I want to start by congratulating RTÉ on their TV50 project. It has already been an important event - part celebration, part analysis, part statement of intent for the future. It could easily have been an introspective exercise in self referential navel gazing. It hasn’t. Instead the ‘event’ has taken a clear eyed and balanced look at what has gone before. It has celebrated the positive contribution that the broadcaster has made while not flinching from covering the conflicts, internal and external, that have characterised much of the last half century of television broadcasting in Ireland. It has provided a comprehensive account of the last 50 years of television in Ireland, its origins, its limitations, its growing pains and above all, the fact that, as “window and mirror” it has both reflected and reflected upon the social, cultural and economic changes in Irish life over that period.
Moreover, it has kindled anew the debate and discussion over the role and place of media and in particular public service broadcasting in Irish society and public life, a process I hope the debate here today will further in a constructive way.
I am going to reflect briefly on the contribution RTÉ television has made to Irish society, but my primary focus will be on the changing media environment, the challenges that lie ahead, and the roles that RTÉ might take in serving the public interest into the future.
Contribution
The RTÉ we know is the result of a series of compromises, the most central being the most obvious; the fact that it is neither fully State funded or fully commercial. As such, it has never entirely become the ‘luxury service’ that the Department of Finance so famously feared in the 1950s, or the cravenly commercial importer of alien values that others were wary of, and that some may still resent. This central tension, which survives to this day, is merely one of many that the broadcaster has had to negotiate in its history. Others include the tension between the commercial and the worthy, between the self-consciously modernising and arch conservative, between Church and State, between the Irish language lobby and more commercially sensitive minds, and, perhaps most interesting of all, the tension between those who supported an Independent Broadcaster and one that cleaved more closely to a Government line.
In many ways therefore the broadcaster continues to be characterised by the fact that it has been compelled to serve a series of ends, not all of them complementary to each other.
Some of these tensions persist but the broadcaster has managed to settle the vast majority of them as it established its place in Irish public life. One such resolved tension is that of the role of Government in determining what RTÉ might broadcast. Younger viewers of the recent ‘Battle Station’ documentary might have expressed surprise at the extent to which, in the early years of the broadcaster, Governments attempted to steer and manage editorial output and the regularity with which political disapproval was expressed.
The fact that interference of that type is now gone from Irish public life is yet another example of both the depth of the democratic tradition in Ireland, and the power of the broadcast media to fight its corner. I’ll leave it to the historians amongst us to decide which was the more important factor …
In managing these transitions, RTÉ’s role in the Irish consciousness has changed over time, sometimes subtly, sometimes in a more obvious manner. There can be no doubt that its initial impact was transformative - in the first 15 or 20 years of its life, it changed Irish political, cultural and social life entirely. I know there are dissenting views as to the extent to which other media outlets played a role – I know Conor Brady of the Irish Times has a slightly broader view, as well he might, but at the very least it can be said that RTÉ dramatically changed the tone of public life, not least because it openly and deliberately challenged a series of accepted social and cultural norms.
The nature of television, the fact that it was so widely available, so immediate, and fell on such a large audience that were crying out for content, for entertainment, for controversy and for a view of the outside world meant that at the very least it was central to modernisation. Famously, the possibility of this occurring was not lost on the political generation that faded out during the 1960s – it was widely recognised that television was too powerful a force to be corralled once released, particularly in a changing society. It was the beginning of the end of the age of deference and gerontocracy. As such, RTÉ was as much an expression of a slowly evolving State as it was a progenitor of such change. Like Prometheus unbound, once released into the world, even the notion of either State or Church controlling either the medium or the message was fleeting.
These changes were facilitated by the full range of programming, and were as much a result of an expression of a spectrum of cultural material as they were about the transmission of dry facts. But I believe that two elements of RTÉ’s output were central to this process, drama and news and current affairs output. Television drama allowed producers the ability, for the first time, to show households all across the country the same drama at the same time.
