Small national PSBs' running costs.

political analyst

https://www.rte.ie/news/politics/2018/0503/960069-rte-public-accounts-committee/

Ms Forbes said that since 2008 RTÉ's overall annual funding has fallen by in excess of €100m and this is why the broadcaster was not now investing enough in TV drama, children's programming, arts and culture output and Irish language TV programming.
She said a fall in financial resources was also why RTÉ does not have enough international/foreign correspondents, and why the organisation was struggling to maintain, let alone grow, its investment in investigative reporting and programming.

I don't believe it's fair to expect small countries' national public service broadcasters, e.g. RTÉ, to have to pay the same as those of large countries, e.g. the BBC, for broadcast equipment and staff.

I believe that the best way to deal with the issue is for the International Telecommunications Union to hold a conference with a view to regulating competition among national PSBs throughout the world so that the amounts of money each country's PSB has to pay for equipment and staff is proportionate to the size of each country's population.

If the aim of that conference was achieved then RTÉ might be able to run its broadcast services on the licence fee alone and then it might have enough money to invest in technology to reduce evasion of the licence fee.

Elmo

Huge issue with RTÉ and it's running costs over the last ten years. I think RTÉ do some great work but it's so intermittent and from a TV point of view they rely heavily on repeats, RTÉ2 is purely at repeat channel and sports.

Ms. Forbes and her predecessors all defend the 1% pay to their top 10 presenters but Last year Children's TV account for just 2% of its budget. If 1% is a tiny proportion so is 2%.

They have continued to ring fence 23million for imports, yet they largely air after midnight and even then such programming has fallen in value.

political analyst

Elmo wrote: »

Huge issue with RTÉ and it's running costs over the last ten years. I think RTÉ do some great work but it's so intermittent and from a TV point of view they rely heavily on repeats, RTÉ2 is purely at repeat channel and sports.

Ms. Forbes and her predecessors all defend the 1% pay to their top 10 presenters but Last year Children's TV account for just 2% of its budget. If 1% is a tiny proportion so is 2%.

They have continued to ring fence 23million for imports, yet they largely air after midnight and even then such programming has fallen in value.

I remember the discussion about the scheduling of US shows on RTÉ 1 and 2.

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057687754

RTÉ 2, in fairness, does have brilliant World War 2 and Cold War documentaries imported from France and Germany and broadcast at weekends.

Furthermore, the broadcasting of some BBC drama productions on RTÉ 1 and 2 gives viewers in the Republic another chance to see them - or a first opportunity for terrestrial viewers who don't have cable TV or satellite dishes or overspill from the UK - and also enables those Internet users in the Republic who have good-quality broadband to watch them on the Player.

Elmo

political analyst wrote: »

I remember the discussion about the scheduling of US shows on RTÉ 1 and 2.

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057687754

RTÉ 2, in fairness, does have brilliant World War 2 and Cold War documentaries imported from France and Germany and broadcast at weekends.

Furthermore, the broadcasting of some BBC drama productions on RTÉ 1 and 2 gives viewers in the Republic another chance to see them - or a first opportunity for terrestrial viewers who don't have cable TV or satellite dishes or overspill from the UK - and also enables those Internet users in the Republic who have good-quality broadband to watch them on the Player.

RTÉ2 has more than 50% of its total output as a repeat, I am not sure how often those WW2/Cold War/Nature Docs get repeated. Even if they don't get repeated as often as TBBT/RTÉ ONE programming/Reality RTÉ2 programming it is still a phenomenal amount of repeats for Prime Time. You could suggest that new shows that air after Midnight don't get the same kind of viewers as repeats, but even RTÉ2's top repeat of Home and Away is only getting 50,000 to 80,000 viewers if they are lucky. RTÉ2 has an audience below 5% when not airing sport, and is coming close to 3e in terms of content. Again you could say in fairness they air Children's programming during the day, but again I'd say RTÉ dropped funding to home produced children's programming by 25% to 7m in 2016, and not only that but 66% of all programming on RTÉ2's children's strands are repeats!

I don't consider a first showing of a BBC/ITV/Channel 4 drama on any Irish channel as a repeat, neither do the channels themselves, but the value of imports (including US programming) has dropped in 2 ways. Firstly in terms of the economy, why during a recession did RTÉ continue to spend 23million on such programming and secondly in terms of the ubiquity of that content, its not like in the old days that RTÉ could really rely on a first showing of a US programme, RTÉ won't repeat the ER and Friends effect of the 1990s. And they can't hold off airing programming such as The Practice for a year in the current era of TV/On Demand (I pick The Practice as it was used as a replacement for ER, had good audiences, and wasn't really available on English channels, I think it aired on ITV, nowadays that just wouldn't be viable).

This is coupled with the bad RTÉ Player and the fact that not even half of imports are on the player.

political analyst

Elmo wrote: »

RTÉ2 has more than 50% of its total output as a repeat, I am not sure how often those WW2/Cold War/Nature Docs get repeated. Even if they don't get repeated as often as TBBT/RTÉ ONE programming/Reality RTÉ2 programming it is still a phenomenal amount of repeats for Prime Time. You could suggest that new shows that air after Midnight don't get the same kind of viewers as repeats, but even RTÉ2's top repeat of Home and Away is only getting 50,000 to 80,000 viewers if they are lucky. RTÉ2 has an audience below 5% when not airing sport, and is coming close to 3e in terms of content. Again you could say in fairness they air Children's programming during the day, but again I'd say RTÉ dropped funding to home produced children's programming by 25% to 7m in 2016, and not only that but 66% of all programming on RTÉ2's children's strands are repeats!

