The world of communication is immersed in a profound and complex process of transformation and all the media, both large and small, are looking for their model to be able to move forward. However, there will not be a single model that will be useful for everyone, and each one must follow its own path; on the one hand, diversifying the sources of income, and on the other hand, deepening the knowledge of its own audience and adapting both its offer and its supports to better connect with this community. In other words: it is necessary to guarantee the survival of the projects and, with it, to strive to increase the social impact and/or personal impact. And yes, this path that each media must follow is complex, because it affects, among other things, all the work activities of the projects, but it becomes even more difficult, because in this historical moment in which these new models are trying to create and stabilize, the playing field itself is in motion, in addition to an ever faster movement.
If the year 2023 was the year in which the first general models of artificial intelligence were presented, the year 2024 can be considered as the year to give practical uses to these artificial intelligences. The process had already begun, but at a lower level, less generalized. Many things and work practices will change in the short term and not only in the field of communication and/or the media.
These last years have been difficult years for the Basque media, as the aforementioned general context of transformation has been accompanied by an enormous increase in the price of several elements essential for the daily activity of the media. Paper, electricity, fuels, rents, services... everything has increased significantly and, as we have said, in the midst of the profound process of transformation that the world of communication has been going through in recent decades.
Well, this being the context, from the association we have made a special effort to access more resources for the Basque media, giving absolute priority to this action and, as we will see later, this effort, at least in some areas, has given me its fruit
Advances in Traditional Grants
It has been six years since the Basque media sector agreed with the Basque Government and the three Provincial Councils on a new system of subsidies for media financing, and for several months we have been working to define a new model for the coming years. The sector valued the new system as a step in the right direction at the time, but over time it has shown significant deficiencies and it was essential to adapt to new times. As a production-based model, it often hindered the media from taking new steps to adapt their projects to new consumer habits.
In addition, the increases in the price of paper, electricity, fuel and/or different services that have taken place in recent years have almost wiped out the progress made in 2019 and, as a result, the benefits that the new model had to bring, the improvement of working conditions and the stabilization of working groups, were once again compromised.
We must not forget that the Basque media play a strategic role in the process of normalization of the Basque language and that their contribution is essential for citizens to make their daily life in Basque. In addition, since Basque is a less common language in the process of standardisation, the support of public institutions is essential for the Basque media. In fact, without this support they can hardly make progress, basically because the Basque community is smaller than it should be and this has a direct impact on the different sources of income that communication projects work with.
For all these reasons, at the Mesa de Medios, with the public institutions, we launched a process of rethinking the subsidy model for the period 2025-2027. A subcommittee was created to guide the process and the topics and timetable for discussion were agreed, which has been the most important activity of the association in recent months.
In this process of rethinking the call for the 2025-2027 period, we have also had the support of, among other things, the international consultancy Innovation Media Consulting, and we have carried out pilot experiences in one local and another national media, in order to better position these two media in the face of the different current challenges and to draw lessons that the sector can be useful from these experiences. Likewise, and in line with what has been said previously, these two pilot experiences have also been used to extract ideas that may be of interest for the 2025-2027 call.
The new system will establish minimum requirements for participation in the call, including minimum production measures, but in general, the system will not, like the previous model, be based on production; in some ways, it can be said that it is liberated from production. The new call model aims to promote the development of Basque media and, in this sense, as steps are taken to adapt one’s project to the current needs (audience knowledge, innovation...), in addition to guaranteeing a minimum of support, the possibility of accessing additional supports is expanded. Likewise, the new call will take into account the communication projects and will not differentiate between the different groups according to the supports. The different products and/or supports produced by each communication project will be considered together. Thus, at the time of the call, each communication project must present its planning for the coming years, specifying what it is, what it does, what it wants to do and what kind of team and resources it needs to do so. Part of this total budget will be covered by grants. Getting more and more points in the valuation of the plan will increase its public coverage, understanding that the actions that allow the achievement of these additional points have an added expense behind them, and in order to guarantee those who want to develop them the impulse to develop them.
