The CNMG dream of becoming a commercially-viable State-funded-and-run TV station, governed by a fairly-independent board of directors, has not matched up to expectations. After an expensive start-up, which cost taxpayers a capital investment of some $135 million, CNMG followed quickly on the TTT path of posting losses.

The State-owned station recorded cumulative losses of over $25 million for the fist two years of operation, and last year posted a modest profit of $753,964 for the year ended December 31, 2007. But, in what appears to be a bit of subterfuge in its financial statements, it treated a $25.1 million Government grant as income.

In an apparent continuation of TTT-modelled State bailouts, the Manning administration gave CNMG a $25.1 million Government subsidy in 2007, but the financials, signed off by the chartered accounting firm of KPMG, listed that Government grant under the heading ’revenue’ as ’other income’.

An accounting sleight of hand, maybe, but the continued bailout of the State-run and funded TV station has raised questions about the State’s role in owning and running media houses. Observers say the existing output from CNMG is not much different from the other privately-owned commercial TV stations, and did not justify the continued reliance on the Treasury.

The State-funded TV station, according to the latest Media Tracking Survey, May 2007, shows CNMG with a market audience of 5.6 per cent, a decline over its previous year’s performance. CCN’s TV6 dominated the ratings with a market share of 56.4 per cent of local television stations.

Sources say the push for more Government control of the State’s media resources is not unrelated to a view inside the Manning Cabinet, that the privately-owned media were not on its side, and there was need for a more sympathetic outlet to get its story out.

Various ministers, the latest among them Health Minister Jerry Narace, have accused the independent media of bias, and of publishing and broadcasting news designed to make the Manning Government look bad. The incumbent Government has used the threat of State advertising dollars, a vital source of revenue for all of the country’s media, as a way of punishing critical media outlets and rewarding supportive ones.

But analysts say that Government’s need to control or spin information, and the desired outcome of that spin, might be a huge miscalculation. One former minister of information was said to have put it this way: ’What is the point of Government owning and funding a TV station, if nobody watches it.’