Drama allowed the entire community to share the same experience of an evening, and to reflect on it communally the next day. It allowed for the reinterpretation and the re-telling of old stories and the exploration of the new Ireland. News and current affairs, on the other hand, changed public life in Ireland for ever, and on a number of scales. It introduced the news cycle, it set new agendas, and it allowed for the dramatic and incisive exploration of stories that had previously been hidden.
We take both of these things for granted now, but in the 1960s and even the 1970s they were dramatic and new, and were a powerful force in nation building, in shaping and moulding the Ireland that emerged out of the ferment of the 1960s. RTÉ became central to public life in Ireland, it gave people a voice and a means to share experiences, from the most profound political and social events to the most trivial.
The influence of television on the evolution of events in Northern Ireland could be the subject of a separate conference, but, even on the highest level, these events could be said to have been almost bookmarked by the decisions of two Labour Ministers, the late Conor Cruise O’Brien and Michael D. Higgins. These decisions were, of course, fiercely debated inside and outside of RTÉ at the time, and whatever their respective merits it is difficult to see how the civil rights movement could have emerged in the way it did without the power of television.
Changes and Challenges The fact that the historical events and context which shaped the origins of the national broadcaster continue to retain an often central relevance today probably won’t surprise anyone in a University History Department. The extent to which this context, despite 50 years of dramatic social, economic and technological change, continues to shape the role of the broadcaster still surprises however from to time to time.
In many ways, the beginnings of television in Ireland marked a grudging and eventual acceptance of the fact that international developments were beginning to impinge on the Irish broadcast space, and that, as much as anything else, the Irish State could no longer pretend that it wasn’t happening. It had to stake a claim and establish a presence - to plant a flag, if you like, or to surrender the airwaves to broadcast signals from elsewhere. This awareness of international factors, of the critical issues of scale and the need for a national voice in media drove the need for a national broadcaster, and to a degree, continues to do so today.
For a small country, sharing a language with two of the largest and most advanced media markets in the world, and geographically located between the two, preserving some indigenous critical mass in media has been and will continue to be of central importance. RTÉ was many things at the outset, a response to external stimuli, a revolutionary development and an admission of the inevitability of technological progress. But above all it was a response to the fact that television was coming, one way or the other, and RTÉ was the means chosen to deliver it into the Irish media landscape.Fifty years later, we face a far more immediate issue. Already, the market for television advertising in Ireland is getting incredibly crowded - there are more than 30 channels of advertising available for sale in Ireland, with the majority of these originating from outside the State, than 85% of the population has access to some form of pay-tv. Irish broadcasters now compete for audience attention with a range of global media conglomerates, some of whom can deliver content to the Irish market with a minimal footprint here. Moreover, that television audience is also fragmented and possessed of a wide range of mobile and other devices that they can use to access content, play games or discuss their favourite political scandal.
This dramatically changed media environment poses a series of linked challenges to all Irish broadcasters, and for media policy in general in Ireland. Broadcasters are effectively competing with organisations possessed of larger economies of scale than they can ever hope to achieve. These organisations can spend far more on content, on advertising and on platforms than any indigenous broadcaster. Moreover, their established presence in all sections of the Irish
television market, and their ability to specialise - be that in sports, children’s television, drama and current affairs pose a longstanding challenge in terms of maintaining standards, both technical and editorial. In other words, Irish broadcasters must compete with the very best the world has to offer, while still catering for the particular needs of the domestic market. However the advertising market is getting increasingly fragmented across an expanding number of television channels and a rapidly growing online market. Existing relativities and certainties are dissolving across the media industry in Ireland, something with which the print industry is already familiar.
One of the interesting developments in recent years is the fact that broadcasters have come to realise that quality programming is an area where the market can still deliver advertising revenues, be that HBO or Showtime in the US, or the Sky Atlantic offering on this side of the planet. Quality programming is not a millstone, it can drive audience share and subscription revenues, but it is expensive, particularly where cinema standard effects, talent and scripts are involved. There are lessons to be drawn for broadcasters here on this also – audiences are fully exposed to this, and they will continue to demand high quality product. Moreover, this reinforces the importance and centrality of RTÉ’s public service broadcasting remit – the need to deliver domestic programming of consistently high standard, right across the spectrum of output.