Much work has been done to agree on the new system and an increase of resources is also planned for the coming years that will allow the implementation of the new model in the budgets of the Basque Government for the year 2025. Therefore, we can say that the immense work of the last two years has borne fruit in order to allow the development of the sector in the following years and, in this sense, the work and attitude of the managers and technicians of the Vice-Ministry of Language Policy has been appreciated. In the absence of final specifications, we hope that the new grant model will be a significant temporary step forward for the sector.
Also in Navarre, a reflection on the Basque media has been developed in a subcommittee of the Navarre Basque Council and, among other things, a report has been written that highlights the needs of the sector. The report makes it clear that the work of the Basque media is also essential in Navarre and that the current support of public institutions is not sufficient and, therefore, the final objective would be to launch in the near future a process similar to the one mentioned above to try to agree on the model of the Navarre call for support of the Basque media. In recent years the budget allocated by the Government of Navarre to support the Basque media has been increasing, but the number is still far from the needs of the Basque media in Navarre and, more importantly, the current model of call has significant deficiencies in promoting the development and/or modernization of the media. In Navarre it is also essential to adapt the model of the call to the new reality of the Basque media and this will be the most important challenge that the sector will face in the coming months in Navarre.
In the Northern Basque Country, public subsidies for the Basque media are distributed mainly by the Basque Public Body and in the last three years the number has been frozen, after suffering a reduction of 1.5% in 2022. In fact, while the amount destined to support the Basque media in 2021 was 537,500 euros, from 2022 onwards it is 529,500 euros. In a context in which the media are immersed in a profound transformation process and in these years in which paper, electricity, transport and other services have become enormously expensive, instead of increasing subsidies, they are frozen, with all that this implies.
But the problems don’t end there and the end of 2024 has brought troubling news to the radio field in particular. In the budget debate for 2025, the French State planned to reduce the funding of local radio stations by 35%, reducing five jobs, which raised red alarms among Basque radio stations in the Northern Basque Country. In fact, as we have already said, EEP is the main public financier of the Basque media, but not the only one. The French State also supports the Basque media through other channels, including Basque radio stations, and allocates around 400,000 euros from the FSER fund to Basque radio stations. In addition, from the same fund, every five years, additional support for the renovation of the equipment is also provided. In the end, the representatives of the Basque radio stations held several meetings with the deputies and senators of the Northern Basque Country and with those responsible for the corresponding ministry, which seem to have managed to postpone the decision, but the situation is very worrying.
Alava, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa recover the extraordinary call for grants
In 2023, there were no extraordinary calls for grants in Álava, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa, because it is said that the subject was being studied in the European Union, but this was done last year, with a different purpose or objective: “To minimize the negative impact of generative artificial intelligence (AAG) in the creation, elaboration and publication of content by professional media that provide daily information”.
As you know, the Basque Government distributed extraordinary grants for two years, in 2021 and 2022, to various media in Álava, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa, with the aim of mitigating the damage caused to the media by the pandemic in the first year (directly, without calling) and guaranteeing the right to information and diversity of opinion in the second (by calling). There was no such thing in 2023 and it was not good news for the media. Despite the fact that in these two years more than 9 out of 10 euros were allocated to media published in Spanish, this extraordinary support was important for the Basque media.
In 2021, the government distributed 5 million euros and only 2 Basque media were taken into account. We had meetings with the heads of the different departments and in 2022 they put in a million more, increasing the bag by 20%, and they took into account 9 Basque media, but again the amount received by the Basque media was very low (it did not reach 8%). The absence of this extraordinary subsidy in 2023 added a point of difficulty both to the 9 Basque media that received this support the previous year and to those that have received nothing so far, but finally the new call has arrived.
At the end of July 2024, the Basque Government published the aforementioned special call for grants, apparently with all the guarantees of the European Union and the deadline for submitting applications was limited to August, with all that this implies. In the stock exchange, an additional 1 million was forecast, totaling 7 million euros, 6 million for the general media and 1 million for the local media and in this last line two sub-lines were forecast according to the audience. In addition to this, the call included some interesting measures to prevent a single media from taking a significant part of the bag and to allow more distributed support to occur, but other requests from the sector were not taken into account: on the one hand, the calculations regarding the audience were general, not according to the potential audiences of each one; on the other hand, as in the previous ones, the thematic media excluded from the call.
