Television statiojn owners presenting their request to the Albania Audiovisual Media Authority on Monday. Photo: AMA

The owners and directors of four local and two national television stations in Albania have proposed a law which would provide them with tax money to finance their operations.

The proposal, presented on Monday, calls for direct tax financing of privately-owned stations, using the television-set tax that Albanians pay through their utility bills, which currently goes to the public broadcaster.

Presenting their proposals, the private station owners said the money will help them to "boost investigative journalism" and "fight fake news".

Currently, Albanians pay about 1.2 billion leks (9.2 million euros) per year through the TV-set tax. The director of the public broadcaster Thoma Gellci proposed earlier this year to increase the tax "by 50 per cent".

The private stations want to have 50 per cent of this revenue distributed among them according to their market share.

The owners promised to run public awareness advertisement campaigns against drink-driving and for HIV awareness in return for the money.

They also demanded that the public broadcaster be forbidden to air advertisements.

The public broadcaster’s ad revenues were just 500,000 euros in 2017 but the owners of private television stations claim this is unfair competition since most of the public broadcaster’s funding comes from taxes.

The television market in Albania has many operators, but a few control most of the audiences and revenues.

Revenues for the main free-to-air channels were 32 million euros in 2016, of which the two biggest, Top Channel and TV Klan, took 67 per cent. All of the companies are family-owned businesses.

Links between politics and media owners pose a major concern for the freedom of media and media plurality in the country, analysts argue.