Paying for Tubs, Miriam etc - Village Magazine

5 8 April 2017

MEDIA

HE IDEA for a television licence decoupled from

ownership of a television, proposed by Fine

Gael as long ago as the 2011 election campaign

as a "content tax" or "public broadcasting

charge to apply to all households and applica-

ble businesses, regardless of the device they use to

access content" has undergone several iterations since,

but is not on the agenda of anyone realistic about Irish

politics. Meanwhile RTÉ continues to struggle ﬁnancially

to keep its head above water.

In the coalition government that followed the 2011

election, Labour ministers – Pat Rabbitte then Alex White

– took over the communications portfolio, and neither

seemed enthusiastic about a new and more wide-rang

ing TV licence scheme, especially given the problems

water charges were causing. The idea of a content tax

was quietly shelved.

The idea was raised again following a Sean O'Rourke

interview with RTÉ director general Dee Forbes on the

subject of the station's ﬁnances, during which she men-

tioned the fabulous value-for money of the RTÉ TV licence.

"The licence fee [€160] is 40 cents a day. That’s what

it costs the Irish viewer. I think that's incredible value for

money. Quite honestly I think it should be double that”,

she told the mid-morning show. "Look at the Scandina

vian markets where the licence fee is double that and you

see what they're getting for that. The more money we

have to play with content the more we can do. The case

we're in now is critical. We’re ﬁghting for survival as an

organisation. What I have to do, along with the team

here, is ensure that we do survive”.

There followed a ﬂurry of RTÉ stories, as Forbes was

forced to clarify she was not saying the licence fee

should be doubled, minister Denis Naughten

effectively ruled out any fee increase, and the

usual stories about who might take over

licence collections to reducing the non-pay-

ment rate (estimated at 15 percent of the 92%

of households that have a TV) were reheated.

The station had a €2.8m deﬁcit in 2015 and

the 2016 ﬁgure is expected to be multiples of

that ﬁgure, for reasons ranging from the

expense of covering the Olympics to the

decline in UK-based advertisers due to Brexit.

In January 2017, it announced plans to sell off

part of its prime Donnybrook campus.

A few days after Forbes' interview, the "content tax"

on all screens larger that eleven inches resurfaced.

Having already been put on hold once, a broad-based

broadcasting tax seems unlikely to succeed a second

time. Memories of the backlash against water charges

are still fresh. However, the idea now seems to be insti

tutionally embedded.

Quite conceivably, after a few years and the next round

of electoral musical chairs, one could foresee a Fianna

Fáil (or possibly Sinn Féin) minister propose an amalga

mated Home Tax, which would incorporate a broadcasting

charge to ﬁnance RTÉ alongside the existing property

tax, refuse charges, and perhaps even water charges. It

would be marketed as an efﬁciency, so that harried tax

payers would only have to keep track of one tax bill

instead of several. Italy, Greece, and Portugal take their

fees as part of household electricity bills.

By then, RTÉ may have stemmed the ﬂow temporarily

by selling off some of the family silver and organising

another round of redundancies, but it will still be caught

in a downward spiral as advertising migrates to the

behemoths of Google and Facebook.

Of the fee, approximately 85% goes to RTÉ to carry it

out its Public Service Media commitments. A further 7%

is paid to the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland for the

operation of the Broadcasting Funding Scheme, TG4 also

receives €9.24m per annum and An Post is paid approxi-

mately 6% of the fee in respect of TV licence collection

activities.

Dee Forbes did have a point when she spoke about the

value the station offers at "40 cents a day". Denmark, a

country with only a slightly larger population, charges

€322 for a TV licence, over twice the Irish rate. In addi

tion, the licence is not restricted to TVs, but can also

apply to computer screens. The results of that greater

investment can be been seen on Irish TV and other

screens, where viewers are familiar with successful

exports like 'Borgen' and 'The Bridge'.

Everyone in Ireland beneﬁts from a ﬁnancially healthy

RTE, not least because occasionally 'Prime Time' or 'This

Week' can spend half an hour dissecting the latest HSE

or Garda omnishambles, and someone has to do that

work. And a ﬁnancially healthier ﬁrm would also have the

resources to produce two or three high-quality pro-

grammes a year which it could export to other TV markets,

earning additional revenue. But persuading the multitude

that they need to pay more for RTÉ when presented with,

for example, Ryan Tubridy's annual salary, may be an

uphill climb too far for Ireland's politicians.

RTÉ had a €2.8m

deﬁcit in 2015

and the 2016

ﬁgure is expected

to be multiples of

that ﬁgure

Actually RTÉ is quite good

value, though the water-

tax debacle means it

won’t be properly funded

Paying for

Tubs, Miriam etc

€160

€53

€170

€136

€215

€335

Ireland Poland England France Germany Denmark

Cost of a TV

licence across

the EU

by Gerard

Cunningham