Oireachtas Channel credit crunched

The Cush

Plans to launch an Oireachtas Channel on DTT have been cancelled due to the recession.

Planned Dáil TV station falls victim to cutbacks
Ken Foxe Public Affairs Correspondent
December 21, 2008

IT PROMISED to be an antidote to the "tripe" that masqueraded as television these days, said former taoiseach Bertie Ahern. But Dáil TV, the planned live broadcast of Dáil debates, committee proceedings and whatever other important business goes on at the Seanad is no more.

The Houses of the Oireachtas Commission has confirmed that plans for a new TV channel focusing entirely on parliamentary affairs have become the latest victim of the chill winds of recession.

A spokesman said: "There was a feasibility study into the establishment of a television channel focusing on the Oireachtas but that has been kicked to touch.

"Fact finding missions involving a number of members of the Joint Administration Committee did take place to Edinburgh and London to see how they did it.

"London has BBC Parliament and Edinburgh has a similar type of set-up and when this was being discussed, it was important to go and look at their set-up."

The possibility of Dáil TV was first raised by former taoiseach Bertie Ahern who felt there was a market for "a dedicated television station broadcasting unedited recordings."

"It might never have high TAM ratings," he said, "but I do not believe many people watch much of the stuff I happen to flick through when looking for the programme I want to watch.

"I would say that a lot of the tripe that is on TV does not get much of a TAM rating, although I have to confess that some of the rubbish gets very high TAM ratings."

Even Fine Gael's Enda Kenny agreed, telling the Dáil: "I understand the technology is available and the cost is not too great ... in Britain even during the summer when the House of Commons is not in session, they broadcast reruns of the issues debated by the committees."

The government is still considering, however, the €1.5 million replacement of the internal storage system, which allows all proceedings to be archived. The project is far less likely to be shelved as it may actually save money and is currently awaiting sanction from the Department of Finance.

Peter Finnegan, the Broadcasting Manager of Dáil Éireann, said: "Technology becomes obsolete and reaches the end of its useful life.

"It is something we are looking at. The archive goes back to 1990 when televising began and at the moment, we are generating around 2,500 hours of footage a year. There is now an issue of space and over the years, the formats have changed. There are issues about replaying and maintaining old footage already."

The Office of Public Works said they had outsourced the actual broadcasting of Dáil proceedings and that new equipment for that was put in place during 2000.

http://www.tribune.ie/article/2008/dec/21/planned-dail-tv-station-falls-victim-to-cutbacks/

Nothingbetter2d

good riddens to it.......waste of a valauble REAL tv station slot...... if we want to hear politicians tells us more lies we can always walk into an constituency office.... lets hope a sport/documentery or movie channel fills its slot

scath

Nothingbetter2d wrote: »

good riddance to it.......waste of a valauble REAL tv station slot...... if we want to hear politicians tells us more lies we can always walk into an constituency office.... lets hope a sport/documentery or movie channel fills its slot

Disagree with you on that Nothingbetter2d. Most other European countries have one...but of course not us? When I got to watch the Oireachtas TV tests on the DTT trial during the summer, I found it quite interesting and learned what was going on about some things. What Oireachtas TV would give people is transparency...to know who's where saying what...and to know what they think about issues.

Who has time to go into a constituency office to find out, tell me...they're only opened a few hours maybe twice a week running around for lots of constituency only to not get the number 1 from half maybe of those they helped.

For the likes of the Lisbon 2 vote Oireachtas TV would be really helpful. What about the European Parliament...wouldn't some students and others like to know what's going on over there also and in other parliaments. Yes you can get this online, but with video contention rates at the moment outside of the cities it doesn't work so well.

So I disagree. Oireachtas TV would be there to inform about all the schemes, what's concerning citizens...what laws are being made. The committees how they arrived and approaches to laws after hearing from experts or communities.

I would say, understandable to be annoyed with the government for poor policy but that's what we voted in in 2007. The majority got blinded by personality politics rather than policy.

So..if you saw Oireachtas TV trial or online and think its a waste then fair enough. If not I'd say give it a watch and then see if you still think so. For me...I'm disappointed...but I hope that RTÉ News Now goes on DTT and it can fulfill most of the time outside of News buletins, rather than endless repeating...at least buletins can be kept to something like every half hour or hour or something and get some coverage meantime. That'd be definitely good value for money.

