A review of the licence fee can only lead to the Americanisation of broadcasting, writes Muiris MacConghail
The Broadcasting (Funding) Bill, 2003, having passed all stages in both houses of the Oireachtas has been sent to Áras an Uachtaráin for signature.
The President will promulgate a law which, in essence, will promote the end of public service broadcasting in Ireland.
One of the basic principles on which public broadcasting is founded - the integrity and security of its funding - will have been removed by Section 4(2) of the Act which enables the Minister for Communications to spend 5 per cent of the net receipts of the licence fee designated by law for the exclusive use of RTÉ as the national broadcaster.
The existence of public broadcasting in Ireland since 1926 has been determined by the commitment for cultural reasons of the Oireachtas and successive Governments to the dedication of the receipts of the radio, now TV, licence fees to the sustenance of the national broadcaster.
No minister of any government has until now determined by legislation to effect such a change in the fundamental position in which RTÉ has been maintained.
Dermot Ahern's legislation has a number of interesting strands to it. The Broadcasting (Funding) Act is an attempt to correct the patent flaws, which exist in the dumbed-down television and radio schedules proffered by the national commercial sector in Today FM and TV3.
The fund to be established by the Act will enable those commercial services and RTÉ to make proposals for the financing of radio or TV programming dealing with aspects of national culture to be shown at prime time.
In broadcasting content analysis this might be viewed as, and almost certainly is, a mechanism for the correction of a "market failure", or the reality that the commercial broadcasting market, being exclusively driven by advertising imperatives, schedules solely according to advertising needs.
Commercial broadcasting delivers an audience to the advertisers and is reimbursed accordingly. The irresponsible scheduling strategy of TV3 and its withdrawal of the Dunphy programme are prime examples of this.
Public service broadcasting is about the relationship between the broadcaster and the audience - all of the audience and not just that part of it which has disposable income and eagerly sought by the advertisers.
Whatever about the Minister's intentions to strengthen the Irish broadcasting fabric against the onslaught of globalisation, the manner in which he proposes to do this can have only one result: the weakening of an already weakened RTÉ.
What is at stake here in the Act is the security and integrity of the funding mechanism available to maintain the national broadcasting service.
Once the principle of the interception of the licence fee has been established under law, the door is open for the abandonment of the licence fee as a funding mechanism and inexorably to the abandonment of RTÉ as the national broadcaster.
The result could well be a restructuring of broadcasting in Ireland with the commercial sector providing the majority of the broadcasting services with a small public niche for TG4 with a small state subsidy on a "feel good" basis as circumstances allow from time to time.
It is clear that the Minister wishes to move away from the licence fee as a funding mechanism for public broadcasting and that this legislation is the first step.
Mr Ahern's statement on the recent television licence increase is worth noting.
In it he gave the lowest possible increase of €2, bringing the annual licence to €152 from January next even though the Price Waterhouse report figures gave him greater latitude.
Of even greater moment was the Minister's announcement that he "will be arranging for an external review of the impact on all broadcasters of the licence fee paid to RTÉ with particular emphasis on the possible distortion in the advertising market," a comment worthy of corporate-speak from the TV3 owners CanWest and Granada following on their abandonment of the Dunphy Show.
What the Minister has done with the Broadcasting (Funding) Act is to take political control of the licence fee on the basis of his intentions to restructure the entire broadcasting scenario in Ireland.
His proposed external review of the licence fee and its supposed distortion of the advertising market can only lead to the abandonment of public service broadcasting and so the Americanisation of Irish broadcasting.
Of course, as the external review will notice, there is a distortion created by the licence fee: it is an intentional distortion since 1926 in favour of an Irish-led broadcasting culture.
Muiris MacConghail teaches in School of Media at Dublin Institute of Technology.