TV now: the future of Irish television

Fifty years after the launch of Telefís Éireann, can public service television survive in Ireland, asks KATHY SHERIDAN

SOME THEMES are timeless. Like television. Like how did the average punter pass those long, dank nights before it arrived? What did they find to talk about before Get Smartor The Virginian? And just how damaging were its trashy, consumerist values on the population?

One Church of England bishop had it sussed early on. As long ago as the 1950s, the poor man’s spirit was already crushed by moronic game shows: “Money for jam, money for nothing, take it easy, it will all come if you are slick enough, cash prizes, nothing to pay,” he wrote in a despairing submission to a British commission on broadcasting, All this “candy floss”, was “a much more subversive influence than violence, or even” – good grief – “direct sex”.

Naive? A glance at today’s roll of vacuous, vajazzling, instant “celebrities” might suggest he was a sage. God alone knows what he would have made of the “Babestation” channels. (No, seriously, don’t look. The image can never be erased).

The bishop's cameo appearance in Window and Mirror, John Bowman's portrait of RTÉ at 50, demonstrates that the argument about television's iniquities had been well aired before three continuity announcers were paraded around Ireland in December 1961 leading up to the grand unveiling of Ireland's own Telefís. "Meet our Girl Announcers", ran the coverline on the RTV Guide as it was then called, alongside pictures of the mature, bouffant-haired "girls", Kathleen Watkins, Nuala Donnelly and Marie O'Sullivan.

The sight of the new station’s test card was enough to attract a crowd around the windows of television dealers.

Colum Kenny, professor of communications at DCU and a member of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, remembers the pre-RTÉ television viewing experience.

"You could barely get an occasional visible image from Northern Ireland, which would then disappear in a blizzard of lines and dashes and various forms of exotic interference. People sat through extraordinary amounts of interference for the pleasure of getting an occasional bit of a programme – Rin Tin Tinor Lassieor The Lone Ranger– on BBC1 or ITV."

But the hunky mavericks, glossy “career girls” and all the shiny stuff that defined a certain glad, confident America for us – fridges, telephones, big cars, fitted kitchens, school buses – gave television an indelible ring of glamour.

On New Year’s Eve 50 years ago, the hottest ticket in town was the station’s inauguration broadcast in the Gresham Hotel. Colum Kenny’s parents were there: “It was such an innocent era . . . What you had was a few aul’ spotlights on the back of a truck on O’Connell Street and it was the height of excitement to see the beams in the night sky . . . And you had the Artane Boys Band marching incongruously up and down the interior of the Gresham ballroom as the entertainment.”

By all accounts, there won’t even be a few aul’ spotlights on the back of a truck to celebrate the 50th. The director general, Noel Curran, looks around nervously when asked about a possible celebratory bash, as if someone might sneak one over him.

And yet, there is something to celebrate.

AUDIENCES ARE ACTUALLY GROWING

THE DEATH OF TELEVISION – never mind public service television – has been greatly exaggerated for a start: “Television is in a much healthier state 50 years on than anyone predicted 10 years ago,” Curran says.

As a student back in DCU, when writing a thesis entitled The Threat to Public Service Broadcasting,he couldn't find a single expert to say that public service broadcasting would still be around in 10 or 20 years. Ten years ago, the trenchant view was that traditional, linear television was dead.

"It isn't," he says firmly. "Digital is all anyone wants to talk about now . . . But the recent Late Late Showtoy show was the highest rating television show on RTÉ in the last 17 years. Audiences are actually growing, even among younger demographics." Indeed, on the average weekday in 2010, adults aged 15 to 24 were watching an average of 25 minutes more per day than in 2007.

RTÉ’s demise in a digital environment was long foretold; its nice Irish blas couldn’t survive against hundreds of slick, foreign channels, opined the experts. “Yet RTÉ is actually growing its share in digital homes. It’s obvious that there is a sense of wanting the familiar . . . Television is much more resilient than many bargained for.”

However, Curran, at 46 the first director general born after the station’s birth, is acutely alert to the threat and the promise of digital. Eighteen months ago, 15 per cent of page impressions on RTÉ’s web services were made on mobile technologies; the figure now is 45 per cent. “No one could have predicted that. It is going to change things fundamentally.”

Television will survive; it’s how people choose to access it that will be intriguing. “You may be watching television individually but you’re still connected virtually [to other people] by Twitter or Facebook, for example. Depending on how smart television develops, we could see it growing even more, with people watching together virtually, because technology will allow that in the future . . . There is a much greater attraction to that communal experience than people expected.”