A movie channel is already planned by the Irish Film Board. Question is will it too get the chop? For now haven't heard it would. But easy way for TDs to show restraint is to cut their channel. Enough sports with Setanta, Sky...I mean I'd not be against Extreme Sports channel have the slot. But anyhow...question will be will we have enough free channels. Like will 3E the new name for Channel 6 on cable and satellite be free-to-air as C4 did with Film4 or will it go on Boxer...I mean that's my issue isn't it better have a parliament channel rather than 1 channel less free-to-air even if you feel like that. Of course you could argue for DCTV in its place too as although I'd argue that 1 community channel should have a rotation between all community TV channels called Irish Community TV (ICTV). But there is no regional DTT yet planned which would have to be built regionally and separately managed to National DTT.

Veering slightly of topic maybe...I would support regional DTT as an opportunity like local radio. I think of course that regional broadcasters like provincial broadcasters on TV would have a place but not county ones as well it would be too expensive and unfeasable. I mean it would make more sense for UPC to build a regional DTT network of 1 multiplex than continue with cable for anything other than high speed broadband and teleconferencing. That sounds like the future for UPC and well this would suit City Channel etc to schedule channels that they can broadcast for area and then City channels could schedule for instance a few programmes across all for regional muxes to act as-national audiences.

When you think about it basing national DTT regionally would regionalise TV...but of course would have logistical costs. So it seems to make better sense to stay with mainly national DTT with a half multiplex for regional DTT. I think UPC is going to suffer when DTT comes along, with its free and charged bits. I think UPC will have to have a free tier to compete. But I really think to grow their business the best thing for them to do is ask the BAI for a regional operator DTT license (provincial) from the BAI under the Broadcasting (Amendment) 2007 Act following switchover.

Maybe regional DTT should be a topic for discussion.

pa990

scath wrote: »

.............I think UPC is going to suffer when DTT comes along, with its free and charged bits. I think UPC will have to have a free tier to compete....... .

The only Free channels will be RTE 1, RTE2, TV3, TG4,
and whatever other few imaginary channels have been dreamed up.

Hardly strong competition for UPC / SKY

Having said that .. i have canceled Sky in favour of Freesat, and am looking forward to the delivery of my Sony "W" series TV with Mpeg4 tuner

The Cush

The following report appeared in yesterdays Irish Mail on Sunday. The Oireachtas TV Channel may be resurrected as part of the retendering for Televising of the proceedings of the Houses of the Oireachtas.

The current contract was awarded to Windmill Lane Ltd in late 2005 for 3 years with an option to extend the contract for up to a further 2 years without retendering. The report indicates the contract is due for renewal this Dec but this may be incorrect as Windmill may have another year on their contract and the last tendering process lasted almost 12 months (Feb 05, Apr 05).

The report also mentions the Irish Film Channel and a Culture Channel having been cancelled. There were no plans for a Culture Channel in the current Broadcasting Act.

The current cost for televising the Oireachtas is approx €3.7 million.

Mossy Monk

How hard is it really to rebroadcast what is already available freely on the internet?

eden_my_ass

Mossy Monk wrote: »

How hard is it really to rebroadcast what is already available freely on the internet?

Don't forget where we're living, there is rarely direct proportionality between effort and expense in the Irish public service, theres deals to be done and palms to be crossed

It'll probably be broadcast first to russia, then sent to the international space station for encoding, and beamed back to Ireland via some Californian tv company...but sure everyone involved will be an ex-pat

Mike 1972

I dont see why an Oireachtas channel would cost much to run. The production costs would be negligible given that all the gear is already in place and a small amount of capacity (lets face it we hardly need HDTV here) on the RTE DTT multiplex for very little cost.

I suspect the real reason for shelving this channel is that politicians are afraid that the large amounts of downtime and scenes of a virtually empty house wouldnt go down well with the public.

One way some of the downtime could be usefully filled would be to show coverage of the European parliament. The level of media coverage and public ignorance of European afairs in Ireland is pretty apalling. Its probably the second worst country in the EU in that regard.

The Irish film channel was a white elephant though. There simply havent enough Irish films ever made to programme such a channel unless they repeat them every week or adopt a ludicrously wide definition of what constutes an "Irish" film.

bazzer

I thought TG4 was supposed to be our culture channel. What's the matter with televising recorded Oireachtas procedings during the night hours, in place of the France 24 slot?

