Proposed changes to the television licence fee system “will not alleviate the crisis” in public broadcasting and will instead likely “make the crisis more acute”, RTÉ’s director-general has said.
The Government announced in August that it intended to replace the traditional television licence fee system with a new “device-independent broadcasting charge”.
However, the Government is first putting the collection of the existing licence fee out to tender for a five-year contract, meaning the new system will not come into place for at least five years.
The move was not well received by the public broadcaster, with Dee Forbes, its director-general, sending a letter to Minister for Communications Richard Bruton on August 29th criticising the proposed changes.
The letter, which was released to The Irish Times under the Freedom of Information Act, said that while the broadcaster welcomed the Minister’s acknowledgement of the importance of public-service broadcasting, “the proposed reforms do not appear to meet either the urgency or the scale of the challenges identified”.
‘Increasingly misaligned’
"Postponing, up to seven years, the move to a device independent charge will ensure the licence fee collection system becomes increasingly misaligned to modern media consumption and wholly unfit for the purpose of sustaining and supporting public media in Ireland, " the letter said.
"In addition, the measures announced do almost nothing to alleviate the crisis now being experienced in public service broadcasting provision of RTÉ, and will likely, through increased top slicing of the TV licence to pay for regulation, actually make the crisis worse," it added.
After recording seven annual deficits in the past 10 years, RTÉ is predicting significant further funding shortfalls as it struggles to maintain its output.
In a letter to staff in September, management said the broadcaster could no longer “operate as we are”, without a significant increase in funding.
An analysis of the broadcaster’s finances found that voluntary redundancies, legislative changes and cuts to the provision of sport, Irish language services, educational and religious content may all be required to plug the financial gaps at RTÉ.
Top earners
The issue of salaries for the broadcaster’s top earners has also been raised in discussions around RTÉ’s finances.
In a meeting between the Minister and Ms Forbes in January 2019 relating to the broadcaster’s financial woes, Mr Bruton raised the issue of high salaries with the director-general.
According to minutes from the meeting, obtained by the Irish Times, Ms Forbes said she intended to keep the salaries “under review”, adding that “the time to look at these is as each contract comes up for renewal”.
In the meeting, Ms Forbes also addressed the fall in advertising revenue, which she attributed to Brexit.
“Most advertisers are UK based and are cautious in their spending since the referendum on Brexit,” the minutes state.
She added that 10 years ago, RTÉ had cash reserves and spent twice as much on independent productions compared with what it spends now.
