RTÉ in regulation row
Oireachtas Committee hears complaints about RTÉ, funding and regulation. Hilary Curley reports
RTÉ has consistently lost viewers over the last number of years, falling by over 12 percent, despite a doubling of government funding since 1998, according to James Morris, chairperson of TV3. RTÉ is not offering value for money or fulfilling its public service broadcast remit, he said and Irish broadcasting is stagnating because of RTE's dominant market position and the current broadcasting regulations.
His remarks were made during a review of the broadcasting legislation by the Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Marine and Natural Resources on 13 July. Several of the organisations and individuals involved in the industry in Ireland made submissions.
Most of the participants welcomed a proposal for a new independent regulator of Irish broadcasting, but there was disagreement on who should be this regulator and what its role would be.
The Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) currently fulfils the role of content regulator for the one commercial station, TV3, and it is responsible for licensing new TV and radio services. The Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Dermot Ahern has proposed that the BCI would be the regulatory body generally, responsible also for RTÉ.
RTÉ and the trade unions oppose this on he grounds that historically the BCI has been the advocate of commercial broadcasting. RTÉ claims it is required to ensure that all of their programmes are subtitled while TV3 has a subtitling requirement for only 60 percent of its programmes. The BCI has allowed 65 per cent of independent commercial radio stations to forgo the requirement to broadcast 20 per cent news and current affairs, further evidence of its favour for commercial broadcasting, RTÉ claimed.
It was pointed out Sky News Ireland which is targeted at an Irish audience does not have to comply with the Irish broadcasting regulations such as the Children's Advertising Code. In fact, none of the 11 channels that broadcast in Ireland are subject to Irish regulation.
Independent producers of television, film and animation looked for a greater proportion of the licence fee to be ring-fenced for Irish productions. They were also critical of RTÉ's insistence on claiming copyright to independent productions after they had been broadcast on RTÉ.
Cathal Goan, Director General of RTÉ responded: "There is no question of RTÉ denying (independent producers) the opportunity to benefit from their work but when a programme is 100 per cent fully paid for out of the public pocket, then this has to be taken into consideration."
Local independent radio and TV channels complained that they had not seen a euro from the new €20m broadcasting fund that was to be introduced by the allocation of 5 per cent of the current broadcast license fee to independent productions. They claimed also that the fund, as it currently planed, was too restrictive.
A recurrent theme during the presentations was prospect of the switchover to digital from 2008. Ireland has been slow in preparing for this. More than a third of TV viewers here currently do not have a digital facility and may not be able to access the British channels from 2008, the target 'switch' date for the BBC.