The Bob Collins Interview - Pay DTT still on the cards?

Elmo · 19-09-2010 3:15pm #1

In today's Sunday Business Post

In short the BAI did no wrong.

1. Had come to the conclusion that advertising mins should be increased on Commercial TV, due to other channels with EU mins already set, feels it did not effect Radio, which had its ad mins defined in the Broadcasting Act. But would they have increased them on radio if they could?
2. Thinks that a successful Commercial DTT licence process could be achieved if the BAI could force RTÉ into talks with the winners of such a contract. Would like to see the process start all over again in Mid-2011
3. Product Placement still up in the air even thought RTÉ, TV3, TG4, Setanta continue to operate PP on many of their TV show. While City Channel is PPTV.

Anyway thats what I am getting out of what he said.

watty · 19-09-2010 10:29pm

Fantasy.

rlogue · 20-09-2010 12:49am

RTE will stop it like they've stopped everything else to do with Commercial DTT. Bob Collins is living in a fantasy land.

Elmo · 20-09-2010 12:54am

rlogue wrote: »

RTE will stop it like they've stopped everything else to do with Commercial DTT. Bob Collins is living in a fantasy land.

I personally don't think we can blame RTÉ. The BAI have allot to answer for and they really aren't doing their job.

I don't believe in a PAY commercial TV service on DTT, and if it should happen why should the public foot the bill twice.

rlogue · 20-09-2010 12:57am

Hmm. Maybe I should buy newspapers that tell me the BAI held up agreement on DTT due to their insistence on massive bond payments?

Elmo · 20-09-2010 1:03am

rlogue wrote: »

Hmm. Maybe I should buy newspapers that tell me the BAI held up agreement on DTT due to their insistence on massive bond payments?

Maybe I should contact a private company currently paying for the role out of DTT. The issue lies with the fact that RTÉ have spent money on the project and the private companies seem to want to get the system without RTÉ looking for security. Thus when they do an "ITV Digital" RTÉ (i.e. the public) have to pay to pick up the pieces.

The BAI weren't strong in any case. Had they been the would not have be railroaded away from 3 licences down to 1.

rlogue · 20-09-2010 1:21am

The whole problem with DTT was that a vested interest (RTE) is still allowed to control the national transmission service. So that service behaves in a way to protect the perceived interests of RTE.

In addition the BAI and the Department for Communications are utterly toothless. Witness how they handle TV3's cavalier attitude to Irish productions and poor rollout of the TV3 analogue signal 12 years since TV3 launched.

What passes for Irish Digital TV policy is controlled by certain mandarins in Montrose as a way of furthering RTE's interests.

I believe the time has come for the splitting off of RTE NL from RTE and for it to be sold off to a third party who will be compelled to act in the interests of the state.

The Cush · 20-09-2010 1:24am

Elmo wrote: »

In today's Sunday Business Post

In short the BAI did no wrong.

2. Thinks that a successful Commercial DTT licence process could be achieved if the BAI could force RTÉ into talks with the winners of such a contract. Would like to see the process start all over again in Mid-2011

Nothing new in the article, he said the same thing at the Oireachtas discussion in mid July, except maybe the Oct 2012 ASO date. Previously announced that ASO will occur during Quarter 4 of 2012 (in conjunction with ASO in Northern Ireland). Getting closer to a fixed date?

BAI wants new powers on digital TV

Sunday, September 19, 2010 - By Catherine O’Mahony

The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) wants statutory powers to compel RTE, if necessary, to enter into a mediation process with any future application to run a commercial Digital Terrestial Television (DTT) service.

The legislation granting such powers would need to be in place by mid-2011 which is when the BAI said it may restart the search for a commercial DTT operator after the first contract negotiations failed earlier this year.

BAI chairman Bob Collins said legislative weakness was partly to blame for the collapse of the unusually protracted contract negotiations.

DTT will replace the analogue television signal, on which around one million people receive TV.

The analogue signal will be switched off in October 2012.

Collins said that the BAI had asked RTE and One Vision, the second bidder for a DTT licence, to enter a non-binding mediation process to try to end their disagreement over access to the DTT transmission network, which RTE is building.

He said OneVision agreed but RTE refused. ‘‘We had no docking mechanism with RTE in any of this,” Collins said.

‘‘What was missing was a direct relationship, from a statutory point of view, between the DTT applicant and RTE, and also between ourselves and RTE.”

