The Commission also notes that paragraph 50 of the report states that ‘As the National Audit Office has not examined the foreign public service broadcasters’ accounts in any greater detail, there may be differences between those broadcasters’ activities and between the calculation methods used for individual accounting items. What this means is that the costs used, and the unit costs derived from these, do not necessarily pertain to identical activities and that they have not necessarily been calculated according to identical accounting principles. As a result, unit cost levels do not lend themselves to ready comparison. Because the purpose of including the foreign broadcasters is to compare productivity “development”, rather than the level of productivity as such, the National Audit Office has taken the view that the data pertaining to the foreign television broadcasters may nevertheless, in its current form, serve as a reasonable indicator of development’. Paragraph 53 of the report also points out that ‘The National Audit Office has not examined the causes of the above developments in any greater detail because, as stated above, the development of the stated unit costs is dependent on the content of the broadcasters’ programme offering and because the analysis presupposes, at any rate, that the quality has remained unchanged. As this presents an immediate difficulty in terms of drawing comparisons between the public service broadcasters concerned, the findings of the analysis should be interpreted with some caution. In this respect, the Ministry of Culture has stated that it agrees with the described unit cost developments and that the comparison of DR’s, TV2’s and the foreign public service broadcasters’ unit costs should be interpreted with some caution’.
Komisija tudi ugotavlja, da je v odstavku 50 navedeno, da „zato, ker državni urad za revizijo ni bolj podrobno preveril računovodskih izkazov tujih javnih radijskih in televizijskih postaj, lahko obstajajo razlike med dejavnostmi teh postaj in med metodami izračunavanja, ki so se uporabljale za posamezne računovodske postavke. To pomeni, da ni nujno, da se uporabljeni stroški in iz njih izpeljani stroški na enoto nanašajo na identične dejavnosti ter da so bili izračunani glede na identična računovodska načela. Zato ravni stroškov na enoto same po sebi niso ustrezne za primerjavo. Ker je namen vključevanja tujih postaj primerjava ‚razvoja‘ produktivnosti, ne pa raven produktivnosti kot taka, je državni urad za revizijo zavzel stališče, da lahko podatki, ki se nanašajo na tuje televizijske postaje, služijo kot kazalnik razvoja.“ Odstavek 53 poročila tudi poudarja, da „državni urad za revizijo ni podrobno proučil vzrokov zgoraj navedenih dogodkov, ker je razvoj navedenih stroškov na enoto, kot je navedeno zgoraj, odvisen od vsebine programov, ki jih ponujajo postaje, in ker analiza na kateri koli stopnji predpostavlja, da je kakovost ostala nespremenjena. Ker to predstavlja neposredno težavo na ravni izvajanja primerjav med zadevnimi javnimi radijskimi in televizijskimi postajami, je treba ugotovitve analize razlagati z določeno mero previdnosti. V zvezi s tem je ministrstvo za kulturo navedlo, da se strinja z opisanim razvojem stroškov na enoto ter da je treba primerjavo stroškov DR, TV2 in tujih javnih radijskih in televizijskih postaj na enoto razlagati z določeno mero previdnosti.“