Mark Little
Former RTÉ broadcaster, entrepreneur and member of the Future of Media Commission
Is there anything the Future of Media Commission missed?: Possibly the one thing we didn’t gauge was how polluted the commercial side of the house was in terms of its impact on other areas. The commission saw the commercial revenue [as a] necessary evil because it’s such a huge proportion of the income... But I think broadly the commission got it right... Public service content, whether or not it comes from RTÉ, is critical public infrastructure... If we don’t have those shared facts, we fall apart as a nation. The second principle was that it’s not just RTÉ, this is about public service, public interest media and cultural innovation [more widely].
It concluded that the licence fee wasn’t fit for purpose: It was surprising how quickly we arrived at [that] conclusion. A handful of countries use licence fees... It’s ridiculous to ask younger people to pay for a television set in the corner. We recommended that there should be exchequer funding... It was a down-payment on a transformation plan. [The commission suggested a three-year period for this plan. Little now feels it should be four years.]
Was a scandal like this an inevitable consequence of the funding model?: If your only real focus is advertising, success is gauged by how many big hits you can have... If all you have is a hammer, everything has to be a nail. If all you have is monetising a mass audience, then all you’re thinking about is the top five performers… instead of thinking, “Where are my next 10 talented podcasters coming from?”
Where are they coming from?: It you think about the people who have made the most impact in Irish culture, many of them were not incubated in the linear [broadcasting] format. Blindboy is a fantastic example… The thing that really shocks me is no one has been talking in the last couple of days of mass migration of [young people] from traditional media. I haven’t heard anybody speaking from the perspective of a 26-year-old who right now thinks MrBeast on YouTube is 100 times more important than who’s presenting The Late Late Show.
What other questions should we be asking?: What do we really mean by public service?… I think we need to sit down and do a very honest audit of what activities right now are adding to Irish culture [what] needs to be in-house and what should be outsourced, not only because it’s cheaper but because it could actually create more cultural innovation and make RTÉ a little bit more open to risk.
Could you cleanly separate the commercial from the public service output?: Give RTÉ an envelope of four years, a guarantee... and make sure that in that time, they’re incentivised to seek out other ways to make money... If you think some sort of magic stroke-of-a-pen separation between public service and commercial will happen overnight, it won’t.
Is there a danger that the crisis will actually stall change?: RTÉ will fail at things and that’s got to be okay. While I’ve been admiring some of the seriousness with which politicians have taken this, I’m also really worried about this absolute rush to judge every single mistake. Who in RTÉ is going to take a risk in the coming years on essential innovation if they’re going to be hauled before the PAC and there’s no quarter given to any mistake?
Larry Bass
CEO of Shinawil Productions, briefly an RTÉ board member in 2021
Were you surprised by the crisis?: Anyone who’s been close to RTÉ can see that it has been allowed evolve into being a problem child… And when something is not fit for purpose, it’s going to have cracks starting to emerge. There’s now an opportunity to make it better. And the great thing about it is that all the people you need to make it better are all there.
How should RTÉ be restructured?: It should concentrate its resources on having the absolute best people doing news and current affairs, as they have always done, to the highest possible standards, and everything else should be commissioned by a very strong editorial board of people who commission and manage budgets, manage the editorial independence of the organisation, and get the programmes made by [external] programme makers.
That’s what’s called the “publisher-broadcaster model”. Where else do you get that?: Channel 4 is a publisher-broadcaster. TG4 is a publisher-broadcaster... Both ITV and BBC have had to move to that model. BBC still [creates] news and current affairs but BBC Studios is the commercial wing... They would have been the production company behind the excellent coverage of Glastonbury… They own other production companies around the world. They have income derived from creating new IP [intellectual property]. Whether RTÉ creates an RTÉ commercial division that makes commercial television and competes globally, that’s a decision that it can decide to take.
How should public service broadcasting/RTÉ be funded?: The two faults that are endemic in the current licence fee is a) it’s not being collected b) it hasn’t moved since its last increase in 2008. And that’s just not practical in a modern world where prices, unfortunately, do not stay stable.
What model would you propose?: Finland is a country of similar size to Ireland. YLE, the national broadcaster, is hugely successful... [A public service content charge] is collected from every citizen in the country. And, more importantly, the corporations in Finland pay [an amount] per year... No citizen pays over a certain amount. If you’re unwaged, the state pays it. It’s a very fair system.
Should commercial broadcasting be separated out from State-funded broadcasting?: I would take commercial revenue completely away from RTÉ… You’d then have this really dynamic service not interrupted by commercials... Virgin Media could be the way of selling commercials in Ireland, and they would have more money as well, so you’d have a much more dynamic, much more competitive landscape.
What do you worry might happen?: I fear that people won’t take the opportunity to change... Numerous governments have kicked this can down the road... I’ve said to politicians that if they don’t take this seriously, they’re the ones who are going to suffer most… Irish politics is discussed on prime time on national television. If you allow the national broadcaster diminish and dissipate and disappear, people in the country won’t have a clue who you are, and nor will they care.