Collins said that he believed there was still commercial interest in a DTT service, which he said was crucially important to give maximum choice to viewers and to provide Irish programme makers with multiple digital outlets.

The government has told RTE to proceed with plans to set up a public service DTT service, but has reserved network capacity for a commercial service as well.

Collins said the government had also asked the BAI to help determine the content of RTE’s DTT service. The BAI last year became responsible for regulating RTE, as well as commercial television. He rejected as ‘unfair’ criticism of the BAI’s role in securing a DTT contract.

‘‘The DTT outcome certainly was a significant disappointment,” he said. ‘‘But it would have been inappropriate for us to pull a plug arbitrarily when it seemed things were happening. The ideal scenario would have been that the first applicant, having won the licence, had seen it through.”

A consortium led by Communicorp won the contest for a DTT licence but pulled out of contract talks because of the economic downturn.

The licence was then offered to the second-ranked bidder, OneVision, which also failed to compete negotiations.

http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2010/09/19/story51756.asp#

Elmo · 20-09-2010 1:35am

rlogue wrote: »

I believe the time has come for the splitting off of RTE NL from RTE and for it to be sold off to a third party who will be compelled to act in the interests of the state.

I don't believe that a Third party would work in the states interest. RTÉ NL should be separate I will agree but it should not be sold to a private company. I don't believe that Boxer, One Vision or Easy TV ever considered working in the "interest of the state".

I would love to know what the interest of RTÉ are, how does it help them to suppress DTT?

The Cush · 20-09-2010 1:42am

rlogue wrote: »

I believe the time has come for the splitting off of RTE NL from RTE and for it to be sold off to a third party who will be compelled to act in the interests of the state.

And end up with a mess like Eircom. Be careful what you wish for, lest it come true.

The security guarantee/bond required by RTÉ was a necessary evil I believe when you consider some of those involved in the commercial process (eircom, setanta and tv3) and the likely success of the pay DTT project. The tax payer (licence fee payer) could end up carrying the can again.

One negative point on the guarantee/bond, it was only introduced during negotiations following the licence award and was not part of the application process. If it had been, how would that affected the application process? No excuse next time around if commercial DTT is resurrected.

watty · 20-09-2010 10:15am

The Cush wrote: »

And end up with a mess like Eircom. Be careful what you wish for, lest it come true.

The extra Debt incurred by Vultures doing leveraged buyouts and not result of any investment would have paid for Universal 100Mbps fibre to home TWICE for everyone. Even the meanest mountain top hovel. Negative investment (asset stripping, debt from leveraged buyouts etc) has been over €4Billion since privatisation.

The Cush wrote: »

The security guarantee/bond required by RTÉ was a necessary evil I believe when you consider some of those involved in the commercial process (eircom, setanta and tv3) and the likely success of the pay DTT project. The tax payer (licence fee payer) could end up carrying the can again.

What RTE NL was looking for was so normal that it didn't need to be in the Licence Tender documents. They incurring expense that would take 5 to 10 years to pay off. They had even prematurely bought gear for PayDTT rollout assuming it would happen.

I never believed Boxer was serious. People apply for and get licences all the time with no intention of running a service.
1) To Beautify the company (look how many licences we have)
2) Qualcom buying spectrum licences to keep out WiMax.
3) WISPs in Ireland take licences and release them at deadline to slow or block competitor rollouts.

RTE is a convenient scapegoat for a Failed Government policy that held up DTT roll-out for Ten Years.

The Cush wrote: »

One negative point on the guarantee/bond, it was only introduced during negotiations following the licence award and was not part of the application process. If it had been, how would that affected the application process? No excuse next time around if commercial DTT is resurrected.

PayTV on DTT in Ireland is commercial suicide and Fantasy [blog post version with infographic], until AFTER analogue closedown and even then only a Niche market, less % probably than "Top Up TV" in UK.
Pay TV here has fundamentally different origin to UK pay TV. Here it was driven by BBC/ITV, which is all on Freesat now and is now driven by Sky Sport primarily and niche Multichannel programming.

Excluding FTA freesat or Irish Terrestrial channels the Next most popular are ALL Sky sport channels added together less than 1.7% and Sky1 less than 1.7%.

All the Free channels are more than 87% viewing.

even before Sky Digital, over 75% of households had UTV or HTV. Slightly over 80% of Households have PayTV now. Less than 10% of those would move to any feasible DTT Pay Platform. A tiny percent of the 20% without payTV would go foro Pay TV at any price.