Apogee

Mike 1972 wrote: »

I dont see why an Oireachtas channel would cost much to run. The production costs would be negligible given that all the gear is already in place and a small amount of capacity (lets face it we hardly need HDTV here) on the RTE DTT multiplex for very little cost.

I suspect the real reason for shelving this channel is that politicians are afraid that the large amounts of downtime and scenes of a virtually empty house wouldnt go down well with the public.

One way some of the downtime could be usefully filled would be to show coverage of the European parliament. The level of media coverage and public ignorance of European afairs in Ireland is pretty apalling. Its probably the second worst country in the EU in that regard.

Your post contains the answer to your question re: cost. They want an Oireachtas TV with all the bells and whistles to mirror BBC Parliament. So it would have material from the EU and C-Span as well as home-produced programmes similar to "Daily Politics" providing political analysis. The stated reason for this is to ensure citizens are kept abreast of political and civic affairs.

In reality, they want this additional, expensive material because an Oireachtas TV ident rolling for months on end during the summer mightn't go down well with the proles while the TDs are doing "constituency work" i.e. going to funerals/Galway races/sunbathing in Ulick McEvaddy's villa in the south of France.

It is a nice ident though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIdqxVzYthQ

Mike 1972

bazzer wrote: »

What's the matter with televising recorded Oireachtas procedings during the night hours, in place of the France 24 slot?

Good point. What is a publically funded channel doing carrying programming fom a foreign propaganda service (albeit generally benign) anyway ?

Apogee wrote: »

So it would have material from the EU and C-Span as well as home-produced programmes

EU material wouldnt cost much. Could be taken from the EbS feed on Hotbird. C-Span irrelevent unless we plan to become the 51st state.

It is a nice ident though.

How much did they pay for that doodle ?

The Cush

Mike 1972 wrote: »

I dont see why an Oireachtas channel would cost much to run. The production costs would be negligible given that all the gear is already in place and a small amount of capacity (lets face it we hardly need HDTV here) on the RTE DTT multiplex for very little cost.

The broadcasting facilities and equipment (owned by the Oireachtas) are all purchased, maintained, repaired and upgraded from the allocated budget. The contractor (currently Windmill Lane) is there to operate, manage and maintain the facilities for the televising of Oireachtas proceedings (including committee proceedings) also from the same budget.

The estimated cost this year is €3.7 million.

The figure of up to €33 million quoted in the newspaper report is a wild exaggeration.

Apogee

Mike 1972 wrote: »

EU material wouldnt cost much. Could be taken from the EbS feed on Hotbird. C-Span irrelevent unless we plan to become the 51st state.

Some members of the current government prefer Boston to Berlin! FWIW quite a bit of C-Span is carried on BBC Parliament and it's just as readily available as EbS.

It's the home-produced stuff that would be expensive.

The cheapest route would be to take the feed from the Houses of the Oireachtas direct and leave it blank the rest of the time. But they've got all these notions from going on junkets fact-finding missions to see what wonderful things other countries do.

Mike 1972

Some members of the current government prefer Boston to Berlin!

(sigh) Conceded !

coylemj

Remeber what Pat Rabitte said about Oireachtas Report when it was in a 'graveyard' slot at the end of the night - only insomniacs and alcoholics were watching it.

The Oireachtas is like the Dublin District Court, 95% of what goes on is terminally boring but every now and then there's something worth watching. To put it on a dedicated TV channel would be waste of spectrum space. Even if you go into the bar in Leinster House, the proceedings in the Dail are on monitors all over the place but the TDs couldn't be bothered to watch. When a division is called in the Dail, a big banner with 'Votail' or something similar appears across the bottom half of the monitor but they still ring bells all over the place for the simple reason that they know nobody is watching the monitors.

Mossy Monk

coylemj wrote: »

To put it on a dedicated TV channel would be waste of spectrum space.

What channels will it be taking space from? I would like to be able to see what our elected representatives are getting up to without having to go to a PC. A waste of spectrum? I disagree.

coylemj

Mossy Monk wrote: »

I would like to be able to see what our elected representatives are getting up to without having to go to a PC.

If you want to see what our elected representatives are up to then the chamber in Dail Eireann is probably the last place you'd look, you'd be better off heading to a few funerals and GAA matches!

Mossy Monk

Or watching proceedings from the Dáil. Believe it or not there is something going on in there all the time.

coylemj

Mossy Monk wrote: »

Or watching proceedings from the Dáil. Believe it or not there is something going on in there all the time.

