Bci

BrianD

Should the BCI be disbanded? It appears that this organisation seems to make it up as it goes along - announcing new policies and then u-turning at the drop of a hat. These guys are not performing any sort of meaningful role and to think that they wanted to control all Irish broadcasting. Some recent events that the BCI has acted unusually on:

1) sale of Country 106.8 to SRH in contravention to its own policy and the fact it allowed Country to operate in apparent breach of its contract.

2) Redrawing of the Tipperary franchises to the detriment of Tipp Mid west - a community style station - and in favour of Tipp FM a commercial player.
3) The disgraceful situation where Anna Livia Fm has been off-air for months and there is some doubt as to who has ownership and control.

Time for this mob to go? Any thoughts?

dmeehan

They allowed rte to block GAA games on sky digital platform for most of the summer which was in breech of the contract. The content on sky is supposed to be a mirro of the content broadcasted terrestrially

maybe there'll be a flood-style tribunal in a few years where we will find out whats really going on:D

Elmo

BCI should have more control over Sky.

Actually perhaps anyone in Ireland should Regulate Sky.

All of the major Companies in this country have bowed to Sky.

E.g. TV3 and its as live rights
RTE and TV3 and TG4 allowing Sky show there stations on its platform without any regulator behind them.
NTL and Corus for not providing any other sporting or movie or PPV channels i.e Film Four, Carlon Cinema, Satanta, Eurosport etc on Analog service rather the opt for the Sky Channels. Ok since sky have most rights, but surely Sky Cinema could be replaced with TCM or such or Sky Sports One with Satanta Sports. Or Sky News with any other News Channel even our own one or Sky One with any other station.

Everyone has bowed to the might of Sky?

jrd

In terms of regulation, no-one actually regulates Sky. In Ireland, the ODTR wants to - in the same way that it regulates NTL and Chorus. However, Sky are not regulated in the UK either. A friend of mine at the ODTR mentioned that BSkyB are registered in Luxembourg , I think, and as such are exempt from UK (or Irish) regulation.

In terms of the rights issue, I think RTE made a bit of a boo-boo here with Setanta. They sorted it out in time for the finals. I expect that future deals will be more carefully checked for Irish Satellite viewers. I think Niall Cogley is starting to get to grips with the whole thing.

DMC

Not quite jolly... They are now.

In the past, when BSB was the nominated satellite broadcaster for the UK, they were the only regulated one, broadcasting from the Marco Polo satellite. Now what Sky did, and it was revolutionary at the time, was they hired satellite capacity from Astra in Luxembourg, and transmitted their signal out of control of the UK authorities. Around the time after BSB and Sky TV merged to become BSkyB, the legislation was tightened, so that any satellite channel based in the UK, and those aimed at a UK audience had to be regulated by the ITC.

This is what the BCI and the government are missing.