RTE will this morning publish its blueprint for the future, the Review of Structures and Operations, which has been approved by the Authority. All 2,000 staff members will be given a copy of the report, which took six months to prepare and is the first major analysis of how the State broadcaster will deal with falling revenue and increased competition, especially from the new national broadcaster, TV3. E is about to face competition, especially from the new broadcast TV3, which starts on September 21st, will be a low-cost commercial station with no union agreements, offering a diet of programmes acquired in the US, Australia and Britain, and five hours weekly of home-produced television, outside its commitment to news and current affairs.
While TV3 was being up-beat and positive yesterday when it gave a journalists a taste of its programmes, RTE staff will be told today of the need for major cutbacks and the sale of facilities. They will hear of the necessity for change to face a future with a reduced income due to pressure on its budget from independent producers and continued commitments to TnaG while new players enter the advertising market.
It is believed that one of the report's recommendations is that news and current affairs be merged into one department. It is expected that this will meet strong resistance. It is also expected that RTE will be looking for about 400 redundancies, but no contact has yet been made with the Group of Unions.
The secretary of the Group of Unions, Mr JP Coakley, said before there was any talk of redundancy, RTE had to show it had a vision of the future and how reduced staffing fitted into that.
Earlier this week, the Group of Unions published its own report, Towards a Shared Vision. E would be reduced in the near future as a result of Government policy decisions which were beyond RTE's control. "It seems essential that there be some action by Government to ensure that public service broadcasting does not sink under the weight of additional obligations combined with the loss of advertising revenue."
Mr Coakley said that with the arrival of TV3, RTE should focus not only on the reduction of costs and expenditure, but also on additional sources of revenue. "We recommend that RTE should provide staff and facilities to independent producers on a commercially sound basis. A prerequisite for such a development would be the introduction of a more transparent costing system."
While the concept of change has been central to the rhetoric of managers dealing with staff, he said, the employees see RTE as an organisation which does not often recognise their potential or welcome their attempts to realise it. In permitting the growth of such a corporate culture, management had unwittingly obstructed rather than facilitated change.