The EBU’s Ukrainian Member UA:PBC has celebrated its first anniversary as an independent public broadcaster following the merging of formerly separate radio and TV entities at an event in Kyiv jointly hosted by the Council of Europe.

During UA:PBC's first year a number of structural changes have been made including separating creative and administrative parts of the broadcaster. A process is also underway to make regional television and radio companies affiliated branches of UA:PBC supervised by elected managers and producers which is due to be completed by April this year. There has also been a standardization of production processes and technical modernization.

A new electronic document management system called iDoc has also been introduced to improve the efficiency of working processes and to ensure their transparency.

Since the creation of UA:PBC, television and radio news has been merged into a single department and three TV channels, UA: Pershyi, UA: Kultura and UA: Krym,  have begun broadcasting in widescreen.

The broadcaster’s Kyiv headquarters have also been opened to the public who can visit a new creative space, UA: HUB, where various events take place regularly: including film screenings, lectures and exhibitions.

Despite the positive changes, funding remains an issue for UA:PBC. Speakers at the event including Director General Zurab Alasania highlighted that despite a new law guaranteeing 1.5 billion hryvnas of funding (0.2% of the state budget) only half of that amount has been received.