Irish television will have to compete with global competition, a convergence of new technologies and the challenges of regulation, writes Malcolm Byrne
This autumn, Minister for Communications Noel Dempsey will bring before the Oireachtas a major Bill to deal with the future of broadcasting in Ireland.
He will be doing it at a time when the global television market is becoming more competitive, where there is a convergence of technologies providing us with our news and entertainment, and where the challenges of regulation of the content on our screens pose major headaches at national, European and global levels.
In Ireland for about 30 years leading up to the 1990s most people had access to RTÉ television, and those living on the east coast or near the Border also had the main terrestrial British channels (BBC, ITV and then Channel 4 from the 1980s). It was an era when programmes such as The Late Late Show would be viewed by a majority of Irish adults and would grab the attention of the nation every week.
The advent of cable and satellite gave viewers a greater choice and the dominance of the market by the national broadcasters in Ireland and across Europe began to decline. Satellite television is now in a third of Irish homes (in the US, the figure exceeds 70 per cent). Commercial television came to Ireland a decade ago through TV3, but in addition RTÉ now has to fight for its advertising revenue with the likes of Sky, UTV and Channel 4.
The move to accessing television content via satellite or cable will increase dramatically in the next few years. Aerials will disappear from chimney tops around the countries of Europe as the analogue method of transmission will close down and communication will all become digital.
The British government has set 2012 as the final date for analogue switch-off. Some of the ITV companies are moving faster than that and Welsh company HTV, for instance, plans to be purely digital from 2008. This will mean that those in the southeast of Ireland who currently receive HTV will no longer be able to do so if they just rely on their TV aerials.
Some of the Nordic countries have set dates for analogue switchoff at the end of this decade but there is no clear strategy planned for Ireland.
With more and more channels becoming available, concern will naturally switch to what viewers are able to watch.
A major debate took place here last year about children's advertising and whether sweets and toys should be advertised at certain times. The Broadcasting Commission of Ireland stepped in with a code. The domestic channels naturally protested; they had to follow the rules but their competitors in Sky and ITV, for instance, didn't, as they did not get their broadcast licences in Ireland.
During Ireland's EU presidency, then communications minister Dermot Ahern made a valiant effort to rule that where a channel was being broadcast into a country, the receiving state would have a role in regulating its content. The EU's "country of origin" rules mean that broadcasters simply had to follow the code in the country where they received their licences. So if Sky and others with a UK licence faced no regulations in London about children's advertising, they didn't have to follow Irish codes.
France recently faced the challenge of an Islamic broadcaster, based in north Africa, broadcasting into the country with certain programmes that could be interpreted as inciting hatred. How could it be regulated? Indeed, as more and more people are using the internet as their source of TV content, what regulation can be applied there?
This challenge will also face regulators as mobile handsets can cope with more content and become TV sets on the move. In the way the mobile phone has overtaken the landline, new technologies may mean that in future we receive most of our news and entertainment online or through hand-held devices. What will this mean for the television licence fee, RTÉ's main source of funding?
At European level, there are plans next year to update the television without frontiers directive. This directive says, inter alia, that 50 per cent of content on European television channels must be European programming. The commission realises that this will be a nightmare to police if channels are broadcasting from outside the EU or via the web.
From a cultural perspective, it is essential that all is done to preserve and promote Irish and, indeed, European voices and stories in a global communications environment that is increasingly US-dominated.
To do that through regulation will not be sufficient, nor indeed will it be entirely effective. Irish content must be able to compete at home and internationally, on a variety of screens (television, internet, mobile phone). As methods of communications converge, they must all be brought under one authority whose role is not only to regulate where it can but to help ensure that Ireland is at the cutting edge of content creation internationally.
The Minister can try tinkering around with regulating for the Irish television broadcasting sector in his Bill or he can be radical and try and prepare this small nation for what is coming down the tracks. To pursue the former option would be like setting rules for asses and carts when everyone moved to driving cars.
Malcolm Byrne is a former director of Screen Producers Ireland and now provides independent research. The views he expresses are his own.