Does our fee give RTE a TV licence to kill?

Not many people enjoy having to pay a television licence fee. Paying for Cablelink, Sky Sports, even the Comedy Channel - that's different, we say. And it certainly is. For one thing, you couldn't go to jail for non-payment of those fees. For another, we choose to pay for something like Cablelink because we want to watch the stations provided. It doesn't matter if you never watch RTE; even if you don't have it tuned into your television, you still have to pay.

Worse still, there are currently plans afoot for raising the fee. The same indignation applies in Britain where there is ongoing controversy surrounding a proposed increase in the licence fee for the BBC. Already their fee is quite a bit higher than ours - £101 sterling every year, which at the current rate converts into about £130 Irish. Our fee is £70 a year. A recent poll in Britain showed that two-thirds of those surveyed thought the BBC should start financing itself with advertising. According to an article in the Guardian last November, this attitude isn't really anything new - the licence fee has never had much popular support.

Interestingly, much of the backlash against the increase in the licence fee seems to be coming from papers like the Sun and the Times, both publications owned by Rupert Murdoch - who also happens to own BSkyB, a BBC competitor.

But to become increasingly reliant on advertising would be to change the whole ethos of the BBC. RTE must already compete with commercial stations, such as TV3 or Sky, for advertisers; it would have to do so even more aggressively without the fee.

Some programmes attract huge audience figures, others appeal to smaller audiences - but if you don't have the figures, you won't get the advertisers.

It would probably mean RTE dropping programmes which might be of a very high standard, but which couldn't compete with the likes of Friends. Oireachtas Report, for example. It mightn't appeal to as many people as Winning Streak, but a lot of people would argue it is an invaluable facility in a democratic society. But worthiness isn't of any interest to advertisers.

Which isn't to say a reliance on advertising revenue is all bad. According to Julian Vingoles, producer of Would You Believe? for RTE TV, "having to please advertisers has kept us in touch with the audience. You need to know where people's interest lie if you want to keep your share of the market."

However, in a recent Irish Times article, Joe Mulholland, RTE's managing director for television, made the case for more public money: "RTE is expected to provide a full and comprehensive service catering for all tastes and interests . . . The public service remit of RTE has never been adequately financed."

The advent of digital television will have even more financial implications. In Britain one of the suggestions floating about is to increase the current licence fee marginally, and to have an extra fee for those with digital television access. Again, the suggestion has its critics.

According to the Guardian, the BBC has "an impossible mission to be the best at everything all the time", even though few want to pay for it. Could the same be said of RTE television?