Officials pay for programs on a cable television network that the municipality’s residents do not have. So why exactly does the municipality’s wójt pay for it? We tried to solve the mystery by asking the municipality secretary Iwonę Przybylską. The conversation had three acts.
Act one
Iwona Przybylska firmly claimed that the municipality’s residents watch the materials paid for by the municipality online. We replied that the viewership of Azart-Sat materials is low. We even counted the views: over the last 30 days, one video averaged 16 views. Some programs have no views at all; the best of them had 118.
Act two
Iwona Przybylska changed tack and said that the municipality’s residents watch cable television in the homes of their family members living in Bolesławiec, during family visits. We asked where this information came from. Did she have any evidence? Iwona Przybylska did not answer the question.
Act three
The municipality secretary began asking why we were interested in the matter. She concluded that we were trying to prove that her spending on promoting the municipality was pointless.
The fact is that there is no cable television in homes within the municipality. Almost nobody watches Azart-Sat materials online, as anyone can check for themselves. This may mean that Iwona Przybylska is indeed pointlessly spending thousands of zlotys on promoting the municipality.
It should be added that the promotional programs paid for by the municipality in 2015 are owned by Azart-Sat and were merely linked to on the municipality’s websites. There were only five of them (sic!). Each episode cost taxpayers over PLN 3,500. Today, they are unavailable because the television station changed its website. Only one of the old episodes can be watched in the corridor of the municipality’s headquarters at ul. Teatralnej. It is played on a television hanging on the wall.
What do you think of this kind of promotion?