THE FUTURE OF RTÉ - 1: If quality Irish programming is to be at the centre of public servicebroadcasting here, then the people must be prepared to pay for it, arguesMuiris MacConghail, in the first of two articles on the future of the national broadcaster
The current debate about the future of RTÉ is a debate about the quality of Irish broadcasting. This debate may well decide whether we are to have any Irish-produced programming at all, particularly on the television services.
Let us dispose of TV3 and Today FM immediately in the context of this question. Both of those organisations are not players in the home-produced quality and quantity league. Neither of the owners of those independent commercial services - Granada/CanWest of TV3 and Scottish Radio Holdings of Today - have the slightest interest in funding an extensive range of home-produced substantive and substantial Irish programming. Both of these organisations have managed to drive a coach and four through the legislation that empowers them and through the regulatory body which is responsible for them to the Oireachtas - the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland.
The net issue is whether or not RTÉ will follow, be allowed to follow or have to follow the pattern of programming adopted by the Irish commercial broadcasting sector. The Irish broadcasting situation at national level is one in which the commercial sector is dominated and controlled by an alliance of UK and Canadian investors, and the public broadcast service sector is owned by the people of Ireland. While the citizens may own it they have little, if any, say in how RTÉ is to be administered and provided for. The citizens' voting shares are held in proxy essentially by the Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, Síle de Valera, and it is the Minister who directs the policy and determines what resources the national broadcaster shall have in this awful struggle between profit and service.
In this situation I am reminded of the Irish phrase so well used by a late Chief Justice and President, Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh: "clocha ceangailte agus madraí scaoilte" which can, in this scenario, read "the defenders are restrained and the marauders are let loose".
One of the problems is that two quango-type bodies on a part-time basis administer Irish broadcasting policy and their selection is through a process of political patronage. The problem is further exacerbated by the insistence at all times of the Minister with responsibility for broadcasting in holding the puppet strings.
Because of the part-time and politically directed efforts of the two quasi-autonomous bodies running Irish broadcasting, we now have a raft of consultants employed to heave them and their responsibilities out of the black hole into which Irish broadcasting has fallen. The Minister, not to be outdone in this process, employed her own consultants to correct - as she saw it - the application for a licence fee prepared under the supervision of her nominees to the RTÉ Authority.
The RTÉ executive is not without blame. It has failed to connect with its public and seems to have failed to communicate with its staff. Its failure with the public is one of failure of explanation about the issues involved. Its staff seems to have lost morale and thereby creativity. The choices made on its behalf by the RTÉ executive to invest enormously in IT and online developments to the downgrading of programming resources were a mistake.
The closure of the training centre at Montrose sends out a clear signal and confirms an anti-intellectual trend which is evident in the RTÉ output on television in particular. Putting it another way, the construction and commissioning of RTÉ programming is ratings-led. That is a direct result of the inverse proportion of the ratio between income from licence fee and the income from advertising.
The training centre evacuation has been linked by some within RTÉ with a proposal, which seems to emanate from at least one member of the authority, that RTÉ should leave its Donnybrook site, sell the property and invest the proceeds in programmes. This kite has no wings and must have been flown by an absolute amateur in broadcasting finances. The sale of the property if realised would make little dent on the general financial malaise of RTÉ. This idea and the destruction of the training department is more probably indicative of a very serious belief now held in some quarters that RTÉ should adopt the broadcaster/publisher model and retain only its in-house production capacity in the area of news and perhaps current affairs. The argument here is that off-site production would reduce both the costs to RTÉ of programme making and thereby reduce the in-house production staff.
Television production is a labour-intensive activity. Time, labour and materials are at the cost core: those and a driving factor of creativity. There is nothing to suggest that programmes made outside a broadcasting organisation are necessarily cheaper than those made inside on a production per unit basis. It is the choice and range of programming to be made which will determine the cost. If you reduce drama, documentary and all those programmes involved in the creation of a story-telling narrative relevant to and about the people of Ireland, then of course you can reduce costs.
What is at the centre of this issue is a relentless and sustained antagonism by this Government towards the idea of public service broadcasting and to the institution capable of providing it. Privatisation is the Government's preferred option or at worst a poorly funded broadcaster which operates peripherally to the private and profit-led sector whose range of programming is best illustrated by the output of TV3 and Today FM.
I am not dismissive of ratings as a guide to the value and success of programmes. A public service broadcaster is one which by the nature of the programme schedule on offer embraces the interests of all of the audience - or rather should I say audiences - in their different modes and moods throughout the broadcasting day. Many of the audience will want to watch the English Premier League or Who Wants to be a Millionaire? but almost 700,000 persons also watched Sinners - the Magdalen laundry epic shown on Saturday, March 23rd.
The crisis in Irish broadcasting is brought about by the extent to which the national broadcaster is funded by commercial income from advertising. Public service broadcasting is an obligation and undertaking to secure an audience and to serve and sustain that audience.
The role of public service broadcasting is to nurture and cherish that audience in its various forms: those who speak Irish; those who on Good Friday wished to see and participate in the ritual of the Passion of Jesus transmitted from St Mel's Cathedral in Longford; those who wanted to watch the Ireland vs Denmark game at Lansdowne Road last Wednesday and those who wanted to access the culture of bread-making in Ireland on Friday night last.
Commercial advertisers, on the other hand, see the audience in quite different terms. They see that audience, and it is one in their minds, in terms of commercial value. Irish advertisers place an absolute priority on audiences who are in the 15 to 24 age group and 25 to 35 age group. These are the audiences which have purchasing power. The advertiser will pay a premium for programming directed towards those two audiences and in that order and it does not matter whether that programming is home-produced or imported in to the schedule.
IN THE dilemma facing RTÉ over its commercial income, programming strategy is more likely to favour the more fortunate and younger age groups with spending power. The overall demographics of Irish society are not the driving force in advertising strategy. The demographics must, however, be at the core of public service broadcasting. The twain do not meet on this issue. This is not God and Mammon stuff but close enough nonetheless.
Having exhausted the role of consultants to determine her broadcasting policy, the Minister has done something which she ought to have done before drafting her Broadcasting Act, 2001. Síle de Valera has established a forum on broadcasting to look at the future funding of public service broadcasting and to identify whether public service broadcasting has any role to play in the future of broadcasting in Ireland.
The essential ingredient in this work set for the forum - in the short time in which it must deliberate and report by the end of July - is that its proceedings should be and must be held in public so that for the first time the people of Ireland might participate in the decision-making process.
Broadcasting could be central to the survival of an indigenous culture in Ireland. The economics of broadcasting suggest that, if Irish programming is to be at the centre of a broadcasting strategy, then the people must pay for it. This forum has to work out how the people might pay for it and the bill of fare to be offered in return for their support.
This is not a matter for politicians to determine and the sooner they are removed from the equation the better. In the matter of broadcasting policy they have done the country no service.
Muiris MacConghail is a former Controller of Programmes at RTÉ Television and currently teaches in the School of Media at the Dublin Institute of Technology
Tomorrow: Independent producer David Blake Knox maintains there is no obvious reason why quality public service programmes have to be made only within RTÉ