Who makes the television programmes you watch? It may not matter much to viewers whether their favourite programmes are produced by inhouse broadcasters or independent production companies, but the move towards increased independent production is really starting to bite into the RTE schedules, with more and more programming generated outside the confines of Montrose.
Next year, RTE will be required to devote one fifth of its budget - or £12 million (whichever is the greater, and there's some dispute over the figures) - to independently-produced programming.
Much of this is made by the bigger, longer-established independents, but a new generation of younger companies has sprung up in response to the increased demand, many of them attempting the kind of quirky, stylish material at which RTE has traditionally failed. Unlike the previous generation of independents, the people who make these programmes have often never worked inside RTE. They in turn employ a growing network of technicians and facilities companies contributing - in theory at least - to a livelier and more diverse range of programming on our screens.
Adrian Lynch and Darragh Byrne of Graph Films are cited by many of their peers as one of the most successful of the new breed. With series such as The Morrison Tapes and Sweet Dreams already under their belts, their documentary My Great-Grandmother Was A Boxer went out last month on RTE. Graph has another documentary due for broadcast in March, and is currently in production on a series about students preparing for the Leaving Certificate.
"In the past two years we've been trying to develop the company in a way that's not entirely dependent on RTE," says Byrne, "so we're also working on highquality single documentaries that have legs in Europe and America." Robert Walpole's Treasure Films is best known for producing the successful feature film, I Went Down, but the company was also responsible for the soccer documentary The Road To America and the hospital series WRH. Walpole is currently in production on a documentary series for RTE called Home, and a one-off feature-length documentary for Channel 4 on boxer Francis Barrett. He too pinpoints one of the particular peculiarities of the Irish scene - the reliance on one monopoly state broadcaster. "In a TV environment where you have more than one broadcaster, you can have a level of competition for the services of the independent companies. It's not RTE's fault that doesn't exist here, but their policy has to take it into account when they decide what companies they want to be working with in three or five years time."
Of course, there is another television broadcaster in the State. TnaG was set up on the same commissioner/broadcaster lines as Channel 4, albeit on a far smaller budget. The channel has encouraged the setting-up of many new, small production companies, and several independents favourably compare what they see as the accessibility and openness of TnaG's commissioning process with the perceived rigidity of RTE. Brendan Culleton's Akajava Productions made the European video travel diary series E-Mag for TnaG, and describes working for the new channel as "very exciting. E-Mag was pushed through, even though I hadn't made anything for TV before. They're looking for lively stuff, the kind of trashy stuff that I personally like. They may not be quite there yet, but their hearts are in the right place. They're very informal, so you can make contact with them much more easily than you can with RTE."
One of the liveliest new offerings in RTE's autumn schedules was @ last tv, a hip, fast-moving, pick 'n' mix magazine programme which marks the maiden outing of Stopwatch Productions, led by Tom Johnson and Mary Murphy. Stopwatch took a leaf out of the broadcasters' book, sub-contracting about half the mini-segments within the programme to other writers and directors. "Most of them had never done anything for television before, but they all had something to say," Murphy says. "I think if you have a magazine show with a certain number of producers and researchers, you can find that you're starting to scrape the barrel by the 35th segment, so it's better to spread."
Having completed production on @ last tv, Murphy and Johnson will spend the next few months working on new ideas for programmes. "We don't have any commissions lined up, but we do have projects that we'll be developing now that we've completed @ last tv. We would hope to get to a stage where we always have something coming up. What we really want to do is make highquality documentaries."
As the most expensive and risky form of programming, drama has always been a particularly thorny area for RTE. While the station has been involved in several of the feature films produced here over the past few years, there have been indications that it's now more interested in developing serial drama specifically for television, rather than part-financing cinema films. I Went Down was partly financed by RTE, and Walpole acknowledges the importance of the support his film received from the Independent Productions Unit there.
He is concerned, though, that recent statements indicate the broadcaster is rowing back from its involvement in films. "They say films don't address their core audience, that they want to focus on serial drama specifically for television. I have no problem with TV drama - we're developing some of that ourselves - but if you look at other public service broadcasters around the world they're an integral part of their national film industries: it's seen as part of their remit. We'll be missing that here if they only occasionally invest in feature films. I accept there's a difference of scale with the UK, but if RTE solely pursues television drama, then that's an ITV-type policy from a public service station."
To survive in independent TV in Ireland, you have to diversify. Most producers will try to have a broad portfolio of work, which can include non-broadcast corporate videos, factual series, documentaries and drama. Some of the larger companies also produce commercials. But budgets are usually tight - one of the attractions of independents for television stations is that they are not subject to the same labour requirements as highly-unionised, inhouse productions. "Budgets are going down all over Europe," says Culleton. "With deregulation, the big, state broadcasters have less money. More and more you've either got these gigantic, glossy coproductions - the kind of thing you'll see on a Sunday evening - or, at the other end, there's the really low-budget stuff with one lad going around with his digital camera."
"If you look at the credits on some English shows you realise how much bigger their budgets are," Murphy says. "We had one researcher" - on @ last tv - "so you do have to work really, really hard."
Darragh Byrne agrees that broadcasters often want to cut corners. "It's very difficult to shoot anything on film for RTE. It's not seen as economically viable. National broadcasters, when they're producing stuff for their home market, will want to shoot on tape, but when it becomes a question of co-production or overseas sales, then people will want to shoot on film, because they know they can sell it around the world. Videotape can be brilliant for some things, but sometimes film is the best option. What we all have to understand, though, is that RTE is a small broadcaster, and there are certain realities which arise from that."
"The difficulty is in growing your company," says Walpole. "There is an independent sector which RTE needs to manage like a resource, to make it work for them. The guidelines they put out recently were for £160,000 for a six-part series. At that level you're talking about one or two-person operations that do one production, then stop until they get another. It's very difficult to become a bigger organisation and do quality work."
The difficulty, Graph's Adrian Lynch points out, lies in deciding who should get part of what everyone agrees is a relatively small cake. "If you do accept that the broadcaster has a responsibility to grow companies, then you immediately have to ask which companies? Is their responsibility to the bigger companies, or to encourage smaller outfits and new talent? The reality is that we submit programmes into RTE every year like anyone else, and if they're not good ideas we won't get commissioned. I do believe that RTE operates chiefly on the basis of the quality of the submissions they receive, but I think they would be conscious of us as a company that's moved from an attic into a proper office. They know that if we weren't commissioned from one year to the next we would be in trouble, and I think they do feel a responsibility."
If production companies can't rely on a minimum level of work, though, their energy and creativity is bound to flag. While most producers praise the work of RTE's Independent Productions Unit (unsurprisingly, there's considerable caution about biting the hand that feeds), implicit in some of their comments is the inevitable tension between self-employed, risk-taking freelances and RTE's permanent staff.
"If you're not careful, you can end up creating an underclass," Culleton says. "There's a lot of people working in this business who have no pensions, who can never get a mortgage. You have to wonder where we'll all be in 20 years."
But Byrne believes the situation has changed considerably for the better in recent years. "Until the Independent Productions Unit was established, when did you ever see an independent documentary on RTE? Hardly ever, but that's all changed now, and that has to be good."