The resolution was published at the end of November and, as in previous years, most of the support went to the Erdal media. However, due to the truth, it should be noted that in the latter the distribution was not as unequal as in previous years, since 21.5% of the total was for the Basque media. In the same way, in the last year more Basque media have been supported than in previous years and this is also noteworthy: in the first year only two were supported, in the next 9 and in the last 17. Finally, it should also be noted that almost all the Basque media that have been accepted have received more support than in the previous year, in some cases significantly more.
But what has been said, although there have been improvements, once again several Basque media have been excluded from the call, all the topics and others. In addition, once again, the same obvious gap has been repeated: the audience that is so important to calculate the amount of aid, has been made according to the general audience, not according to the potential audience itself and, of course, this hurts the Basque media.
We will have to continue to influence this as well. On the one hand, so that this special call for grants, so important for the development of the media, becomes habitual, that is, to be published every year; on the other hand, that all the Basque media have the right to participate and that the calculations are made according to the potential audiences.
No change in the distribution of institutional advertising
While in the field of subsidies the music is good, in the field of institutional advertising the head is always the head, that is, the distribution continues to be very unbalanced in favor of the Erdal media and to the detriment of the Basque ones.
According to the study carried out by Luz in December 20181, while 92% (5.8 million euros) of the expenditure of the Basque Government on advertising was received by the media, the amount received by the Basque media did not reach half a million. Well, last year we were able to access new data because the engineer Jaime Gómez-Obregón created the search engine https://gobiernovasco.marketing based on the annual reports published by the Basque Government to inform about advertising campaigns. The weekly Luz carried out a new study using this instrument2 in December 2023 and the result was as revealing as the one obtained at the time: Between 2018-2022, 93% of advertising spending by the Basque Government went to the media.
The data for 2023 from this annual report, which the Government publishes to inform Parliament about its advertising campaigns, are also already included in the aforementioned search engine, and anyone who wishes can make more up-to-date searches, but unfortunately will see that the aforementioned reality remains intact.
In fact, the imbalance is obvious and without much logic, although both those responsible for this division and the main beneficiary insist on it. They say that the distribution is so unequal because the audiences of the Erdal media are greater than those of the Basque. But in this view of both the public institutions and the advertising agencies under their contracts, there is a flagrant mistake: they measure the Basque media according to the playing field of the Erdal media and this is not correct. The audiences of the Basque media are measured by the general audience, not by their potential audience and, of course, by doing so, the results are much lower than those of the Basque media. In fact, if you take into account the knowledge of the Basque language of the population, the audiences of the Basque media are very, really significant, and in some areas better than those of the Basque media. We have repeatedly explained this important issue to those in charge of the public institutions, but they continue to include all the media in the same sack and do not include corrective criteria in the case of the Basque media.
These have been, above all, the most important elaborations of the best needs of the sector made during the year 2024 by the association Hekimae, which aspires to be a tool of the sector, but as we will see below, the Basque media have continued to take steps both to better reach their target audience and to reach more target audience.
The context of the Basque media
There are many and varied steps taken by the Basque media to adapt their activity to the new reality in the field of Basque media during 2024 and it is impossible to mention all of them in this section, so we will limit ourselves to mentioning a sample of this general process, with the aim of helping to represent in some way the path that the sector in general is taking.
To begin with, we must highlight the steps that have been taken in the use of neural translators based on artificial intelligence. Previously, there were Basque media that were beginning to incorporate these new tools into their work, but in 2024 we can say that there has been a certain generalization. The magazine Elhuyar, for example, launched a test to provide various Basque contents of its portal in other languages. The contents can be read in Spanish, French, English, Catalan or Galician, but you can not only read them, but also listen to them if you choose one of the nine synthetic voices that are offered. Likewise, since May of last year, several media outlets of the Tokikom group have also begun to translate the line and the introduction of some of the content created by them in the newsroom from Basque to other languages. Initially, only Spanish, French and English could be selected, but it is also possible to choose the Catalan and Galician days. In the case of the Tokikom group media, it is also possible to listen to the text, in this case being able to choose between two synthetic voices. Along the same lines, Luz has also carried out a test through the neural translator, offering the possibility of translating the contents of its digital portal into English, Catalan and/or Galician. In this last case, this test was initiated within the framework of the Rodeo project of the Sociolinguistic Cluster and should have been for a month, but they have found that the step taken is interesting and have decided to maintain the translation option. Both the Business Administration and the Irutxulo Word have also participated in this project of the aforementioned Cluster, but the use of the translator has been internal.
