Fiji Broadcasting Corporation (FBC)

The Fiji Broadcasting Corporation (FBC) is Fiji’s state-owned national public broadcaster, tracing its origins to the Fiji Broadcasting Commission, which transmitted its first programme on 1 July 1954 under the call sign ZJV. The Commission was corporatised in January 1998 as Island Networks Corporation Limited under Fiji’s public-sector reform programme, and renamed Fiji Broadcasting Corporation Limited in June 1999. FBC launched its first free-to-air television channel, FBC TV, on 25 November 2011, and now operates three television channels alongside a network of six radio stations broadcasting in the country’s three principal languages (i-Taukei, Fiji Hindustani and English). The Corporation marked its 71st anniversary on 1 July 2025, an occasion that Board Chair Isoa Kaloumaira used to emphasise the broadcaster’s continuing transition toward financial self-sustainability.

Media assets

Television: FBC TV, FBC Sports and FBC 2; VITI+ streaming platform

Radio: Radio Fiji One and Bula FM (i-Taukei); Radio Fiji Two and Mirchi FM (Fiji Hindustani); Gold FM and 2day FM (English)

Ownership and governance

FBC is wholly government-owned and is overseen by a four-member Board of Directors appointed by the state shareholder. Following the December 2022 elections that brought Sitiveni Rabuka’s coalition government to power, the entire previous Board resigned and was swiftly replaced. Ajay Bhai Amrit was installed as Chair in January 2023; he was succeeded by Isoa Kaloumaira on 22 September 2023, following Amrit’s appointment as Fiji’s High Commissioner to Australia. Kaloumaira, a former Chairman of Fiji Television Limited and former CEO of the iTaukei Trust Fund, continues to serve as Chair as of mid-2026, alongside Board Directors Hemendra Nagin, Cecil Browne and Mereoni Duaibe.

At management level, the January 2023 dismissal of long-serving Chief Executive Riyaz Sayed-Khaiyum was followed by the appointment of Chief Financial Officer Vimlesh Sagar as Acting CEO, and then by the appointment of veteran broadcast executive Tarun Patel, previously Group CEO of Fiji Television Limited until 2014, as Acting CEO on 13 February 2023 and as permanent Chief Executive Officer on 21 April 2023. Patel remains in the role as of mid-2026.

The post-2022 governance reset has also included scrutiny of past financial-management practices. In July 2024, the Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption (FICAC) charged Sayed-Khaiyum with two counts of abuse of office and two counts of general dishonesty causing a loss, and Sagar with two counts of general dishonesty causing a loss. The charges related to the initiation of five legal proceedings on behalf of FBC without Board approval and to the procurement of a Volkswagen Touareg vehicle outside the broadcaster’s tender process. Subsequent proceedings have included withdrawals, refilings and a partial discharge, with matters continuing in the Suva Magistrates Court as of late 2025. The proceedings reinforce the relevance of financial oversight to the broadcaster’s governance trajectory but do not in themselves alter the 2026 typology.

Source of funding and budget

FBC was historically overwhelmingly state-funded through the Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) fee, a contractual mechanism through which the government compensates the broadcaster for delivering public-interest content across two of its radio stations and its television services. Under the previous administration, annual PSB allocations were substantially higher, with the broadcaster having received cumulatively about FJD 91.95 million in PSB fees over the previous decade.

The Rabuka government substantially restructured FBC’s funding model. In July 2023, FBC’s new Board volunteered a 40% reduction in its PSB allocation, taking the figure from the FJD 10.4 million originally provided in the 2023–24 budget down to FJD 6.2 million. Under the revised PSB framework, FBC’s direct PSB allocation has settled at roughly FJD 6.2–7.2 million annually, depending on VAT and tender-year treatment, under a three-year arrangement effective from 1 August 2023, while a separate share of PSB funding was opened to competitive tender by other media organisations under the Ministry of Finance, ending the exclusivity FBC had previously enjoyed. In a decision announced in July 2024, Prime Minister Rabuka described the change as designed to “ensure fairness and a level playing field in the media industry”.

The cumulative effect has been a fundamental shift in FBC’s revenue profile. According to testimony by CFO Vimlesh Sagar to the Standing Committee on Economic Affairs in September 2025, FBC’s reliance on PSB revenue has fallen from approximately 64% of total income to around 30%, with advertising and own-source commercial revenue now providing the majority share. The transition has nonetheless remained politically contested. In November 2025, Independent Opposition MP Alvick Maharaj criticised the government and FBC’s management for what he described as “hypocritical” PSB funding, arguing that FBC continued to classify PSB funds as commercial revenue in its financial statements rather than as a non-revenue government grant, a distinction with material implications for the broadcaster’s reported profitability and for parliamentary oversight of state subsidies.

Editorial independence

Under the previous administration of Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama (2006–2022), FBC operated alongside other Fijian media under heavy legal constraints, principally through the 2010 Media Industry Development Decree (made into law in 2018) and its supervisory body, the Media Industry Development Authority (MIDA). Press conditions have improved substantially since Rabuka assumed office in December 2022. Parliament repealed the Media Industry Development Act on 6 April 2023, eliminating the prison-sentence provisions that had been used to constrain editorial coverage.

After the repeal of MIDA, Fiji no longer has a dedicated media-content regulator comparable to ACMA in Australia or Ofcom in the United Kingdom; FBC remains subject to general broadcasting, corporate, electoral, defamation and contempt obligations, but no specialised statutory framework currently safeguards its editorial independence or constrains executive direction in editorial matters. No confirmed public evidence of direct executive intervention in FBC editorial decision-making during the 2025–26 review period was identified in the SMM review. Journalists and media observers consulted by RSF note that FBC enjoys greater day-to-day editorial autonomy than during the Bainimarama period. That autonomy nonetheless remains structurally dependent on the political environment rather than on legally guaranteed safeguards.

AI and digital policy

FBC maintains a digital presence centred on fbcnews.com.fj, with the VITI+ streaming platform for television and radio channels and social-media accounts on Facebook, X, Instagram and YouTube. No publicly available evidence of a formal FBC policy on AI-generated content, synthetic-media disclosure, or content provenance frameworks such as C2PA was identified in this review. A national AI governance framework, announced in March 2024 by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Communications Manoa Kamikamica as a component of Fiji’s cybersecurity strategy and the Fiji National Digital Strategy 2025–2030, remained in development through early 2026.

June 2026