As the online demand grows, the big question is how relatively small media organisations manage to fund such services. In the UK – way ahead of Ireland in scale and broadband development – television earns 31 per cent of its revenue online; RTÉ, the biggest domestically owned website in the country, generates just 2.5 per cent online.

Core content will remain free, says Curran, “but what everyone has to realise is that quality online costs. Unless organisations can generate income online, we won’t be able to keep investing in it. That’s the real crux.”

People already pay for merchandise, for DVDs. “A few years ago, RTÉ had four out of the top 10 DVD releases at Christmas – such as Tommy Tiernan . . . This is why we’ve moved archive and merchandising into our new digital department.”

It is also looking at more partnerships, such as the streaming arrangement with irishtimes.com during the Queen’s visit.

“If we missed a trick in the past, it’s that we were too defensive about partnerships, we weren’t open enough about talking to other people, we were too closed about our content – and they are things that are changing. We did an awful lot right, but we need more steps in terms of securing the future of online. I don’t think anyone can do it on their own, not unless you’re a big multinational.”

And there’s no shortage of those. In a recent DCU public lecture, he outlined what a day of viewing, listening and web browsing might be like, without any of RTÉ’s services.

"You might begin with Ireland AMon TV3. TV3 is owned by Doughty Hanson, the multi-billion pound, London-based private equity firm." And so on through the day, with a succession of vast, profit-driven media groups. "So to those who say that RTÉ is too big, too dominant or too controlling in this market, I would say pause for a moment, take a step back and see the real elephant barging its way into our living rooms!"

The case “is for a strong, relevant RTÉ that will provide us with that sense of selves which Irish people cherish so dearly. Our history, our culture, our heritage and all the expressions and iterations of ourselves, that make us who we are. RTÉ will be home to them.”

DAYTIME TV WILL FEEL THE CUTS

TROUBLE IS, SUCH A HOME doesn’t come cheap. Sharp, fast lessons are being learned. RTÉ’s commercial revenue remains at about 44 per cent below 2008 levels. Costs have been cut by 18 per cent in two years (compared to an average of 6 per cent in the rest of the Irish semi-States, according to a PwC report). Staff numbers have been cut by 300. The fees of the top 10 “talent” are being slashed by 30 per cent. Daytime television in particular will feel the lash in the new year. The cuts have triggered serious ripples. Barbara Galavan, of Screen Producers Ireland, says their main complaint is that the independents have suffered cuts of 28 per cent while RTÉ’s payroll has only been reduced by 13.5 per cent.

Curran says it’s “unreasonable” to look at figures year by year, given how major events – such as the forthcoming Olympics and Euro 2012 – cause spikes, retractions and fluctuations. Which is precisely what underlines the SPI’s sense of “foreboding” about the new year.

He points to the huge increase in spend – from €34 million to €76 million – on independent productions in the boom years but he’s clearly anxious not to get into what he calls “a them and us . . . There is no them and us. They are very much an integral part of what we do. I would argue the RTÉ view has changed fundamentally on the independent sector in recent years. I’m not sure if the independent sector realises how much, but it has.”

Another project undoubtedly under review is Project 2025, the €350 million redevelopment of the Montrose campus, although Curran says they are currently working through it, with an eye on the planning process.

But the figures are falling in the right direction. A “potential” deficit of €40 million has been pulled back to €17 million in 2011 and they hope to break even in 2013. With a wintry laugh, Curran remarks that in the three months between the time he accepted the director general job in November 2010 and started work in February 2011, the station lost €15 million in State funding – €10 million for TG4 and €5 million for social welfare/OAP licence waivers – and was €10 million off in its commercial projections.

IN THE ODD LANDSCAPE of Irish broadcasting, Colum Kenny points out that TG4 – the State’s second independent public service broadcaster – gets one-quarter of all public monies available for broadcasting in the Republic. “Add together the revenue grant of €10 million, the hour per day it already gets ‘free’ from RTÉ, its share of the Sound and Vision fund, and a number of other smaller revenue sources, and that’s the reality for a tiny share of the audience – which is, that one in 50 people at any given time is watching TG4.”

A bizarre upshot is that it allows TG4 to outbid RTÉ for Heineken Cup rugby highlights, for example, something which drives TV3 “nuts”, in the words of TV3’s chief executive, David McRedmond. “Can you imagine being TV3, depending on an advertising market with the prices set by RTÉ, having to compete with RTÉ and TG4 bidding against each other for Heineken Cup rights? That’s the lunacy of not sorting out the broadcasting sector.”

Nonetheless, out in Ballymount at the TV3’s HQ – around, astonishingly, only since 1997 – McRedmond seems pretty happy with recent progress. Some 40 per cent of its output now is home produced, he says, and it has 40 per cent more viewers than RTÉ2. “TV3 is bigger in Ireland than BBC1 and UTV combined in terms of viewership. It’s now big broadcaster other than RTÉ1.”