Susan Kirby
CEO of Screen Producers Ireland (SPI) which represents the independent production sector in Ireland
What are the key concerns for SPI members?: In the short term, our focus has been on sustaining the flow of business contracting in the medium term, so that there wouldn’t be a “paralysis of decision-making” to quote one of our members. We have met with Minister [for Media] Catherine Martin. We met with [chairwoman of the RTÉ board] Siún Ní Raghallaigh and with the new DG, Kevin Bakhurst. There was a clear understanding of the importance of the sector... We’ve not been given any signals of significant delays at the moment and that gives us some comfort.
What are the SPI’s concerns more generally?: The sustainable financial model of RTÉ. Our members have been hearing for many years about budget constraints and budget cuts, and there’s a downward pressure on their budgets as a result. It causes enormous concern to have something as seismic as this occur but also, we’ve never seen as proactive a national conversation happening about the need for reform in RTÉ and while that might be destabilising in one way, we also welcome it.
From your perspective, what wasn’t working?: Probably at the core of it, it’s the year-on-year funding model and the ability to long-range plan and offer certainty and clarity.
How should the funding model be changed?: One [idea] came directly from the Future of Media Report and that was central funding from Government. It’s the one recommendation Government decided to not adopt... We need to bring those ideas back on the table and look at the best model for sustainable funding for RTÉ.
What other structural changes would you like to see?: We would advocate for a hybrid publisher-broadcaster model where news and current affairs are retained in public service, but you would engage with the independent sector to deliver on those [other] core tenets of public sector media while also delivering for the taxpayer and Government and the public in terms of value for money.
Does there need to be a clean delineation between commercial funding and public funding?: It’s clearly a discussion that needs to be had but I would caution that that shouldn’t involve deciding that certain kinds of content are commercial and the others are public service.
What else worries your members?: Uncertainty is an enemy of our sector. It doesn’t support innovation or creativity. That feeds back into the need for multiannual funding, some kind of stability of funding. Projects can take months and years to ideate and bring to market. The goal for a number of our members is to build a stable financial model for themselves. They offer employment, commissioning writers, directors, actors, authors and composers, hiring crews... If part of [the system] is broken or under pressure or in any way not functioning properly, it impacts on the wider ecology.
Darren Smith
Managing director of Kite Entertainment
Are you talking much about the RTÉ fiasco?: [Laughs] You add half an hour to any conversation you’re having to discuss it.
What will RTÉ look like in a few years?: I don’t see any version of RTÉ in 10 years’ time that isn’t a publisher-broadcaster... News and current affairs would remain in-house. I presume radio would remain in-house. And then all other shows would go through the commissioning process at the IPU [Independent Productions Unit]. The IPU system [is] boring, but it holds us [independent producers] to account on every line in the budget. And it keeps us out of Oireachtas hearings... So we are looking at a future where Fair City, The Late Late, the big-ticket items. could go out to tender. RTÉ could have a production wing that goes and pitches on the same terms as the rest of us but could also pitch to Virgin, could pitch to BBC, could pitch the Sky.
Some have suggested that commercially funded productions be split off from public interest broadcasting. What’s your take on that?: The way the ad dollar is going, then that’s bad news for drama, entertainment, factual entertainment. If it all has to live off the ad dollar, that’s not going to work and the parts supported by the licence fee will be swimming in cash. That’s too disproportionate.
How should RTÉ be funded?: I think the Future of Media Commission’s recommendation last year [that it be funded from the exchequer] makes sense. I think it was interesting at the weekend to hear what was an essentially a U-turn from Government [politicians] going, “It’s clear the licence fee is an outdated model and doesn’t work.” And you’re like, “I wish someone told you a year ago.” The core of why the musical [Toy Show – The Musical] happened and why shortcuts were taken, is because the place was a financial basket case and it needed to look at other ways to raise money.
What’s the problem with the TV licence?: It’s another bill that comes in on top of all your other bills. And you mightn’t feel you watch those channels, whereas you don’t really object to your taxes being spent on libraries and sports grounds that you don’t go into. You understand that they’re important for society and the community… There’s also a problem with the brand. People take television quite personally. If you call something funny and then you don’t make someone laugh, they can take offence and act as if you all got together in a room to work out how to irritate them.
What are your immediate concerns about the crisis?: My short-term immediate concern is paralysis around decision-making. Has anything been greenlit since this started?… [Another] concern now is that decision-making on what gets commissioned might get handed over to people who aren’t television people.
Anything on the plus side?: New DGs [director generals] are like new presidents of America, they have their first 100 days. But what he has now is an opportunity. He’s got his first 100 days, he has no sin on his hands and he has an emergency. So now is the hour to change the world while people are focused on it.
Any other suggestions?: There’s a bit of “What have the Romans ever done for us?” about attitudes to RTÉ... If they said, in a month’s time, “We’re changing RTÉ’s name to ‘Media Ireland’” there’d be an outcry. “No, you’re RTÉ!” And they’d be like, “Oh, so you do like us?” The church is irrelevant. The North is not the live issue it was... If we don’t have RTÉ to give out about, are we even Irish?
