Trade unions representing 1,800 RTÉ staff members will next week launch a public campaign designed to make the licence fee an election issue. The move comes as the RTÉ Authority considers proposals on the future of the organisation presented to them last Wednesday by consultants KPMG and Logica.
The authority has already requested clarification and elaboration of various points contained in the consultants' report and has so far made no comment on the proposals contained within it. The chairman of the authority, Paddy Wright, said it was considering the report as a "work in progress" until futher submissions were received.
A spokesperson for RTÉ's trade union group said the purpose of the campaign was to bring the plight of RTÉ staff to the attention of politicians and the public. The campaign, entitled "RTÉ Works!", is designed to motivate RTÉ staff to fight for their organisation. Each member of staff will receive a pack containing postcards to be used to lobby politicians on the licence fee, as well as posters asking for support for the national broadcaster.
• An Irish production company has been commissioned to make six half-hour programmes for BBC's arts and culture digital channel, BBC4. Mint Productions will make six programmes for the "Profiles" strand for the new channel, which launched at the beginning of this month. The first programme is on Italy's controversial prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, to be transmitted on May 9th. Other subjects include Mary Robinson and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.
Mint Productions was founded 18 months ago by producer/director Steve Carson and RTÉ current affairs presenter Miriam O'Callaghan. It was set up as an all-Ireland production company with offices in Belfast and Dublin. The company's four-part series on the intensive care unit at the National Maternity Hospital is currently being shown on RTÉ1 on Tuesdays at 10.10 p.m.
• BBC1 has dropped the globe logo that has been a part of its identity since 1964. The globe was scrapped in favour of a series of "idents" designed to reflect a more multicultural Britain. Since yesterday, BBC programmes are now linked by 10-second idents featuring black, Asian and disabled actors and dancers alongside white Britons in contemporary settings. One sequence shows performers doing a Brazilian dance against a dramatic London skyline, while another shows ballet dancers on Cornwall's cliffs.
The new idents all incorporate the colour red, as the channel's signature colour, to match a new on-screen red and white logo. They replace the idents that feature red and yellow hot air balloons drifting past well-known British locations. The rebranding exercise has cost £700,000 sterling.
• The show that revolutionised morning TV in Britain, Channel 4's The Big Breakfast, yesterday bowed out after almost 10 years. The Big Breakfast, which launched the careers of Chris Evans, Johnny Vaughan and Denise Van Outen, was axed last year because of plummeting ratings. Channel 4 will launch a new breakfast show in its place next month, to be made by a consortium including BSkyB. Details of the show are being kept under wraps, but the format has been described as "the TV equivalent of the Sun".