higher fee,” Choi said.
Civic groups also condemned the KBS and KCC over the proposed fee hike.
“By granting an increased television license fee, KBS is seeking compensation for its conversion into a mouthpiece for President Park Geun-hye,” the Citizen’s Coalition for Democratic Media said in a statement.
A survey of 700 people by the Hyundae Research Institute showed more than 73 percent of respondents opposing the hike.
KBS has long claimed that a higher fee is critical to its attempts to become a quality provider of news programs and documentaries, and cited role models in Britain’s BBC and Japan’s NHK.
The BBC, of course, was the same network that refused to broadcast a speech by Winston Churchill on the ninth anniversary of the Battle of El Alamein in 1951, spending the slot playing movie music from “Desert Fox” instead.
The company was concerned that broadcasting the speech might give a favorable influence to Churchill’s Conservative Party ahead of that year’s general election.
The decision is remembered as a passionate commitment to impartiality, considering that Britain then was just six years removed from World War II. That is a level of commitment Koreans have learned not to expect from KBS.