He finds a tiny bit of common ground with Curran. Television is booming, he says. “Television is emerging as the supermedia. As online becomes a threat to others, television is the perfect complementary medium to online.” He mentioned “pockets of real brilliance” in RTÉ, such as sport, current affairs, arts and drama. “Love/Hate is world class, brilliantly written, fantastically produced, well scheduled – that’s RTÉ at its best”. That’s where the backrub stops. “But it doesn’t do enough original drama. It probably doesn’t do enough arts programming. Some would argue that it doesn’t do enough religious programming . . . All those areas that the licence fee is for, it doesn’t do.”

He accuses them of being confused about their public-service remit and of chasing ratings. Scheduling rather than content is television's Holy Grail, McRedmond claims. "It's all about how schedules compete against each other." So he reckons that RTÉ deliberately puts in "some of the really big programmes" to counter The Apprentice,for example. But isn't that what any self-respecting rival would do? "No, I don't think they should be doing it."

‘RTÉ HAVE COMPLETELY MESSED UP THE COMMERCIAL MARKET’

McREDMOND ACCUSES RTÉ of buying "tons and tons" of US acquisitions, spending €25 million a year on the likes of Mad Men– "which they put on at 11.30 at night", plus "a load of stuff they don't play out at all", simply to keep TV3 out of the market. "We would go after things like Hawaii Five-0, Pan Am, The Good Wife, and time and time again, we'd turn up at the door of a studio and be told, 'Oh no, we've a deal with RTÉ.' That's not what RTÉ should be doing . . . But most of all – and this is what most exercises me – it's that they've completely messed up the commercial market."

The average spend per capita on television advertising is way below most European countries, he says, “and that’s all driven by what RTÉ have done . . . They’ve driven prices to a level below cost. We have more advertising minutage but we have to compete with RTÉ in price. And we’re obliged to offer a discount as RTÉ is the price-maker, while it receives pretty much all of the licence fee.”

McRedmond argues that TV3 only needs “marginally more revenue” to start making their own dramas. “We’re building a new studio two buildings up – and that will allow us to increase our level of Irish content,” he says, comparing TV3’s €5 million new studio with RTÉ’s €350 million Project 2525.

His solution is to give RTÉ1 the full, unsliced licence fee but make it advertisement free, and to make RTÉ2 a strictly commercial station, running head to head with TV3, and obliged to sell advertising above cost.

"Of course RTÉ1 is not going to have the same funds so it's not going to do Frozen Planet; it would be more Charlie Bird in the Amazon," he says mischievously. "But it wouldn't have to, if it didn't spend €25 million a year on US acquisitions and didn't spend vast sums on building studios in Donnybrook."

' LIKE TWO BALD MEN FIGHTING OVER A COMB'

CONFRONTED WITH McRedmond’s views, Curran suppresses a sigh and says he tries not to get into “slanging matches” with TV3. But the commercial station got 20 per cent more advertising minutes last year. “And that,” he says, “has been the biggest factor influencing price in the television advertising market . . . TV3 undercuts our prices constantly.”

And, he says meaningfully, he’s “very pleased” to hear TV3 say they’re doing well, “since they constantly complaining that RTÉ distorts the market. It’s a viable market.”

“The two broadcasters are just fundamentally different. We do an awful lot more home production, we do an awful lot more studio shows, we invest in in-house drama. TV3 has none of that. The whole idea of the proposed Project 2525 is that we will use the site much more effectively and efficiently and will prepare ourselves for the digital age.

“There’s a lack of honesty – or realism, from those who want to see RTÉ’s remit narrowed to certain types of output . . . They’re saying, in other words, you do what we don’t want to do or whatever doesn’t make money for us. That can only have one outcome – the eventual marginalisation of RTÉ.

“When audiences dwindle, they would be the first to ask why we should spend public monies on a minority broadcaster that few people listen to or watch.”

But in a way, as Curran himself concedes, it’s like two bald men fighting over a comb. Google’s online Irish advertising revenue is up at €50 to 60 million, for example, compared to RTÉ’s €3.5 million. If everyone wants to talk about digital, it’s for a reason. But the central questions remain.

“Do we want an Irish broadcaster that has a substantial share of the market?” asks Colum Kenny. “Do we care strategically or culturally enough to ensure that that happens – or do we say, let it all rip so that it doesn’t matter whether people watch satellite channels or whatever? . . .

“I’m not saying there aren’t savings to be made, but you can’t go round pretending you can have RTÉ on a shoestring.”