Who fancies a top-slice of licence fee cake?

‘Top-slicing’ is the broadcasting industry term given to the practice of cutting a layer off licence fee income – a cake originally intended entirely for the sustenance of the national public service broadcaster(s) – and sharing it around the commercial sector.

First introduced to Ireland in 2001 legislation, top-slicing was solidified as government policy in the Broadcasting Act 2009, when the percentage of the licence fee that is given to the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland for redistribution increased from 5 per cent to 7 per cent.

Now, as Minister for Communications Pat Rabbitte awaits both the value-for- money report on a device-independent replacement for the licence fee and the BAI's recommendations on the future funding of the media sector, the question of which media organisations get to consume taxpayers' money and regurgitate it in the form of public service content is being asked again.

"Pretty much everybody" has looked for a cut of the proposed public service broadcasting charge, the Minister has observed, at a time when public funding is likely to take on a "pronounced importance" to RTÉ (which in 2011 was awarded €125 or 78 per cent of each €160 licence fee).

Some of RTE’s competitors have been more vocal in their insistence on getting a bigger bite of the pie, however. For the Independent Broadcasters of Ireland, the 7 per cent that is spooned into the BAI’s Sound and Vision fund is still crumbs.

The group, which represents 34 commercial radio stations, wants a higher proportion of the replacement for the licence fee to be made available to its members, citing the independent sector’s 67 per cent share of radio listenership.

"Though we are 67 per cent of the market, we are not seeking 67 per cent of the funding," chairman John Purcell told the organisation's annual conference, which is just as well, of course, as it has no chance of getting it.

The group wants the Sound and Vision allocation to be adjusted so that radio stations can use its funds to pay for their daily diet of live programming. At present, the money goes instead to independent producers who make pre-recorded documentaries and dramas that tick the authority’s public service-y boxes. It also wants the levy paid by broadcasters to fund the BAI to be abolished and the regulator’s operations paid for through the new charge – top-sliced money doesn’t always go towards content production.

TV3 has certainly availed of Sound and Vision to feed its indigenous production plate. In the latest batch of grants, five companies producing shows destined for the its schedule received €1.13 million between them. But RTÉ's domestic television competitor takes a different line to that of the independent broadcasters' organisation and hankers mostly after a greater chunk of the other pudding in the funding mix: advertising.

TV3 chief executive David McRedmond has signalled that it won’t fight to the death for continued top-slicing of the licence fee. In exchange, TV3 wants RTÉ’s commercial mandate to be limited via measures such as a reduction in its permitted advertising minutes or even a shutdown of services such as RTÉ Two with which it competes commercially.

Privately-owned media companies that call for a deeper divvying up of the licence fee replacement than has existed up to now point to the fact that they too are in the business of “public service content” – indeed, broadcasters are under statutory obligation to produce such content thanks to news and current affairs quotas.

If “public service content” is defined simply as particular genres of programming, it would seem to follow that they can be produced by any entity. But sharing the public service broadcasting charge like this, and letting the funds disperse throughout the sector, would clearly risk weakening the rationale for having public subsidies in the first place.

Though cautioning on the limits of State aid rules, Rabbitte acknowledged this week that independent broadcasters aired “public service output of merit that has to be recognised and encouraged and preserved”.

The point he made, somewhat undiplomatically, at the same conference a year ago nevertheless stands. His verdict then was that it was “worth keeping in mind at all times” that the commercial media sector was “just that – commercial”. RTÉ, though it may behave commercially, is a semi-state institution; for its hungry rivals, content with a public service flavour, no matter how appealing, is ultimately one ingredient in making dough.