Stations should decide on news output - TV3

TV3 has told the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) that stations should be allowed to decide themselves whether to devote 20 per cent of their programming to news and current affairs.

However, the European Commission office in Dublin has called on the regulator to retain the rule that obliges stations to devote 20 per cent of output to news and current affairs. This obligation was first introduced in the Radio and Television Act, 1988 and updated in later legislation.

Television and radio stations have long argued that the requirement imposes unnecessary costs on them. While the BCI can give derogations, most stations must abide by the rule unless they are offering some kind of niche or special interest service.

In a submission sent to the BCI in recent days, TV3 argues that "prescriptive quotas" of any kind should be reviewed by the regulator. The station suggests tight regulation is not the answer and "market forces" should be allowed operate instead.

"We encourage the BCI to take this opportunity to be realistic as to the challenges to commercial broadcasters that are not state-funded and to consider if the issue is not to regulate the amount of news but to submit that market forces are the real driver of consumer choice," states its submission.

The EU Commission office said it would like to see television and radio stations offering more coverage of European issues. It said that any derogation on the current 20 per cent news and current affairs requirement "might lessen even further the amount of EU-related news and debate which is broadcast on the airwaves". However, the EU Commission appreciated the vast majority of stations were "commercially-driven and have limited resources available to them".