Digiweb was going to launch a TV platform over 4 years ago.
SCTV MMDS has failed.
UPC MMDS is a fraction of peak of Chorus/NTL MMDS.
The MMDs platforms can have about x5 to x10 the number of channels of pay DTT and can't compete with Freesat and Sky.

UPC Cable now offers Broadband and phone far cheaper and faster than eircom and will offer VOD and 100Mbps soon. UPC isn't going to lose many customers at all to Pay DTT. UPC hasn't finished it's cable upgrades either.

When Sky customers cancel they get all the UK Freesat channels. The number of Free UK channels on EPG actually increases when they take out Irish viewing card. Satellite (freesat + Sky) is going to lose hardly any viewers to Pay DTT

The basic DTT will work as it's simply a replacement of Analogue TV. Free Irish TV for 20% that don't want Pay TV or extra TV sets in Pay TV households.

We don't have the critical mass of Indigenous Pay TV channels to make a purely Irish Pay TV platform work. TV3e is about it and not very Indigenous or popular.

UPC and Sky Pay content is 99.9% UK payTV platform content.

The Cush · 20-09-2010 11:50am

The relatively new Fine Gael Communications Spokesman Leo Varadkar recently said the following

“If Communications Minister Éamon Ryan had not made a total mess of Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT), Sky would be facing competition across Ireland from 2012. But this will not now happen due to failure of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) and RTE to secure a commercial partner to provide Pay TV alongside RTE’s new digital service.

“No doubt Éamon Ryan will try to claim that multi-channel television in Ireland is cheaper than the United Kingdom when you adjust for ‘purchasing power parity’ in line with his laughable contention that electricity prices in Ireland are below the European average. This is fantasy and nonsense.

“I am calling on him to end the rip-off and protect Irish consumers by amending the Broadcasting Act to give the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) the power to regulate the multi-channel television market until it is truly competitive and give it the necessary power to force an agreement between RTENL and a commercial partner so that everyone can enjoy the full benefits of Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT)”, Deputy Varadkar concluded.

http://www.clareherald.com/business-and-finance/consumer/3011-sky-tv-branded-a-rip-off.html?lang=

Sky vs. pay DTT, the man doesn't know what he's talking about.

Elmo · 20-09-2010 12:36pm

watty wrote: »

The basic DTT will work as it's simply a replacement of Analogue TV. Free Irish TV for 20% that don't want Pay TV or extra TV sets in Pay TV households.

We don't have the critical mass of Indigenous Pay TV channels to make a purely Irish Pay TV platform work. TV3e is about it and not very Indigenous or popular.

I will mention Setanta but that is not my argument nor has it ever been. And it isn't a very good one.

I believe that RTÉ, TV3 and TG4 can provide extra free channels on DTT which would be also must carries on Cable and SaorSat (should that happen). The mention of SaorSat further pushes back the idea of a Pay service made up of UK services on DTT.

I also believe that another commercial TV channel should be allow provide services to the Irish Public. Hopeful this would pull back part of the advertising revenue leaving the country. Even 3e and Setanta are currently doing that, it would also mean that Irish TV channels would not have to worry about the 12mins of ads available on E4, Sky One etc. It would also hopeful mean strong ingenious competition which is required.

I am not talking about major channels BTW simple General Entertainment channels, I don't see why E4 should provide that type of programming on DTT over an Irish based company, I am not suggesting that we go with the Canadian model either, E4 should be available on other platforms. This would also help in the so called quest for Choice.

The addition of BBC 1, 2, UTV and C4 would also be welcome on SaorView.

We are currently one of the only (if not the only) European country not protect ingenious TV channels.

watty · 20-09-2010 12:56pm

There is no commercially viable method to pay for BBC 1, 2, UTV and C4 on Irish DTT other than having a Major payTV operator. The whole goal of Digital Changeover is to almost halve the TV spectrum in Ireland and have a sell off of Licences to Telecom Operators. Thus there is not enough space to have enough channels for a new pay DTT Platform as BAI envisages, but only to have some extra commercial channels. The original flaw in BCI/Dept of Comms thinking between 1999 and 2008 was ignoring the need for have x4 space per channel for the inevitable HD changeover.

