High noon for producers seeking licence fee funds

The deadline for the latest round of Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) funding for new television and radio programmes is today at noon.

With five rounds spread over two years under the current scheme, Sound and Vision 3, the available grants will be highly contested on the television side, with RTÉ, TV3, TG4, UTV Ireland and Setanta Sports all in the fray.

The scheme is financed from the Broadcast Fund, which is assigned 7 per cent of television licence fee receipts. In recent years, these revenues have decreased, while Sound and Vision has also had to share the fund with BAI’s archiving scheme.

The money, when awarded, goes to independent producers who traditionally must have a letter of commitment from a broadcaster at the time of application. In the case of the “under-represented” genres of drama, education and animation, however, the BAI says the commitment can come at the time of approval instead, as long as the grant requested is 50 per cent or less of the total budget.

Much to the ire of independent radio stations, news and live current affairs programmes are excluded from the scheme, but otherwise the regulator’s funding decision-makers take what they describe as “a broad view of Irish culture, heritage and experience and include all of its contemporary expressions”.

Recent examples of applicants that successfully ticked the "contemporary society" box range from TV3's breezy factual series Danger! Amanda at Work! (originally titled There's Something About Amanda) to TG4's "dark", undertaker-themed animation Tea With The Dead – Life, Death and a Packet of Digestives.

The cost of making the genre means when dramas do win grants, they tend to be relatively large compared to other awards. TV3's soap Red Rock got a grant of €800,000 to get off the ground, while TG4's in-production indie band comedy drama Eipic was awarded €600,000 and RTÉ One's forthcoming Wexford-set drama Clean Break got €450,000.

Decisions on this crop of applicants are not expected until October 2015.