What is coming next may well be even more challenging though. We’ve seen stirrings of Internet Protocol Television, or IPTV, for many years - already there is a range of possible means by which such content can be delivered to a wide variety of devices. However it appears that the industry is approaching a singularity in terms of the business models available and that we’re likely to see relatively rapid developments over the medium term. If and when this does occur, the challenges facing Irish broadcasters will multiply. Technology like this tends to afford greater economies of scale to all, and those who therefore stand to gain the most are the largest companies, those with the existing relationships with content providers, those with the existing customer base and back office functions.
Television will persist – it is too powerful a communicator not to – but it would be naïve in the extreme for any of us to believe that in a country where everyone will have access to at least 30mb broadband, and with a universe of content available online, that even a DTT based broadcasting eco-system can remain unaffected.
However, from a national perspective, the democratic requirement for a plural and diverse media is more pressing than ever. From a historical perspective, the modern State grew around and with the assistance of a critical and free media, and of media dedicated to local markets – it remains a central element of democracy today, not least because of the role it plays in explaining and drawing out the stories that shape all of our lives. Broadcast media brought the modern media state into being. The public and common good is therefore dependent on this media ecosystem, not despite the fact that it is fractious, argumentative and critical, but because of these things. Moreover, as the media becomes fragmented, internationalised and atomised across platforms and channels, the need for robust, well funded and critical media outlets is even more central to the functioning of the political system in liberal democracies. If media is important and I believe that it is, we should be prepared to pay for it, and to ensure that sufficient critical mass exists so that it can be a stable and reliable source of media content, not just news and current affairs, but the full range of public service broadcasting.
In practical terms, this means a national broadcaster, one that can continue to speak as a national voice, one dedicated solely to the Irish people and that can hold its central role in political and social life. It will not help to meet the marked challenges facing media policy if different sections of the broadcast and print media start to cannibalise each other rather than creatively responding to technological change. The television licence regime, not matter how it is altered, is not a solution to falling revenues and the challenge posed by technological change.
However, neither the historical record nor the ongoing need for public sector broadcasting should mean that such a broadcaster be beyond challenge, in fact it means that the broadcaster should be perennially challenged, from within and without. It should be challenged to do better, to do more with the valuable resources accorded to it, by Government, by the regulator and most of all by the audience. And it should be always held to the highest standards.
Everyone will have their own opinion as to how well RTE accomplish this task – it is the ultimate paradox of public service broadcasting that, far from keeping everyone happy, RTÉ is under legislative orders to actively try and not keep everyone happy – to push, to harangue, to test, to ask questions that commercial broadcasters are sometimes unwilling to, and in ways that they are unable to.
Broadcasting, and indeed the media sector general, is one of considerable volatility, largely as a consequence of the speed with which technological changes can change markets. RTÉ cannot sit still, it cannot wait for the market to suit it – it has to continually adapt and change. This is not an easy task. The economic circumstances are difficult; the organisation is losing staff and experience as it seeks to return to financial stability.
I welcome the profound restructuring and reorganisation already underway under the competent leadership of Director General Noel Curran. The single most important element of this process is around charting a course through the transition to digital media into the future, all the while taking cognisance of reduced resources. Already, we are less than two months away from Analogue Switch Off, the point where Irish broadcasting becomes an all digital affair. This has not happened by itself, and I would like to acknowledge the huge investment of energy and resources put into delivering Digital Switchover by RTÉ.
The Ireland chronicled in John Bowman’s excellent “Window and Mirror” is not the Ireland for which the Director General must now prepare RTÉ. But just as the talented young people overcame obstacles to lay the foundations for television from 1961 onwards, I am confident that the talent, leadership and energy exist within RTÉ to secure public service broadcasting into the future.