RTÉ’s ‘dominance’ of advert market threatens papers

THE future of the Irish newspaper industry is threatened by public service broadcaster RTÉ’s dominance of the advertising market, the Oireachtas communication committee was informed yesterday.

Representing the country’s print media, National Newspapers of Ireland (NNI) coordinating director Frank Cullen said that “successive governments have failed to implement a cohesive media policy”.

Mr Cullen outlined the problems in the Irish media market, with publicly-funded broadcaster RTÉ already having 60% of the TV advertising market, the highest retained by any public service broadcaster in Europe, where the average is between 27% and 29%.

With RTÉ moving into increased internet coverage, the NNI is concerned that no limits have been placed on the amount of advertising it can seek in this area, particularly when the broadcaster’s website is heavily promoted through its TV coverage.

The unfair commercial benefits accruing to RTÉ are compounded by the broadcaster using large amounts of public funding to acquire its content, but then appears to give it to its commercial arm free of charge.

According to Mr Cullen “this generates more users, more readers, and ultimately more advertising” that should be open to commercial media.

Independent senator Joe O’Toole said he agreed that there seemed to be an unlevel playing field, noting that BBC website contains no advertising.

Irish Times managing director Liam Kavanagh said the commercial newspaper sector was “not looking for subsidies but looking for consistency”.

He added that he believed “there was long future yet for print” journalism.