swissinfo.ch spared additional budget cuts

Parliament has rejected additional cuts in the budget of the international offer of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC), including the multilingual platform swissinfo.ch. The House of Representatives on Tuesday threw out a proposal by its finance committee to reduce financial contributions by CHF2 million ($1.97 million) for the online services swissinfo.ch, tvsvizzera.it (in Italian) as well as for the television programmes of TV5Monde (in French) and 3sat (in German). The government currently pays CHF39 million annually to the four channels. The budget of swissinfo.ch, just under CHF18 million, would have been cut by up to CHF4 million, because any cuts in government subsidies leads to a reduction in funds from SBC. The House also narrowly dismissed a proposal to cut CHF300,000 in subsidies for the Swiss Review magazine, published by the Organisation of the Swiss Abroad. Swiss presence abroad During Tuesday’s debate, supporters of the budget cuts, notably ...