RTP-Azores is celebrating its 50th anniversary today, a remarkable achievement that should make the Azoreans proud, given what it represents in the journey towards autonomy for our islands over the last half-century.

After all this time, public television service in the Azores needs to be rethought, as it should have been, and disconnected from a problem that has affected its expansion since its inception: emancipation from Lisbon.

Back in 1992, with the arrival of cable television, the issue was widely debated. Still, it was not until 2003 that the first studies were carried out for the profound restructuring that was expected.

The Board of Directors of RTP hired Boston Consulting to carry out the study, with its experts combing through all of RTP-Açores’ activities during the several days they spent here.

The final report is a eulogy to the “high versatility of the operational functions” of the regional channel’s staff, with “limited support structures,” and recommends the construction of a new building with new news and production studios, which would include RDP-Açores and the LUSA agency.

Land was identified, regional authorities were contacted to collaborate on the project, and its launch was already on paper, drawn up by the company’s engineers and architects, in an investment that would pay for itself with the sale of the RTP-Açores and RDP-Açores buildings.

The centralists in Lisbon did not like the idea. The project was scrapped, with the immediate appointment of someone who came to reduce the regional channel’s activity to a minimum, sell everything that could be sold (even the museum building of the former Emissor Regional dos Açores did not escape) and “canning” regional television in the radio building, where it is today, with only one news studio, none for production, and orders to reduce staff. All with the support of the Regional Government at the time, and some failed politicians from the PSD-Azores.

The administrative emancipation from Lisbon thus became more difficult.

The re-founding of RTP-Azores, as we proposed at the time, continues to involve a reconfiguration of public service funding in the region and a new management model, more studios for the production of regional content, full-time correspondents on all the islands, and the necessary means for content production, even with the collaboration of external production companies, which contribute to an entirely regional programming schedule, without absurd “windows,” reflecting the reality of the nine islands and our diaspora.

The mission of the Azorean channel is to provide an entirely regional public service, without budgetary interference from Lisbon, continuing with the mandatory support from the State and including a responsibility on the part of the Region’s own governing bodies.

This is not a question of transferring costs, but of broadening the concept of public service, with funding that would involve the direct transfer of compensatory allowances from the State to the management of the regional channel, plus the corresponding revenue from audiovisual fees, which are always retained in Lisbon, and the Region’s contribution, included in the Regional Budget.

Until there is political will for this emancipation, we will remain “tied” to the complete management of the channel, despite the enormous effort of its workers and the high-quality work led by its director, Rui Goulart.

Fifty years on, RTP-Açores continues to prove that it is one of the main unifying forces of Azorean identity, a vehicle for knowledge and a factor of unity among the Azorean community.

As one of the best presidents of RTP ever, the late João Soares Louro, understood so well, “after the sea, religion, and language, it was television that contributed most to the unity and identity of the Azorean region. TV in the Azores has helped transform the history of this region, becoming an agent of its rediscovery (if the term is legitimate) both internally and externally, in a dual investment where diversity and unity, the values of the past and the future coexist.”

Congratulations to RTP-Açores, and may it continue to strive to be a television station that is increasingly… “our television station.”

Osvaldo Cabral/Former Director of RTP-Açores

(Açoriano Oriental, August 10, 2025)

Osvaldo Cabral is an emeritus journalist with over 40 years of experience covering the Azores. He was the director of RTP-A (the public television station) and the Diário dos Açores newspaper. He is a regular columnist for many newspapers throughout the Azores and the Diaspora.

NOVIDADES will feature occasional opinion pieces from various leading thinkers and writers in the Azores, providing the diaspora and those interested in the current state of the Azores with insight into the diverse opinions on some of the archipelago’s key issues.

Translated to English as a community outreach program from the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) and the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department (MCLL).