Saorsat isn't an issue, as it's simply a copy of Saorview. Given cost of Saorview rollout and any future payTV Mux rollout (which as envisaged by BAI is separate from Saorview), the carriage on Saorsat is essentially free and automatic for any channel on DTT.

watty · 20-09-2010 12:59pm

The Cush wrote: »

Sky vs. pay DTT, the man doesn't know what he's talking about.

He has admitted he is studying up on the whole Broadcast/Broadband stuff. Éamon Ryan has been in the job for a while and all he has done is sign off the infamous NBS designed by his predecessor.

icdg · 20-09-2010 11:17pm

Moved to Terrestrial.

20-09-2010 11:47pm

vradkar needs to study a lot more then if he's to evolve himself from the rubbish idea that people will pay for channels you get for free on freesat...
heh and he used be the fg spokesperson on enterprise lol..

STB · 21-09-2010 12:01am

Badly advised.

Anyone with a small technical knowledge would be able to tell Leo that the reason that commercial DTT wont work is because it is already FTA and available in one box with DTT for FREE...... of course RTE wont be openly endorsing these products - FTA satellite TV from UK is still an elephant in the room. All the cowboys will be out soon selling these prodcuts of course as soon as it becomes apparent what they do (outside of technical discussion boards).

Strangely I think Leo is indirectly affecting my DTT from being on The Front Line this evening. I dont know what is happening at 3 Rock but I am seeing massive fluctuations in signal strength over the last 20 minutes.

Elmo · 21-09-2010 10:22am

STB wrote: »

Anyone with a small technical knowledge would be able to tell Leo that the reason that commercial DTT wont work is because it is already FTA and available in one box with DTT for FREE...... of course RTE wont be openly endorsing these products - FTA satellite TV from UK is still an elephant in the room. All the cowboys will be out soon selling these prodcuts of course as soon as it becomes apparent what they do (outside of technical discussion boards)..

Will RTÉ not promote SaorSat? Which would feed in to FTA Satellite in general, while not overtly pointing it out.

This gets me that the an interview with the head of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland gets moved to terrestrial. Product Placement, The Levy and Advertising were all discussed in the article.

watty · 21-09-2010 11:26am

RTE told the Committee that as DTT won't have BBC, people can use Freesat.

RTE will concentrate on promotion of Saorview and I suspect Saorsat will be in fine print for those 2% to 7% with not good enough DTT signal.

You will need either a second dish (and the Cassegrain or Gregorian is recommended for Ka Band) or Triax 80cm solid dish with Triax bar and Ku 28E LNBF at one end and Ka 9E LNBF at other end, Diseqc Switch and Freesat HD or some sort of HD DVB-S2 sat box. For Sky + Saorsat you need 2x setbox.

44cm Cassegrain that will avoid the more than one dish rule.

Triax 80cm solid dish for Sky/Freesat, 19E Astra, 13E Hotbird and 9E ka-Sat/Soarsat.

If the Sky/Freesat LNB is a quad, two feeds can be for Sky box and 2 feeds to 2 x Diseqc for FTA/Freesat box. The Ka-Sat single LNBF can be split to feed 2 x Diseqc or PVR with a €5 Sat splitter. On < 20m cable, probably split twice for four feeds (using 3 Sat splitters, not TV splitters)

12 element · 21-09-2010 8:28pm

watty wrote: »

If the Sky/Freesat LNB is a quad, two feeds can be for Sky box and 2 feeds to 2 x Diseqc for FTA/Freesat box. The Ka-Sat single LNBF can be split to feed 2 x Diseqc or PVR with a €5 Sat splitter. On < 20m cable, probably split twice for four feeds (using 3 Sat splitters, not TV splitters)

Good stuff watty, also an IF amp could be used if the cable needs to be split for more saorsat points.

watty · 21-09-2010 8:50pm

final point.

Folks *DO* realise that a €20M Bond only costs as much as an Insurance Company or other Finance Source thinks there is a risk of your PayDTT company going bust before enough years paid?

That any Pay DTT company from 2001 onward could get a licence?

That ESB and other Masts or even renting RTE masts and rolling out your own?

Basically really a lie to suggest the reason we have no pay DTT is RTE costs.

channelsurfer2 · 21-09-2010 9:25pm

knowing a thing or two about bonds etc a bond for around 10million would cost around 40 to 50k so one for 20million would cost less than 100k depending on the risk profile of the prospective client company.... and most public bodies insist on them to cover them in the event of liquidation etc...so the bond issue is really a red herring...

The Bob Collins Interview - Pay DTT still on the cards?

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