Some years are defined by arrivals, others by departures: 2021 in Irish media was unquestionably the latter. Thirty-two years after his initial radio venture, Classic Hits 98FM, first went on air the morning after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Denis O'Brien sold his radio group, Communicorp, to German media conglomerate Bauer.
As O'Brien had in 2019 sold his shareholding in what used to be Independent News & Media (INM) to Belgian company Mediahuis, the Communicorp deal announced in February marked the end of his long and winding era of Irish media ownership. He was over and out.
O’Brien said he was “delighted with the offer” and it had come at the right time. “Half of me is saying ‘Oh, I think the radio business is going to be great’, because we did diversify into podcasts and digital offerings,” he reflected. “But I just can’t put my hand on my heart and say it’s going to be great in five years’ time.”
When the deal completed at the end of May, national stations Today FM and Newstalk, Dublin music stations 98FM and Spin 1038, Limerick-based regional station Spin Southwest and digital sport station Off the Ball became Bauer Media Audio Ireland.
Paul Keenan, president of London-headquartered Bauer Media Audio, assured employees in Dublin that Newstalk – the station Communicorp had previously tried to flog to INM – was "a very important part of the business" and cited the expansion of its Kiss radio brand in the UK as a model for the "similar prospects" it saw for the still-popular Spin stations.
Sprawling family-owned parent company Bauer Media Group has been led since 2010 by chief executive and majority shareholder Yvonne Bauer, who belongs to the fifth generation of Bauers to run the company and is estimated by Forbes to be worth €2 billion, meaning Irish media now has a new billionaire. Goodbye Denis, hello Yvonne.
And that was about the extent of the high-level musical chairs. Elsewhere, there was impasse. Another year rumbled along without the Department of Justice publishing the much-delayed and long-overdue review of a defamation regime that has the capacity to bankrupt the remaining indigenous news media outlets with frightening ease. The play-for-time tactic that guided the Government's establishment of the Future of Media Commission, meanwhile, reached its inevitable "what now?" phase.
Industry frustration
To the genuine frustration of both its members and the media groups that had dusted off old presentations for its virtual hearings, the Government didn’t get around to either publishing or acting on the commission’s report. Who could have predicted that?
Almost everybody, to be fair. Its public hearings – chaired by former Dublin City University president Prof Brian MacCraith, who was simultaneously chairing the High-Level Taskforce on Covid-19 Vaccination – had witnessed a rehash of the same arguments about structural market shifts and outdated funding mechanisms that have been made to various Oireachtas committees and in other government-sponsored arenas for many years, often accompanied by warnings of existential threats. Nothing happened then either.
Awkwardly, the commission’s submitted report is understood to have recommended the scrapping of the television licence fee and its replacement by direct exchequer funding – a conclusion that is not only strongly opposed by several Ministers, but is baffling to the broad church of media outlets seeking reform, not abolition.
A response will be issued "shortly", Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise Leo Varadkar indicated in November. "We look forward to acting on the recommendations from the Future of Media Commission" were his exact words. This promised little, of course, but it did provide rare evidence that the Government had not completely forgotten about the commission it went to the trouble of setting up.
In fairness, it probably had a few other things on its mind.
The Government did, however, manage to edge closer to the formation of a Media Commission, which has nothing to do with the Future of Media Commission but is a sort-of successor to the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland that will also take on a substantial – and probably unwieldy – online regulatory burden. That's assuming the Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill is brought forward by Minister for Media Catherine Martin in its expected shape.
Alas, the Oireachtas media committee's recent expression of support for a "Netflix levy" feels a touch moot. It's not that levying streaming services operating in this market and using the revenue raised to create a content production fund for Irish film and television isn't a great idea. It is, and as Screen Producers Ireland, RTÉ director of strategy Rory Coveney and others have pointed out, there are multiple precedents in other countries for us to follow.
But the Minister said a year ago that more research was needed to see if such a levy “would be of sufficient benefit” and “provide meaningful support” before her department could proceed with one and there is, as yet, no sign that the committee’s pre-legislative verdict will speed up the matter.
Record production
It is more than two years ago that RTÉ director-general Dee Forbes told employees of the State-owned broadcaster that “it will no longer be possible to continue as we are”. Notwithstanding the financial realities prompting this statement, RTÉ is more or less continuing pretty much exactly how it was then, with a modestly sized voluntary exit scheme for employees the only real non-Covid development since 2019.
Last year’s underspending on television programming, thanks to the production sector’s pandemic pause, is now starting to be offset by higher levels of commissioning. But the most remarkable sight of 2021 – the recovery of Irish screen production from its Covid malaise to what Screen Ireland says are record activity levels – is a story only tangentially connected to RTÉ.
This was the year that Disney, Netflix, Apple, Amazon and other richly resourced behemoths were booking up Irish studio space, hiring crew and availing of tax breaks at a dizzying rate. The fever – propagated by the ambitions of streamers – might not last forever, but the changes it brings to the Irish media and entertainment industry could still be permanent.