Usually a junior minister reading a reply to a parliamentary question which was prepared by a civil servant and he/she is lucky if there's more than two people on the opposition benches - yawn!

Don't get me wrong, I salute your interest in the affairs of state, I'm even a bit of a political anorak myself but 99% of the time what goes on in the Dail and Seanad chambers is terminally boring - even the 'highlights' on Oireachtas Report are pretty dull most of the time.

Since the days of James Dillon (before my time) and John Kelly (my time), the place just doesn't have the standard of debate that would make it worth following.

The Cush

A recent Dáil Question was asked about the proposed Oireachtas TV Channel and Irish Film Channel. The answer didn't provide any new information.

Broadcasting Legislation.

73. Deputy Jack Wall asked the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the position regarding the proposed implementation of the Oireachtas channel and the film channel as set out in the Broadcasting Act 2008; the way these channels are to be financed; if they will be put out to tender; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [43343/09]

Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources (Deputy Eamon Ryan): Part 7, Chapter 6 of the Broadcasting Act 2009 provides for the development of an Oireachtas Channel and a film channel. Part 8 of the Act provides for a right of carriage on the RTÉ digital terrestrial television multiplex in respect of these channels.

The Broadcasting Act 2009 provides that the Commission of the Houses of the Oireachtas may establish a public service channel to be made available throughout the island of Ireland providing coverage of: proceedings of both Houses of the Oireachtas; proceedings of a local authority; institutions under the British-Irish Agreement; other legislatures; and UN, EU and Council of Europe institutions.

The 2009 Act provides that the cost of such a channel would be met from the budget of the Commission of the Houses of the Oireachtas and that no advertising is permitted on the channel.

In relation to the Film Channel, the Act provides that the Irish Film Board may establish a public service channel to be made available throughout the island of Ireland providing coverage of Irish, European and World films including those in the Irish language.

The Act provides that the cost of such a channel would be met from the budget of the Irish Film Board. The Act also provides that the Irish Film Channel can broadcast advertisements.

The development of these channels is therefore a matter for the Irish Film Board and the Commission of the Houses of the Oireachtas respectively.

The establishment of a new Oireachtas channel could provide for extended free-to-air television coverage of the proceedings which take place in the Houses of the Oireachtas and in other democratic fora. The Programme for Government contains a commitment in this regard.

The Irish Film Channel can both add to the diversity of available public broadcasting services and provide a wide audience for the wealth of Irish and foreign films produced and in production.

The Cush

Committe meeting next Wednesday 17 February, will probably include discussion of the future Oireachtas Channel. Windmill Lane's contract for the broadcasting of Oireachtas proceedings may also be due for re-tendering this year.

Committees Meeting in Public Session

4.15 p.m.

The Joint Administration Committee will meet in Committee Room 4, Leinster House 2000
Current and future television coverage of the Dáil and Seanad Éireann and Committees
Mr. Cathal Goan, Director General, RTÉ

The Cush

Dáil question answered in written reply yesterday.

Broadcasting Services.

76. Deputy Jim O’Keeffe asked the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the position regarding the establishment of a television channel dedicated to the proceedings of the Houses of the Oireachtas as outlined in the Programme for Government 2007; when it is proposed to be on air; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [10091/10]

Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources (Deputy Eamon Ryan): Part 7, Chapter 6 of the Broadcasting Act 2009 provides for the development of an Oireachtas Channel. Part 8 of the Act provides for a right of carriage on the RTÉ digital terrestrial television multiplex in respect of this channel.

The Broadcasting Act 2009 provides that the Commission of the Houses of the Oireachtas may establish a public service channel to be made available throughout the island of Ireland providing coverage of: · proceedings of both Houses of the Oireachtas; · proceedings of a local authority; · institutions under the British-Irish Agreement; · other legislatures; and · UN, EU and Council of Europe institutions.

The 2009 Act provides that the cost of such a channel would be met from the budget of the Commission of the Houses of the Oireachtas and that no advertising is permitted on the channel. I hope that the Commission of the Houses of the Oireachtas will now be able to make the necessary resources available to progress the channel in conjunction with the roll out of the new digital terrestrial television services.

http://debates.oireachtas.ie/DDebate.aspx?F=DAL20100302.XML&Node=1258#N1258