One TV station offers real choice while another is gifted your money

YOU may have less money available for going out to socialise but there may also be less worth watching on Irish television during the evenings you stay at home in the future, despite your paying €161 each year for the privilege of legally watching your TV.

The media industry is suffering from a major advertising downturn and television is bearing the brunt of it. Television is not delivering the mass audiences of the past to justify the prices charged for advertising because of the alternatives available and the dilution caused by the multiplicity of stations available to many people.

Television remains very expensive to make, so many broadcasters are suffering from the sudden mismatch between revenues and costs. The simple answer is to make less expensive programmes — or just import cheap replacements — but this can be counterproductive too: Irish audiences want to see Irish-made programmes on their Irish stations.

RTÉ is engaging in a major cost-cutting initiative — trying to take €25 million out of annual running costs — that it says may impact on its ability to make or purchase domestic programmes.

Remarkably, it says it is trying to ensure there are no redundancies, which might strike some people as odd: your licence fee is being applied to subsidising people in possibly unnecessary jobs instead of paying for programming that you’ll watch.

Unfortunately, the independent sector, which is commissioned to make some of the programmes RTÉ broadcasts, will have no such luxury about keeping people in jobs. They simply can’t afford this and large-scale redundancies are looming. This is State outsourcing: RTÉ could be accused of letting suppliers lose their income and jobs rather than dealing with internal staffing issues.

TV3 is scaling back some of its weekend commitments, reducing the length (and cost) of its Saturday and Sunday news bulletins and moving its top-class political programme, The Political Party, to 11pm on Fridays so as to avoid the extra costs of filming it on Sundays. It may not get the audience it deserves there, even if it is repeated at the weekend. TV3 has also let people go and reduced its freelance shifts despite operating with a much smaller staff than its main competitor.

TV3 simply does not have the luxury of depending on the licence fee for income. RTÉ gets 95% of what’s collected, amounting to nearly €200m in a full year, which is a powerful comfort to it at a time when advertising income is falling for all.

Here I must declare an interest. I have a commercial interest in the success of TV3 as someone who has been contracted to provide certain services to the station. I was co-host of a pre-election series (along with Eddie Hobbs) last year and hosted the station’s coverage of the rugby world cup.

I have an ongoing commitment to host the live broadcast of a number of All-Ireland senior championship football and hurling matches as part of a three-year contract TV3 signed with the GAA.

It’s irritating to hear people complain there are too many adverts on TV3 during big programming events such as sports fixtures. What do people expect when TV3 depends solely on ads for income and has to compete with RTÉ to purchase the rights to programmes?

If RTÉ broadcasts a GAA match, for example, it funds its purchase through a mix of ads and licence fee income, increasing the price it can pay. Do people really want RTÉ to have a monopoly on broadcasting every match? People can disagree — and accuse me of self-serving bias — but I would argue that the standards applied to TV3 coverage of GAA this year were of the highest quality and put RTÉ under pressure to do its job better.

How can the viewer suffer in those circumstances? More importantly, perhaps TV3 also provides an alternative voice in the provision of news and current affairs. RTÉ’s current affairs output rightly draws much critical acclaim and good audiences, too, but surely there could be more of it? Prime Time is only on air two nights a week (apart from the occasional Prime Time Investigates series).

In any case, the idea that only one station — and one that is under the ultimate control of the State and its government — should be the only television outlet in the State for news and current affairs is surely worrying for democratic debate.

Under its new ownership, TV3 has tried harder and the station gives Vincent Browne’s eccentric (and often very entertaining) nightly panel discussion four outings a week. It could possibly even do more, had it the money to do so.

The most important point is that RTÉ is no longer alone in serving the public interest. While it regards itself as the national broadcaster and follows a public service remit, others are willing and able to do the same.

Radio provides the perfect example as to how competition benefited the public in the provision of choice in news and current affairs. My own radio programme — The Last Word on Today FM — operates in the most competitive time of the day, between 4.30pm and 7pm, against Radio One and Newstalk. The competition between us and Radio One is nip-and-tuck — with leadership in the listener numbers going backwards and forwards — even though RTÉ radio benefits indirectly from the TV licence not alone in sharing costs, but especially from the massive free promotion given to it on RTÉ television.

However, we enjoy a massive lead in audience under the age of 44. This proves that younger people are interested in news and current affairs if presented to them in the way they want and that more than one source is of benefit to people. Nor does it have to be ‘dumbed down’. There is no reason why TV should not be the same.

TV3 is now lobbying for some limited access to the licence fee to help it meet the expensive costs of providing quality news and current affairs output. RTÉ, not surprisingly, wants to keep all of the licence fee money and it is likely to request more of it when it next goes to Communications Minister Eamon Ryan.

AT PRESENT, TV3 has a very limited claim on a tiny portion of the licence fee, the 5% that is diverted to independent producers under the auspices of a special fund run by the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland. However, RTÉ has managed to snaffle the bulk of that too. RTÉ has also argued that TV3 is owned by a foreign investor who is merely looking to make money.

That is true, but RTÉ cannot deny that it operates commercially, too. It seeks to maximise its share of audience wherever possible — often by positioning programmes at the same time as major TV3 events in an attempt to dilute its competitor’s share — and has the financial advantage to be able to do that.

TV3 has tried a damn sight harder under new ownership in recent years since the departure of the tight-fisted CanWest as the controlling shareholding. A British investment firm called Doughty Hanson has authorised investment under chief executive David McRedmond and, for the first time, TV3 is offering a genuine range of choice in Irish-produced programming.

It may not be to everyone’s taste — especially those of the critics — but then neither is much of what RTÉ does. The main thing is that TV3 offers choice to the people who pay licence fees. Is that not a good reason for the licence fee to be distributed in a fairer fashion?