RTÉ’s decision to move the production of programmes like Fair City and the Late Late Show to outside companies is a case of putting more licence payers’ money “into the pockets of private-for-profit entities”, an Oireachtas committee is expected to hear, and will lead to fewer long-term careers in Irish television and radio.
Representatives from the RTÉ group of trade unions – comprising the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), Siptu, Connect and Unite – will appear before the joint Oireachtas committee on media on Tuesday. The committee is scrutinising the Government’s Broadcasting Amendment Bill, which, among other things, would require RTÉ to spend a quarter of its annual public funding on programming commissioned from the private sector.
Trevor Keegan, co-chairman of the RTÉ trade union group, is also expected to tell committee members that unions were not consulted before the State broadcaster’s recent decision to shelve its religious affairs programming department.
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In May, the broadcaster announced plans to switch production of some religious programming – specifically, “Christian worship content” – to the private sector. Asked about the decision at the committee in May, RTÉ director general Kevin Bakhurst denied that the organisation is phasing out religious programming altogether but said it hoped to get a better quality of product.
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The union group is expected to tell the committee that the department, the “latest casualty” of cost-cutting at the broadcaster, has “effectively been shut down”.
Meanwhile, the decision to move production of the Late Late Show and Fair City to private companies, which was first mooted last summer, is creating “worries and fears” among workers in Montrose.
Mr Bakhurst has previously denied that this amounts to the privatisation of RTÉ programming and said it would be “commissioning” the programmes from third parties instead, as it does for other programming. He also previously challenged the unions’ use of the word “outsourcing” in this case.
Mr Keegan will say that the group of unions does not object to improving the independent sector, but objects to the “displacement of safe employment with defined career paths and security of tenure”. Aside from some larger firms, much independent programming is created by workers on short-term contracts with “fragile protections” and this model is not “conducive to long-term careers in TV and radio production”.
The “farming out” of programming “is simply putting more licence payers’ money into the pockets of private for-profit entities”, the committee is expected to hear.
The union group will also express disappointment with the Government’s decision to “ignore” the Future of Media Commission’s recommendation to abolish the licence fee and fund public service broadcasting through the exchequer.
Siptu, meanwhile, will tell the committee that the Bill is an important opportunity to protect the future of public service broadcasting in the State. However, mandating RTÉ to spend at least 25 per cent of its public funding on privately produced programming “could become a mechanism for outsourcing RTÉ production”, Adrian Kane, Siptu services divisional organiser, will tell committee members, unless “properly safeguarded”.
The union’s position is that increased funding should support new content and employment, “not a reallocation of work” done by RTÉ workers, Mr Kane will say.
