Albanian Radio and Television (RTSH)

Albanian Radio and Television (Radio Televizioni Shqiptar, RTSH) is Albania’s public service broadcaster, a public, non-profit legal person operating under Law 97/2013 on audiovisual media and a statute approved by the Assembly. Radio Tirana was inaugurated on 28 November 1938, and the first television broadcast in Albania took place on 26 April 1960. According to the European Broadcasting Union’s diagnostic report of January 2026, RTSH operates 16 television channels and had 1,045 employees; it also runs 11 radio services. Eni Vasili has been Director General since April 2025.

Media assets

Television: 16 channels, including RTSH 1, RTSH 2, RTSH 24 and RTSH Sport, and the parliamentary channel RTSH Kuvend. SafeJournalists reported in September 2025 that RTSH 3, RTSH Plus and RTSH Agro had been removed from terrestrial and satellite platforms.

Radio: Radio Tirana 1, Radio Tirana 2, Radio Tirana 3, Radio Tirana Klasik, Radio Tirana Fëmijë, Radio Tirana Jazz, the external service Radio Internacional, and regional stations in Gjirokastra, Korça, Kukës and Shkodra.

Digital: the rtsh.al news and information portal and RTSH TANI, the broadcaster’s streaming platform offering live television and radio, programme guides and catch-up services.

Ownership and governance

RTSH is governed by a Steering Council (Këshilli Drejtues) of a chair and 10 members, which elects the Director General. Candidates are proposed by media, academic, legal, human rights and disability organisations; party members and recent parliamentary candidates are excluded. The Assembly’s media committee shortlists candidates so as to keep a balance of five members supported by the majority and five supported by the opposition, and the Assembly elects them. The Director General serves a five-year term. The Assembly assesses RTSH’s activity each year by resolution.

On 13 June 2023 the Council unanimously elected Alfred Peza, a Socialist Party member of parliament from 2013 to 2017 and the party’s secretary for media relations until September 2021, as Director General. Peza resigned on 6 September 2024 without giving a reason; the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) noted that he resigned following concerns raised about the positions he held with the Socialist Party. Aurora Polo, whom Peza had appointed deputy director general, then ran RTSH in an acting capacity.

The Council suspended the contest for a new Director General on 30 January 2025, and on 17 February the Assembly dismissed the entire Council, citing irregularities in the selection process. The European Commission’s 2025 report on Albania found that the Assembly had done so in breach of applicable legislation, and that the political background of some of the new members raised concern. The Assembly elected a new Council on 17 March 2025, with Fatjon Hoxhalli as chair. On 25 April 2025 the Council elected the journalist Eni Vasili as Director General with 7 of 11 votes in the second round.

With support from the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the Council approved a restructuring of RTSH in April 2026. The EBU’s diagnostic report identified rationalisation of the channel and service portfolio as the main mechanism for freeing capacity for the transformation, and a task force on a 2026–2030 transformation strategy held its first meeting on 18 September 2026.

Source of funding and budget

RTSH is financed by a licence fee, state budget funding and its own revenue from advertising, the lease of transmission infrastructure and other services. The licence fee of ALL 1,200 a year, ALL 100 a month, has not been revised since 2011; it is collected through electricity bills by the distribution company OSHEE, which retains 10 per cent.

The licence fee provided about 56 per cent of revenue in 2019, with about 30 per cent from the state budget. RTSH’s revenue was ALL 2.23 billion in 2021, when the licence fee provided 61 per cent. Advertising revenue fell from ALL 217.1 million in 2022 to ALL 72 million in 2023. In 2024 revenue was ALL 2.24 billion, 81 per cent of plan, with ALL 673.5 million from the state budget. In 2025 RTSH reported revenue of ALL 2.36 billion against expenditure of ALL 2.50 billion; the licence fee provided 56.5 per cent of total financing and the state budget ALL 810.2 million. The same report records that RTSH owes the Ministry of Finance ALL 1.75 billion (EUR 18.0 million) for a digitalisation loan.

SafeJournalists reported on 4 August 2025 that Vasili had asked the Ministry of Finance for EUR 2 million in emergency support, putting liabilities from past mismanagement at about EUR 8 million, including more than EUR 730,000 for unlawful dismissals. By September 2025 journalists and external contributors had gone unpaid for up to five months. The Council chair put the debt at about EUR 8 million in October 2025, including ALL 228 million in obligations from 84 court cases over dismissals. RTSH’s 2025 report states that, despite its requests for more budget funding, the Ministry approved only a top-up to align the pay of orchestra musicians from October 2025. Separately from the digitalisation loan, RTSH reported in June 2026 that its outstanding obligations had fallen from ALL 442 million at the end of June 2025 to ALL 321 million at the end of May 2026, a reduction of about 27 per cent.

The state budget allocates RTSH ALL 890 million for 2026, as amended on 30 June, with ALL 840 million projected for 2027. The Supreme State Audit Institution’s audit of January 2020 to June 2023, dated December 2024, found ALL 27.5 million in economic damage from fees paid on top of salaries to 91 staff for work within their regular duties in 2022 and 2023.

Editorial independence

More than 150 employees were dismissed under Peza, and RTSH had paid more than ALL 63 million for lost court cases by October 2025. The European Federation of Journalists said in July 2023 that it was alarmed by the wave of arbitrary dismissals. In January 2025 the acting director dismissed the RTSH 1 news editor, Olsjan Laskaj. The Assembly’s resolution on RTSH’s 2023 activity asked that the composition and activity of the Council of Viewers and Listeners be made transparent. When the Assembly’s media committee approved the draft resolution on RTSH’s 2025 activity in June 2026, its co-chair said that institutional and editorial independence should be strengthened; the Assembly adopted the resolution on 16 July by 77 votes to 1.

During its monitoring of the campaign for the parliamentary election of 11 May 2025, ODIHR found that RTSH devoted 45 per cent of its news coverage of electoral contestants to the Socialist Party and 41 per cent to the opposition alliance led by the Democratic Party. Its final report also concluded that the appointment procedures for the public broadcaster lack safeguards for de facto independence, and recommended its depoliticisation. The European Commission’s 2025 report found that procedural irregularities in the election of a new Director General had increased concerns over RTSH’s independence, and its 2026 rule of law chapter on Albania states that the limited independence of the public broadcaster is a concern.

On 16 January 2026 Prime Minister Edi Rama told Socialist Party members of parliament that all options for RTSH, including final closure and privatisation, were open, and that the public broadcaster would not receive a single lek of taxpayers’ money until it deserved it. He later said his position had been distorted. The Association of Albanian Journalists warned that refusing public funding as a tool of political pressure posed a serious risk to public media independence. On 9 February 2026 Media Freedom Rapid Response partners and Albanian media organisations called for RTSH’s funding to be safeguarded from political conditionality.

AI and digital policy

No RTSH policy on artificial intelligence was located at this update. A study of public media in the Western Balkans found that RTSH’s Code of Ethics dates from 2016 and does not refer to artificial intelligence. RTSH reported on 9 October 2026 that the OSCE had held a three-day training for its staff on artificial intelligence in fact-checking and on copyright.

Classification rationale

RTSH is classified as Captured Public/State-Managed (CaPu) because its governance has been subject to substantial political influence, including the appointment of a former ruling-party official as Director General, extensive contested staff dismissals and parliamentary intervention in the composition of its Steering Council. International monitoring organisations have repeatedly questioned its institutional and editorial independence, while political pressure over public financing has continued. The reforms initiated in 2026 have not yet established that these vulnerabilities have been resolved.

October 2026