Proposals which could radically change the face of Irish broadcasting will be presented to the RTÉ Authority within the next fortnight.
A team of two consultancy firms - KPMG and Logical - has been carrying out a fundamental evaluation of RTÉ since January and its report is nearing completion. The internal strategic review comes just as Arts Minister Silé de Valera announces the establishment of a forum to examine the future of Irish public-service broadcasting. It's not yet clear whether the consultants' recommendations will be made public at this stage or form part of an overall RTÉ submission to the forum on broadcasting.
It's expected the consultants' report will offer at least three fully-costed options to the Authority.
Firstly, that the core business of RTÉ remains the same - but is carried out in a more streamlined and efficient manner.
Secondly, that RTE becomes a publisher/broadcaster and almost all its content is farmed out to independent producers. This model would be loosely based on a Channel 4-type of organisation, where all programming bar news is produced by independent production companies rather than in-house.
A third option would see RTÉ producing some content - news, current affairs, sport and drama such as Fair City - while commissioning all other programming from independents.
Options two or three would have drastic repercussions for RTÉ production staff and make sizable redundancies inevitable.
However, any hard decisions about the future of the organisation are unlikely to be taken until the forum on broadcasting reports back to the minister responsible.
The forum, chaired by former Central Bank governor Maurice O'Connell, has been given four months to come up with a blueprint for the future of public service broadcasting. It will take submissions from broadcasters and individuals on public-service broadcasting as well as looking at the structure and regulation of RTÉ.
With a general election looming - there's no way of even knowing what minister the forum will be reporting to - so the climate of uncertainty in RTÉ looks set to continue for some time to come.
Amid all the doom and gloom, one corner of RTÉ has been quietly expanding its operations and staffing levels over the past year. This week, RTÉ Commercial Enterprises Ltd (CEL) announced two significant moves - the relaunch of the RTÉ Guide and the appointment of Gary Mitchell to the newly created post of merchandising manager. The RTÉ Guide remains the highest-selling Irish weekly magazine, with sales of just under 150,000 a week. In a bad year for advertising it was one of the few magazines whose advertising revenue actually increased in 2001.
Twenty-one Irish programmes are up for awards in the Celtic Film and Television Festival, which takes place in Brittany next week. Irish nominations include two entries in the best drama series - Grand Pictures/RTÉ Paths to Freedom and Tyrone Productions/Eo Teilifis/TG4's Ros na Rún. There are four Irish nominations in the area of factual documentary, including the powerful Dead Silence (Wildfire Productions/RTÉ) on BSE which ran on RTÉ as part of the True Lives series; and Ar Dover Fein (Crescendo Concepts/TG4) on the Kirkintulloch disaster in Scotland. RTÉ got seven nominations altogether, with six for TG4.