Funding of Public service broadcasting after the election ?

Re Nua what to scrap the Licence fee and provide the DSP subvention to the licence fee (circa €56m) to a fund for TV/Radio Production (As such the BAI's Sound and Vision Fund). Under this plan RTÉ would receive no licence except through this fund which is open to all other broadcasters. They suggest its cost neutral but they have failed to take into consideration a number of other activates currently supported by the licence fee.

The Social Democrats want to set up a new Digital Department within RTÉ to bring Irish Film, Drama, arts and culture to a wider audience.

Neither are big on detail.

Re Nua appear to be only thinking about their profit making private investors.

With no thought to the fact that RTE support a 100% free to air service.
And good employment.
A company owned by the citizens of the State.

RTE also support culture programmes, music and drama.
The support for our national language.
Both TV and radio.
Much of which is at a cost.

Something needs to be done about the TV licence or possibly household broadcasting charge.
It's unfair so many people get away with not paying.
Either abolish the TV licence and support our State broadcasting from the general taxisation or introduce a universal broadcasting tax/levy on households.

At the moment the TV licence costs me 13.33 per month direct debit.

Sam Russell wrote: »

If a small fee/tax was put on each text message (like 0.1c), it would raise a significant amount of money that could be thrown into the pot to help with cultural content and non-broadcast media. Likewise if a small fee was put on any broadband connection, say over 10 mb/s, like €10 per year, that would also raise money to cover non-broadcast media.

Easier way of doing it would be to place the "Broadcasting/Communications Charge" on to the telecommunications sector. The market share of Vodafone, Eir, Sky, 3 and Virgin and other smaller companies would determined their liability towards €200million in funding.

The level of liability would be determined by ComReg
The BAI would determine increases and decreases and would issue the fee to RTÉ, TG4 and the Sound and Vision Fund
No ministerial involvement

E.g. if the 5 main telecoms companies have an 80% of the telecomminications market they would be liable for 160m or just 32m each on average. (Virgin revenue is at 360m per year).

Transparency at the end of the year a Broadcasting/Communications Charge" statement would be issue by your telecoms provider showing how much you paid into the fund. ComReg and CPCC must insure that such fees are not incorporated into bill (no increases in charges).

The current ARPU for a mobile pre-pay phone is €15, while post-pay is €35 in 2015.

This would mean a pre-pay phone would pay €10.80 per year
and a post-pay phone would pay €25.20 per year

based on the value of the telecommunications income of ~€3billion in 2015 with 6 - 7% (this is variable depending on value) going to the new fund or €200m (this is static, with ComReg and BAI issuing a decision each year on increases or decreases), also TG4 Grant-in-aid could be dropped completely as could the DSP's subvention to the fee.

Also this would be a fair-ish tax, meaning everyone pays in but it is really a fee paid by their Telecoms provider. Businesses would pay based on their use of telecommunications and even children with a pre-pay phone would be included. While at the end of the year everyone would see how much they paid to the fund, courtesy of their telecoms provider.

Questions put to renua

http://cce.gno.ie/news/2016/02/10renua.php

FF want to move away from the Licence fee and move to a different method of payment, while any extra money should go towards PSBing on local independent radio stations, they say Community but really mean independent commercial services.

Like the others it lacks details.

I know a manifesto is a wide document but surely each spokesperson should be able to launch something relating to each department to expand the manifestos. All very late in the day!

Labour: news PSB fee to replace license & a CSPAN type Oirectas TV service!