Another noteworthy trend among the Basque media is the expansion of the podcast offer. This phenomenon, which we also highlighted in last year’s yearbook, continues to gain strength and there are more and more Basque media that are working on podcasts to enrich their offer.
The news, for example, expanded its podcast offer last year, including the launch of the Hizlandia session on literature in collaboration with the Kultur az cooperative, together with the Bada youth media in the Basque Country, working on a videopodcast called Urubia and offering a podcast on language called Nada es fiesta. And of course, he has also continued to offer new seasons of podcasts that he had previously developed. Hamaika Televisión also renewed its podcast offer last year and, among other things, Zozoa developed a videopodcast to the crow to address the different fears or taboos that are common in the crowd. In the same vein, at the end of the year, the magazine Chestnut has launched a new videopodcast called Gosex, which deals with issues related to sex among young people. The radio station Nago also launched the second season of the fictional podcast called Labanka DA in December and recently Dantzan.eus has also begun to offer previews in this profession, specifically the podcast Contrapas about Basque dance. The Klak Youngon Voice project offered a new podcast in our time last year.
But the media isn’t the only one offering podcasts. The AEK also curated the podcast session of 22 episodes in 2024, with the aim of recovering the history of Corr; the Euskalmet agency launched the podcast called Troposfera, with the aim of providing different keys to the weather and climate; the Women’s House of Zarautz also developed the podcast called Voices of Toldope to interview outstanding women of the locality in different areas, among others. It has been found that it can be an effective way to communicate with recipients or customers, and more and more people are starting to take advantage of this type of support or channel.
On the other hand, it is worth mentioning the decision of several Basque media outlets to stop using certain social networks. The power that multinational companies such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta –owner of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp-, Microsoft and X have acquired is enormous and more and more are refusing to use the tools created by them. In our context Lights3 has been promoting the line of technology sovereignty for years and in this way they have stopped using different tools from Google (Youtube, Google Analytics...). They later decided to remove all references to toxic social networks from all their supports and now they have decided to abandon X and Facebook.
In the same vein, at the beginning of this year the Tokikom group4 decided to “stop feeding commercial social networks” because “they are becoming increasingly toxic wells” and there have been several group media that have taken this decision on board. They invite their community to use alternatives that do not depend on these multinationals and that are more open, taking advantage of initiatives such as Fediveroa5, which has been created in our context and offers different alternatives for this same purpose. It is not an easy decision, because it has also been a task for the Basque media for years to build and nurture their community in these social networks and, in some cases, they are still indispensable channels to reach certain target groups. Therefore, several Basque media have begun to use these alternatives that are closer and open but, for the moment, without abandoning these other commercial ones, probably as a transition.
As you can see, the Basque media sector is not at a standstill, it is working to improve its offer and make it reach more friends by reorganizing their newsrooms, constantly forming working groups, testing new supports and products... Now more than ever, there is a need for a stronger impulse from public institutions and this has been the main work of the association in recent months, the acquisition of more resources for the development of the Basque media sector. Let"s see if we can all lay the groundwork for a new period.
1 https://www.argia.eus/argia-astekaria/2623/zortzi-milioi-euroren-banaketa-politikoa
2 https://www.argia.eus/argia-astekaria/2851/jaurlaritzaren-publizitate-banaketa
3 https://www.argia.eus/albistea/zergatik-utzi-ditu-argiak-twitter-eta-facebook
4 https://tokikom.eus/2025/01/goazenlagunok/
5 https://fedibertsoa.eus/