Joint Committee on Transport and Communications
28th January 2015
RTÉ Chair-designate opening statement
Thank you Chairman for the invitation to appear before this Committee today.
I am delighted and indeed honoured to have been asked by Minister White and the Government to become Chairperson of RTÉ.
One of the reasons I was attracted to the role is the way in which my own experience as a former Chair and a member of a range of Boards, as a creative producer, as a business director and entrepreneur, as a developer of new work across all media, and most of all as an avid RTÉ consumer - now reflect the range of skills necessary to be useful in the broadcast space.
It is no longer sufficient to think of the various aspects of the media industries as separate - radio, television and so on - because now each piece of the media jigsaw is closely connected to the others in a kind of ecology where changes to one will have an immediate impact on the others.
This is the media landscape which the rise of the internet has brought us and all media must now think how they are filtered through the online space.
This also means that, more than ever, RTÉ must remain central to Irish life and public discourse and precisely because it holds such a unique position, what it does, how it does it and the framing of its future, are important to all of us.
As per your invitation, I am very happy to discuss with you how I plan to approach my role and to set out my initial thoughts on the key challenges currently facing RTÉ.
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I would also like to give you some thoughts on the broader creative and cultural sector of which RTÉ is key part both as one of sector’s largest employers of creative talent and as a key commissioner and producer of creative output.
The Role of the Board
The Broadcasting Act 2009 sets out, across a number of articles, the role of the RTÉ Board.
As you would expect the Board has a key oversight role in approving strategy and budgets. It has a role in relation to quality of output, performance commitments, and in ensuring efficiency and effectiveness.
The Board must safeguard the independence of the organisation from state, political and commercial interests.
But perhaps most crucially of all, the role of the Board is to represent the interests of audiences. I believe that RTÉ, perhaps more than any other organisation, plays a key role in helping shape the Irish public’s perception of their place in the world.
For me, as the national broadcaster, RTÉ must first and foremost aim to connect with, be relevant to, and be trusted by Irish people.
As you know, the new Board is not yet complete. The Committee’s nominees have not yet joined, but will do so in February.
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Overall, I believe that we have a mix and range of exceptional experience and skill-set among the new Board members, those already appointed and those who will join shortly, to be highly effective.
I am very conscious that RTÉ engages in a broad range of activities in pursuit of its public service objects. The Board must and will consider the whole of what RTÉ does and its overarching responsibilities as it considers changes, strategies and initiatives from management.
I am convinced that the role of the Board is at all times to provide guidance and support to management where possible and, of course, to challenge when appropriate.
Audiences
Central to all our deliberations and engagements will be audiences. Representing the interests of viewers and listeners is, in my view, our first responsibility.
In your own work as a Committee you will have seen that audiences and audience behaviour is changing rapidly. Enabled by new technology and much faster connectivity, people can now access programming and content from anywhere in the world on their phones, tablets, computers and televisions.
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But audiences are not uniform, people of different ages and in different geographic locations are doing different things. Some are adapting to new technologies quickly whereas others at a much slower pace. Audience habits also vary hugely by programme type, with live consumption of radio and key television programming such as news, sport, and big entertainment shows, remaining a dominant trend.
The role of the Board is to represent the interests of all these audience types. The Board already has an example of how we are doing this with the decision before Christmas to slow down the speed of the transition from Long Wave Radio transmission to digital services.
Understanding changes in audience behaviour and making use of a variety of data sources on how audiences are changing is essential for any media organisation today. It is perhaps even more important for public service media which is obliged to meet the needs of all audiences across the range of its services.
This doesn’t mean programming being driven solely by statistical numbers and audience ratings; RTÉ’s mission is much broader than that. But it does mean making decisions informed by an analysis of the patterns in audience and industry trends. The sophisticated use of data in this way allows a body like RTÉ to illustrate very clearly the impact it is having on both economic and social capital.
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Digital Media
Just as new digital technology is changing audience habits so too is it challenging the business models and strategies of traditional media companies.
My initial observation is RTÉ, through the launch of numerous digital services over the past few years, has to date managed to largely keep pace with changing technology. In some areas, such as the recently launched GAAGO product I think RTÉ has been a real innovator in this market.
