It is wrong that RTÉ continues to receive annual licence fee revenue of €170 million on the basis that it is the only provider of public service programming, writes David Tighe.
You have paid €1.50 to read this newspaper, but imagine if you had to pay an annual tax of €155 on top of that for the privilege of reading this newspaper, and that if you didn't pay that tax, you could go to jail? You would be outraged and rightly so. Welcome to the world of Irish broadcasting.
The Independent Broadcasters of Ireland (IBI) recently published research, by DKM Economic Consultants, Competition in Irish Broadcasting, which made an interesting analogy. What if the Irish daily newspaper industry was organised using the economic principles applied to the Irish broadcasting industry?
The Irish Independent and the Evening Herald would belong to the Government. The Irish Times would be a licensed private commercial newspaper. The Irish Examiner, lacking a licence, would not exist. British newspapers would be sold freely.
The Irish Times would be printed by the State-owned Independent Newspapers, which would own the only printing press. Independent Newspapers would have to subsidise an Irish language paper, and a classical music orchestra. All households who read any newspapers would have to pay a licence fee, all of which would go to Independent Newspapers. None of the money from the newspaper reading licence would be given to The Irish Times. Teams of inspectors would be engaged by the Government to enforce the newspaper reading licence. Anyone caught reading a newspaper, even a British one, without a licence would face fines or jail as penalties.
The genesis of broadcasting was rooted in state-run monopoly operations throughout the world. This was because it required an expensive national transmission system. That technology was primarily state-controlled and there was a paternalistic approach to it. In democratic societies, people saw the potential benefit of this new medium and believed it should be used to "educate, inform and entertain", in the words of Lord Reith, the first chairman of the BBC.
It is deeply ironic that RTÉ regularly seizes on this phrase to defend the idea that everything it does is public service broadcasting. That phrase was first uttered in the 1920s and incidentally by a man who disapproved of television.
Ireland of the 21st century is not the UK of the 1920s. The needs of a dynamic, culturally changing republic are such that many organisations are providing a diversity of programming, and the Government must now ensure that a level playing field is established to ensure that all providers are treated in an equitable manner.
Why then should RTÉ still continue to receive a massive annual State subvention of €170 million when other providers are being forced to adhere to strict news and information content rules to ensure that listeners get benefit from public service broadcasting? We accept that the State must ensure that public service programming is supplied to the Irish audience but surely the State also needs to ensure that this programming is supplied in a cost effective and market neutral way, so that the citizen gets value for money.
RTÉ has recently stated that it is not a "State broadcaster" but a national broadcaster and that the "assets" of RTÉ are "vested in the RTÉ Authority on behalf of the people of Ireland". But there are other national broadcasters and local broadcasters too, and licence fee income should be distributed across the sector to reflect that reality. Clearly the Government wants all broadcasters to engage in a degree of public service broadcasting, otherwise it would not impose such stringent news and information requirements on the independent sector. The reality is that the Irish people listen to a variety of local radio stations and one national station, none of which are funded by the licence fee. But these independent stations produce programmes which just as much as Gerry Ryan and Marian Finucane, inform, educate and entertain.
RTÉ repeatedly states it must continue to receive the licence fee because it is the only provider of this public service and that to change the funding system at all would mean that RTÉ would be weaker and that public service programming would not be provided. This is nonsense.
RTÉ should, of course, get the licence fee - but only for its public service broadcasting. DKM finds that only about 30 per cent of RTÉ One and Two's peak-time programming amounts to genuine public service broadcasting. Movies, sitcoms and reality shows clearly fall outside this classification but, amazingly, RTÉ chooses to include this in their definition of public service broadcasting, and taxpayers money is being deployed to it on the basis of this farcical contention.
We support Noel Dempsey's view that competition is good for RTÉ. But RTÉ wants to retain market dominance where it has a monopoly (autumn 2006) on all mainstream sports rights, annual licence fee revenue of €170 million and more than 60 per cent of the television advertising market in Ireland.
IBI has looked for a debate on what should be funded by the licence fee. Any such investigation will lead to public money going to programming that the public needs and wants, and which would not be provided elsewhere.
This report is our initial contribution to a debate we believe is overdue on Irish broadcasting. The European Commission is challenging the fundamentals of State support to broadcasting in Ireland to ensure it does not distort the market and that competition, plurality and diversity is encouraged. It is time for the Government and RTÉ to face up to this reality, and to begin the process of levelling out what is a very uneven broadcasting pitch.
David Tighe is chairman of Independent Broadcasters of Ireland, which represents independent radio, Today FM and TV3