Examination of Witnesses (Questions 692
- 699)
WEDNESDAY 23 NOVEMBER 2005
Mr Allan Bremner, Ms Patricia Galvin and Mr Pa«dhraic
O« Ciardha
Q692 Chairman:
We are very grateful to you for coming in. I think you know what
we are doing in terms of this inquiry; we are now on to stage
two and we are looking at particular aspects of the BBC's work—and
that is our remit—which we really did not have the time
to go into in the same detail, and obviously we are looking very
much at regions and we are looking at Northern Ireland in that
general area. I think the most useful way of beginning would be
if you could not only introduce yourselves but also actually say
what you do and what your organisation is. Mr Bremner, we met
you last night, and we have a vague idea.
Mr Bremner: Like my employers! As you probably know,
ITV is now a consolidated organisation consisting of the former
English ITV companies and the Welsh ITV Company. Three ITV companies
remain outside that single company. You have Scottish Television
and you have UTV and the Channel Islands. In terms of our position,
if you like, in ITV we are effectively an affiliate. We have come
to the very obvious conclusion that we do not wield any power
with the network centre, but obviously we depend on the programmes
which we purchase from the network centre. We represent about
2.5 per cent of the population served by ITV. We are a successful
company inasmuch as there is a considerable appetite for television
in Northern Ireland and we are, as a result, able to sustain one
of the highest shares of viewing in the ITV matrix. We are now
a diversified company; we have our own Internet company, we have
a telephony company, we own six radio stations in the Republic
of Ireland and ten days ago we started our new radio service here
in Belfast, which serves the Greater Belfast area. We also own
17 radio stations in England, one of which is a network, the talkSPORT
network. In terms of local programmes, I would argue that we have
a very diverse range of local programmes; we do news, current
affairs, documentary, entertainment, religious programmes, children's
animations, sports and community programmes. As I was trying to
articulate last night, I think that we are relatively different
in that if you look at this week I suspect that we are the only
ITV company that does a story on investment in Londonderry at
eight o'clock at night. And tonight, for example, we start the
first of four half hours on the problem of race in Northern Ireland.
I hope that is a helpful synopsis.
Q693 Chairman:
Just tell me about ownership.
Mr Bremner: We have no significant corporate
ownership at all; we are a company owned by a diverse range of
small shareholders that are in both the island of Ireland and
Great Britain.
Q694 Chairman:
There is no chief shareholder?
Mr Bremner: No.
Q695 Chairman:
There is no one who owns 15 per cent, 20 per cent?
Mr Bremner: No.
Q696 Lord Maxton:
Advertising?
Mr Bremner: Advertising is going through a difficult
period at the moment. We do not sometimes feel that chill wind
as much as English ITV companies would do because 50 per cent
of our revenue comes from the island of Ireland. ITV had a bad
year in 2005. They are headed for what looks like their worse
ever year for 2006. We think that we will break even whereas the
network will be considerably down on its income.
Q697 Chairman:
Patricia Galvin, tell us about you.
Ms Galvin: Thank you, Chairman. Firstly, may
I send apologies from Cathal Goan, our Director General, who very
much wanted to be here but unfortunately could not? I will try
to answer any questions that you may have and will be happy to
provide any further information in written submissions. RTÉ
is Ireland's public service broadcaster and that consists of two
television channels and four radio channels. It is a dual-funded
broadcaster that is currently funded more or less 50-50 through
the licence fee and advertising funding. Most recently, really
in the last ten years or so, has become more freely available
in the north. There was some spill-over over in the years from
the Clermont Carn transmitter site, but thanks to the concerted
efforts of the Good Friday Belfast Agreement greater efforts were
made to try and make the signal of the RTÉ services available
in the north. I think analogue terrestrial coverage is at about
40, 45 per cent currently. Earlier this year RTÉ became
available on Sky Satellite service here, which is currently reaching
about 200,000 television subscription owners, and we are also
available on NTL Digital in the north. The premise for RTÉ
as a public service broadcaster is that we have a statutory mandate,
a remit that is defined in broadcasting legislation. It is a broad
remit, not dissimilar to that of the BBC's, though obviously we
are funded also partly commercially. There are two other significant
commitments. One is that most recently there was what one might
call a top-slicing of the licence fee, so five per cent of the
licence fee overall funding is now put to one side and that is
to encourage and foster development of the independent production
sector. Also we have a commitment in legislation—I think
it is 28 million—to commit to the independent production
sector. At the moment RTÉ nearly doubles that commitment.
Q698 Chairman:
We will perhaps come on to some of those things in a moment.
Ms Galvin: I suppose the last point is that
while our services are available in the north we are not commercially
active in the north; there is no commercial revenue. We clear
the rights, we make whatever provisions are necessary to make
the services available in the north, but we are not extracting
commercial revenue from that. I work in the area of regulatory
affairs, by the way.
Q699 Chairman:
Thank you. And TG4?
Mr O« Ciardha: My name is Pa«dhraic
O« Ciardha; I am the Deputy Chief Executive of TG Ceathair,
TG4. Shorthand for this Committee's purposes, we are the equivalent
Irish language service to S4C, without the funding. That is to
say, we are a dedicated Irish language service channel set up
nine years ago, funded directly by the Exchequer to the tune of
23 million Euros a year, currently, current funding. We also receive,
similar to the BBC, an hour a day programming from RTÉ,
under whose corporate umbrella we currently sit, but there is
a government proposal to make us totally independent. Like S4C
and Channel 4 we are a publisher/broadcaster and most of our programming
is sourced in the independent production sector. We are, like
RTÉ, receivable here in Northern Ireland and have been
since the beginning, but the signing of the Belfast Agreement
contains two specific provisions: one in which the UK Government
commits to trying to extend our receivable signal here in the
north; and secondly, there is a provision in that Agreement whereby
the British government commits to trying to give financial encouragement
to local Irish language production. The reception commitment has
taken the form of there being a strengthening of our signal from
the Republic; a local transmitter here under this mountain became
operational last spring, almost at the same time as we, along
with RTÉ, became available to Sky subscribers, here on
encrypted satellite. The financial supports take the form of an
Irish Language Broadcast Fund, which was set up and announced
earlier this year, which is a fund available for local production
in Irish here in Northern Ireland, currently administered by the
Northern Ireland Film and Television Commission. That is what
we do.
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