I am very conscious that in the area of news in particular, changing technology is having the biggest impact of all. While TV news bulletins continue to retain very large audiences, particularly in the evening, people are increasingly getting their news on mobile devices from digital news services. News, however, is one of the key pillars in the creation of a national identity, and the Board must ensure that a full overview of the events central to Irish life, locally and globally, is freely available to all at key moments in the day.
Fundamentally then the drive to an online presence has two key components:
• the provision of an anywhere anytime access for the audience
• the creation of high quality platform-neutral content which can be adapted to suit the relevant broadcast medium
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Irish Culture
Given the explosion of stations/providers over the last ten years, and the apparent dominance of externally produced content (particularly USA content), the role of RTÉ in framing and representing the culture of Ireland becomes even more important.
This doesn’t mean developing a representation of Irish culture which is essentialist or monolithic. The cultural framing offered by RTÉ should reflect the diversity of our national identity and strive to place Ireland in a global context.
It doesn’t involve seeing externally created programming as
some form of ‘cultural imperialism’, but viewing the best of it as a marker for the creation of RTÉ programming and content which can compete and represent Ireland on external platforms across the globe.
This is an area where I have some experience and I know that all good cultural content comes through a process of appropriation of the best. This will involve collaboration with willing partners in other states. If RTÉ does not do this, no one else will.
Love/Hate illustrates what is possible here. As indeed does Radio 1’s Documentary on One, which is recognized as one the best radio documentary strands anywhere in the world.
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RTÉ and Creative Economy
While I worked inside RTÉ for a period, for the last 20 years or so, I have been a producer in the cultural and media area. Over that time I have had the opportunity to observe RTÉ from the outside.
Like many people in the creative sector I have had my frustrations with RTÉ but more than anything I came to understand the importance of the relationship between RTÉ and the wider creative industries.
While much public debate often revolves around News and Current Affairs, within the creative sector RTÉ’s role is essential. In the most difficult years of the global economy the creative industries has been one of the few growth areas, showing, at 10%, three times the growth of any other industry and, in the UK context, creating £8.8 million pounds sterling an hour for the economy. In the Irish context the growth rate has been averaging plus 3 % each year since 2003.
RTÉ is this sector’s largest direct employer. It is the largest commissioner of independent television productions, it provides crucial opportunities for actors, writers, and other creative professionals to supplement their work in theatre and film, and it is the country’s largest employer of musicians.
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When RTÉ focuses on and supports cultural events, whether it be Culture Night, the Ploughing Championships or the Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition, it helps drive audiences, enthusiasm and energy to those events.
The creative sector in Ireland has critical co-dependencies. For example, RTÉ needs a thriving independent production sector if it is to produce creative, challenging and high quality programming. The independent sector needs RTÉ as the key commissioner, funder and broadcaster of Irish made programming.
One way into this debate is through a report produced in the UK for the Government; the Work Foundation by Will Hutton entitled Staying Ahead: The Economic performance of the Creative Industries (2007). This seminal document outlines the importance of the creative industries to the economy while examining the most successful creative industries and companies. It illustrates the stages by which creative expression becomes economic product, a process at which RTÉ must be the centre.
As with many other sectors, the recession has been hugely damaging to whole creative sector in Ireland. Public funding and commercial income in the cultural sector has fallen substantially over the past five years.
RTÉ’s funding position, and subsequent capacity to invest in the broader creative sector, has been hugely diminished. While RTÉ has reduced its costs to adjust for huge falls in commercial income and public funding, these cost reductions have rippled through the entire creative sector.
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RTÉ’s investment in the independent television sector, for example, has reduced from over €75 million in 2008 to under €40 million in 2013, mirroring similar large reductions in in-house production. In television drama, a key area of employment in the sector, RTÉ’s total spend has halved over same the period.
RTÉ has the capacity to be a key engine for growth in the Irish creative sector. To achieve this potential however RTÉ needs much more certainty on its funding, public funding in particular.
By way of starting a dialogue there are questions we both need to ask. Questions such as to what is happening with the Public Service Media Charge?
Why is it that Ireland has one of the most inefficient and ineffective licence fee systems of anywhere in Western Europe?
Why is it acceptable that over €30 million is lost every year to licence fee evasion when the sector as a whole is crying out for investment, and our culture is increasingly being diluted with more and more UK and US programming?
I hope that over the course of my time as Chair of RTÉ that some of these questions can be addressed.
Thank you Chairman, I am very happy to answer any questions the Committee may have.