Tough times ahead for Alan Esslemont and TG4

TG4 has appointed Alan Esslemont as its new ardstiúrthóir or director-general, and while the appointment looks to be a very solid one on paper, there is no doubt that there are difficult times ahead for both Esslemont and the broadcaster.

Minister for Communications Denis Naughten said as much in his statement welcoming the appointment, though he used the standard euphemism for difficult, noting that it was a "challenging" time for public service broadcasters, though also an "opportune" one, for reasons he did not expand upon.

Of course, it is not just TG4 but the entire broadcasting industry that is in a very different place than it was 20 years ago, when the Irish-language channel first went on air. (It celebrates its anniversary on Halloween.)

Esslemont, from Braemar in Scotland, will understand this. He is currently head of content at the Scottish Gaelic television channel BBC Alba, but he was part of the senior management team of Teilifís na Gaeilge that launched the channel as TnaG in 1996 and was then later involved in its repositioning and rebranding as TG4 in 1999.

TG4’s remit is to strengthen, promote and celebrate the Irish language and culture, and it receives State funding of about €35 million in order to do so.

Like all broadcasters in the era of on-demand viewing and fierce global competition, it will have to continually examine the best way to find and satisfy its core viewers, while also, and this is the especially hard bit, reaching new ones.

Much research, including the establishment of a viewer panel giving qualitative feedback, has taken place in this area in recent times.

Although it is obviously much more popular in Gaeltacht areas, TG4’s share of national viewing currently hovers in the 1.3 per cent - 2.1 per cent bracket.

While it has been rightly praised for the innovativeness of many of its commissions and acquisitions, the trick is only going to get harder to repeat in future.

Ominously, as Naughten admitted to an Oireachtas committee debate recently, the broadcaster was unable to increase its hours of new and original Irish language content last year, as it originally planned, due to funding cuts.