Gráinne and the moguls

Gráinne Seoige is the face behind the take over
of the Irish media by foreign corporations

On Sunday 6 November, huge numbers of football fans crowded into pubs in Ireland to watch on Sky Sports the most-hyped match of the English Premiership season, Manchester United versus Chelsea. The match delivered on its hype with a famous victory for Manchester United, and Sky Sports also delivered in the excellence of its sports coverage, technically and editorially. Sky Sports is the lever of the Murdoch Sky enterprise whereby it expects to capture a large share of the Irish market. Its other major promotional stratagem revolves around Gráinne Seoige, its televisual newsreader on its Irish Sky News, which so far has achieved a minuscule market share of the Irish television market, around 2 per cent. But her recruitment to the station is a signal of the Murdoch-Sky intention to make significant inroads in the Irish market. Already the Murdoch media empire, with its potent right-wing political agenda, has made a significant impact through the Irish editions of The Sunday Times and The Sun. And already a large portion of the Irish media has been taken over by foreign interests.

The very considerable Irish audience gathered "out of home" on Sunday 6 November to watch Manchester United versus Chelsea is a source of frustration for the Murdoch interests here. The mechanism for measuring audiences is confined to just the "at home" audience and with the home "take-up" of Sky Sports, the overall audience for high-profile games is significantly underrepresented in the viewing statistics.

There was disappointment at Sky at the failure of Gráinne Seoige to win the Television Personality of the Year Award on the evening prior to the Manchester United-Chelsea match – the eve of her 31st birthday. The award went to an almost obscure "personality" Mark Cagney of TV3. Sky, along with TV3, had canvassed strongly for the award which is determined by a public vote. Miriam O'Callaghan won the award in 2003, with Gráinne Seoige second. Her successor as news anchor on TV3, Claire Byrne, won it in 2004, with Gráinne Seoige again in second place; she was to feature second again in 2005.

Gráinne Seoige currently anchors Sky News' Irish news bulletins from its Dublin studio: two half-hour nightly installments of politics, current affairs, sports and entertainment news with "round-ups" at weekends. Regular, UK-based Sky programmes (albeit with Irish advertising support) run throughout the day.

Sky News recruited a crop of Irish reporters for its launch in May 2004 – including FM104's former Head of News Jonathan Healy, TV3's Jerome Hughes and Brian Daly, RTÉ/TG4's Eibhlín Ní Chongaile, and RTÉ's Ray Kennedy – but so far, even with a new slot of 6.30 pm for the earlier bulletin, their Irish reports have failed to make much of a dent on the ratings of RTÉ's Six One News or on TV3.

Seoige, however, is no stranger to the trials and tribulations of new television channels – uniquely, she has been involved in the start-up of three Irish stations: TG4, TV3 and Sky News Ireland.

Sky News has been selling "subscriptions" into the Irish market and this accounts for 90 per cent of its income. But has begun to sell advertising space as well, across its channels, and this, inevitably, will impact on the Irish-based stations and other media here.

The "intrusion" of Sky News into the Irish market has underlined the extent to which foreign interests are coming to control much of the media scene, interests with their own agendas and perspectives, usually controlled by large media corporations.

The other foreign-owned Irish television station, TV3 is owned by Canada's Canwest and Britain's Granada Television. It now has a 12 per cent share of the Irish television market (a considerable share, given that RTÉ One, which for so long was the monopoly Irish station, now has a market share of between 22 and 29 per cent).

Regional newspapers in Ireland, still a major segment of the media market, formerly were family-owned but now are almost entirely foreign or conglomerate owned. Independent News and Media plc, Thomas Crosbie Holdings, the Johnston Group (British), Dunfermiline Press (Scottish) and Alpha Newspaper Group (Northern Ireland) own almost all of the provincial press.

The national newspaper business is dominated in Ireland by Independent News and Media plc, which, arguably, is foreign owned – its controlling shareholder, Tony O'Reilly, insists on the use of a British title ("Sir"), and for tax purposes at least he is based abroad. Rupert Murdoch controls The Irish Sun, The Sunday Times and the News of the World, and Thomas Crosbie Holdings (now a sizeable Irish-owned – for now – corporation) owns The Irish Examiner and the Sunday Business Post along with several provincial newspapers and radio stations. Associated Newspapers, which publishes the Daily Mail in the UK, owns Ireland On Sunday and Metro and will soon launch the Irish Daily Mail.

In radio the state-owned RTÉ has the largest listenership and owns three out of the four national radio stations. The other national station, Today FM, was bought by the British Emap company recently. UTV holds the largest commercial radio market share in Ireland. Denis O'Brien's Communicorp owns 98fm, Newstalk 106, Spin FM and East Coast Radio.

Given the impact the media has on determining the political and social agenda, the domination of corporations, many of them foreign owned, is certain to have an impact on the kind of news that is covered, the manner of the coverage and the tone of reporting. All influencing political opinion and culture.