RTÉ considering TV service in Britain

RTÉ is looking at launching a television service in Britain in a bid to garner revenue from the UK advertising market, RTÉ director-general Noel Curran said in a speech at the Belfast Media Festival today.

Mr Curran also said that RTÉ hoped to offer advertisers in Northern Ireland the opportunity to advertise on a regional “opt-out” of its channels from next year. The broadcaster’s audience has grown in Northern Ireland since digital switchover in October 2012.

The two moves are a response to the arrival of UTV Ireland in the Republic from January, as well as a rise in the number of UK channels selling advertising in the Republic.

“Given the ever-increasing competition south of the border and the arrival of so many new entrants we have to look again at our advertising offering,” Mr Curran said.

An RTÉ television service in Britain would also “improve our overall offering to the Irish community” in that country, “an important responsibility we have”, he added.

Turning to the issue of “retransmission” fees, Mr Curran said Sky and UPC should pay for the carriage of RTÉ on their pay-TV platforms and that RTÉ would be making this case to the Government “in the coming months”.

RTÉ has hired Mediatique, a UK-based consultancy firm, to report on how much access to Irish free-to-air services is worth to the pay-TV operators in Ireland.

“The analysis is telling us that the financial benefits of the relationship are currently completely imbalanced in favour of the pay-TV operators,” he said.

He cited comments by Channel 4’s David Abrahams who said distribution or retransmission fees could be worth as much as £200 million to the main free-to-air channels in the UK because they account for the bulk of viewing on the platforms.

ITV chief executive Adam Crozier then echoed Abrahams’ call for a “fair deal” on retransmission fees, saying that the impact of the current system is that public service broadcasters are forced to subsidise the pay-TV platforms of major media corporations.

“We have been considering this issue in an Irish context for some time,” he said.

“Unlike the US or UK, in Ireland this imbalance causes a particular difficulty because it results in huge amounts of potential investment in Irish programming and content leaving the country. This is an issue that Irish broadcasters need to work together on.”

Mr Curran was delivering the Dan Gilbert Memorial Lecture, organised by the Royal Television Society.

“Life in Northern Ireland has transformed, and so too has the media landscape,” he said, observing that people graduating from university today - the smartphone generation - were four or five when the Good Friday Agreement was signed.

“I like to kid myself that I’m still relatively young, but my first mobile phone as a cub reporter weighed about a stone and stretched halfway up my arm. It was certainly more Dom Joly and Trigger Happy TV than Steve Jobs and iPhone.”