I don't consider a first showing of a BBC/ITV/Channel 4 drama on any Irish channel as a repeat, neither do the channels themselves, but the value of imports (including US programming) has dropped in 2 ways. Firstly in terms of the economy, why during a recession did RTÉ continue to spend 23million on such programming and secondly in terms of the ubiquity of that content, its not like in the old days that RTÉ could really rely on a first showing of a US programme, RTÉ won't repeat the ER and Friends effect of the 1990s. And they can't hold off airing programming such as The Practice for a year in the current era of TV/On Demand (I pick The Practice as it was used as a replacement for ER, had good audiences, and wasn't really available on English channels, I think it aired on ITV, nowadays that just wouldn't be viable).

This is coupled with the bad RTÉ Player and the fact that not even half of imports are on the player.

ITV aired The Practice's first episode and then dropped the show because the ratings were so bad. Then the BBC broadcast some episodes.

Elmo

political analyst wrote: »

ITV aired The Practice's first episode and then dropped the show because the ratings were so bad. Then the BBC broadcast some episodes.

US TV always did better here, it equalled ER here, now such a similar show would air on one of there additional channels.

political analyst

Surely, there must be something that can be done to ensure that the amounts of money national PSBs pay to be able to function are proportionate to the sizes of the populations they serve, i.e. so RTÉ wouldn't have to pay the same amounts as the BBC. Is there actually no way to resolve this issue?

Elmo

political analyst wrote: »

Surely, there must be something that can be done to ensure that the amounts of money national PSBs pay to be able to function are proportionate to the sizes of the populations they serve, i.e. so RTÉ wouldn't have to pay the same amounts as the BBC. Is there actually no way to resolve this issue?

BBC, Sky, Channel 4 etc all pay way more for imported content than RTÉ. Channel 5 practically fund neighbours and home & away as did ITV & BBC before them.

The cost of producing a show will be the same the world over, the 130,000 per hour spent on Fair City probably just covers production costs of EastEnders then you can add actors wages and writers to the cost of EE.

icdg

OP, I’m not sure what your are asking for is possible or even desirable. In fact I’m not really sure even exactly what you are asking for.

Not all countries are the same. Their economies and the cost of hiring staff, facilities, programme making, and doing business generally all differ from country to country. Therefore you cannot expect that a similarly sized broadcaster will face the same operating costs, even in a country with a similar population.

And countries come in different sizes too. A large country with a large taxpayer base will always be able to afford to put more into public service broadcasting than a smaller country. Whether it chooses to do so is a value call for that country to make.

Public service broadcasters come in lots of shapes and sizes. Some are large (the BBC with its seven TV stations and almost 70 radio stations, not counting the overseas ones) some are small (TG4 with its one TV station). The BBC’s costs are always going to be much larger than TG4’s, because it provides a much greater range of services. Not every country has just the one either, you needn’t look too far for that, because we have two: RTE and TG4. There are different methods of funding: the licence fee, direct taxation, viewer donations, grants, and yes, advertising and sponsorship. And public service broadcasting does not equal state ownership, as NPR and PBS would tell you, or indeed on the other side of the spectrum, TVNZ.

Lastly OP, I think you need to better explain how you’d propose to implement your idea. It sounds to me like you want to put some inter-country transfer mechanism in operation. That will never be agreed to, not least because when you cast Ireland in the great scheme of things, RTE would be regarded as a fairly medium sized PSB (five television stations, four radio stations) and we have a second PSB in TG4 to boot. We’d be a net contributor to such a mechanism, and would lose money as a result.

political analyst

icdg wrote: »

OP, I’m not sure what your are asking for is possible or even desirable. In fact I’m not really sure even exactly what you are asking for.

Not all countries are the same. Their economies and the cost of hiring staff, facilities, programme making, and doing business generally all differ from country to country. Therefore you cannot expect that a similarly sized broadcaster will face the same operating costs, even in a country with a similar population.

And countries come in different sizes too. A large country with a large taxpayer base will always be able to afford to put more into public service broadcasting than a smaller country. Whether it chooses to do so is a value call for that country to make.

Public service broadcasters come in lots of shapes and sizes. Some are large (the BBC with its seven TV stations and almost 70 radio stations, not counting the overseas ones) some are small (TG4 with its one TV station). The BBC’s costs are always going to be much larger than TG4’s, because it provides a much greater range of services. Not every country has just the one either, you needn’t look too far for that, because we have two: RTE and TG4. There are different methods of funding: the licence fee, direct taxation, viewer donations, grants, and yes, advertising and sponsorship. And public service broadcasting does not equal state ownership, as NPR and PBS would tell you, or indeed on the other side of the spectrum, TVNZ.

Lastly OP, I think you need to better explain how you’d propose to implement your idea. It sounds to me like you want to put some inter-country transfer mechanism in operation. That will never be agreed to, not least because when you cast Ireland in the great scheme of things, RTE would be regarded as a fairly medium sized PSB (five television stations, four radio stations) and we have a second PSB in TG4 to boot. We’d be a net contributor to such a mechanism, and would lose money as a result.

I think the part that I've highlighted helps me understand the situation.

I appreciate your post.