Sound and Vision

watty wrote: »

There is no real Community TV in Ireland. Channels on Cable don't count.

There is within Ireland communities of people producing content for numerous stations broadcasting. There's also plenty of Community Radio... also S&V funded. But thats not the discussion

Nor is an Internet Web stream Community TV, not with level of Broadband access and quality in Ireland.

this is what the complaints are about. Because it's funded ENTIRELY by TV licence.

If the S&V was funded some other way it wouldn't be as big an issue.

So if it came out of your motor tax? PRSI? Or other taxes? The TV licence covers radio too. Which can also be S&V funded. You can apply for this too if you want to make radio content to be broadcast.

You don't need to make a TV program to highlight stuff. Doing it on a minority viewed PayTV channel is particularly poor way to reach an audience.

Its not perfect but its a start... and very new. It could do with some support too

You don't like the TV licence. Well that doesn't justify misappropriation of it. Which is what the S&V fund is.

Im not justifying the S&V. Its a fund, 10% of the licensing fee that is available for everyone to create content for TV. Creating quality video can be an expensive.

Are you telling me that a fund, paid for by the Irish people (a paltry 10% of a licence) that facilitates irish people to make video (and radio) is a missapropriation? It allows people the opportunity to produce content for a channel (any channel) broadcasting in Ireland... What is evil about that?

The reason setanta got funding was that it applied for it. During the next round of funding they might not get any programmes funded. If you apply you might get some of the money Setanta would get

It facilitates the creation of content for broadcast. Im not sure what you think it does

Elmo wrote: »

I agree with the special case given for Community TV even if it currently on airs on UPC digital. It does not receive commercial money and is a community based project.

I however disagree with programme producers getting Licence fee money for real pay TV stations such as Setanta. Particularly Setanta gaining access directly for in house in studio programming.

Bigtime! Setanta are taking the piss and abusing the system

EDIT: (was writing this as you were replying to above). I reckon we're pretty much in agreement on this

Elmo wrote: »

The Community channels are must carries on UPC.

City Channel cannot get their hands on any S&V fund, channel 6 got one show and after that the funding was taken from them as they were not an FTA channel. Setanta make the case that they go unencrypted yet such programming is only available to sky subscribers.

However all S&V programming should be made available on each of the current set of FTA terrestrial channels.

This is a quite a good idea but I cant see it happening. Its a hell of a task getting a licence to broadcast on FTA channels. RTE dont like it at all. Community stations have been trying and lobbying but keep getting knocked back. The infrastructure is somewhat seen as RTE's

Elmo wrote: »

The new Digital service might have something for them.

However I am suggesting for the moment that the non-terrestial shows are divided up between RTÉ, TV3 and TG4 to be show as part of their commitments.

With that kind of quality logical thinking youre obviously not a politician...shame.

EDIT: Wait by digital service do you mean something else apart from saorview?

watty wrote: »

That's not reasonable if it's broadcast only available on a Foreign platform or only on PayTV.

The only "outside the state" Broadcast that should be subsidized is An Irish International Channel.

PayTV channels should NEVER EVER be subsidised by the Irish Tax payer. Especially not the TV licence.

it's tantamount to robbery.

Hi watty

I'm involved with community TV here and to be honest I can see the logic of your argument.

DCTV is fully aware of the anomaly of the station only being available to a percentage of the population and have sought wider distribution and, in particular, a way to distribute our content without a paywall. This is actually very difficult in Ireland without significant capital resources (and impossible if you are seeking local transmission only since there is no regulatory framework for this). Perhaps DTT will offer opportunities here and we will be making submissions around this and seeking partnerships.

Given all of this we do endeavour to ensure our S&V projects are available to everybody even if they cannot receive the channel. Everything is released under creative commons, we seek sponsors for DVD releases which are generally free on distribution (e.g. our cycling series was distributed by DCC, our childrens series will hopefully be going into schools and libraries later this year) and, in fact all of our S&V projects get shared with Belfasts Northern Visions (at no cost) and broadcast FTA on their terrestrial system.

If you wanted to engage with S&V the broadcasting fund is up for review next year (check out the BAI workplan) and a case could be made that all content should be available FTA. DCTV would support this as long as the statutory responsibilities of the BAI to facilitate community television on digital platforms were taken seriously and some way for our projects to be broadcast was found.

Was_SeeDot wrote: »

DCTV is fully aware of the anomaly of the station only being available to a percentage of the population and have sought wider distribution and, in particular, a way to distribute our content without a paywall. This is actually very difficult in Ireland without significant capital resources (and impossible if you are seeking local transmission only since there is no regulatory framework for this). Perhaps DTT will offer opportunities here and we will be making submissions around this and seeking partnerships.

1) Investigate InfoTv (on Freesat / Sky FTA) who offer microchannel capacity.
also RRsat for capacity. Actual carriage on Satellite is far cheaper than DTT, if you don't need encryption. Sky EPG though can cost more than the carriage, hence RRSat, Freesat and InfoTv.

2) Lobby BAI for infoTV like channel of timeshared Microchannels on DTT. If 5 channels sharing time the cost of DTT carriage could be under €60K. That's about one employee inc office and employment overhead.

use www.techtir.ie contact page to contact me if you want additional free help and advice.

A disgrace.

Corrupt

Criminal that Setanta gets 1c.

Or that a Soap gets any.


Who decides this? Where is the auditing and transparency. How can they justify
a) Funding a Pay TV channel that is only on Sky & UPC.
b) Funding a mass market low common denominator program such as a "soap". Such a program is almost certainly self funding and does nothing for Education or Culture or likely to be a good "ambassadorial" program for export.

Can we get this WASTE of licence payer's money stopped?

TV3 are in breach of Analogue licence. They should not get a steel washer till they put their house in order and commit to be on Saorsat before ASO. They are a disgrace.

The Sound & Vision fund managers are despicable!