The latest episode of the most-watched drama on Irish television – on the unlikely platform of Oireachtas TV as Ryan Tubridy and Noel Kelly appeared before two committees to discuss the payments controversy – did little to dispel one lingering perception. As an institution RTÉ's malaise owes much to its attempt to square the circle created by a simultaneous reliance on market and public revenues.
Given this, can Ireland afford a public service media fully funded by the public purse? And if so, what kind of content could and should it deliver?
International experience demonstrates that full public funding of public service media in Ireland is possible. Both Denmark (population 5.9m) and Finland (population 5.5m) more or less exclusively fund their public service media from public revenue. With each raising more than half a billion euro annually, this is €100 million more than the combined public and commercial revenues of RTÉ and TG4. This approach does not automatically mean increasing the tax burden on individuals. It may even reduce it for some.
The Finnish broadcasting tax is progressive so those earning less than €14,000 pay nothing, while top earners pay a maximum of €163 annually. (The Irish licence fee is €160.) Crucially, the Finnish tax is also levied on businesses, widening the tax base. And concerns that governments might abuse their role in public funding to interfere with media content are not necessarily borne out. Denmark and Finland are ranked among the top-five on the Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index.
To date the most malign influence on RTÉ's public service mission and ethos has been the extent to which successive Irish governments have driven it to depend on commercial sources for the bulk of its revenue. Even now RTÉ remains an outlier in this regard, drawing 43 per cent of its revenue from commercial income, more than twice the European Broadcasting Union average (18 per cent). Given the need to bring audiences to advertisers and produce commodified content for international television sales, there are questions as to how (indeed whether) wider considerations relating to the social, political and cultural needs of the nation inform RTÉ commissioning decisions.
So what might a fully publicly funded media look like? Public service content is frequently defined as the unproblematic social good that is news and current affairs. It is also associated with “market failure” content that, while important for society, has little commercial appeal. This view of public service media sees it as a worthy but dull informational ghetto, characterised by limited audience engagement.
But there are compelling reasons to include a much wider array of programming genres as deserving of public finance. News and current affairs clearly qualifies as a social good because it allows citizens to participate meaningfully in democratic life. But politics is not the only realm of existence where access to quality content matters.
Few commentators would label the commercially compromised RTÉ as innovative, notwithstanding the fact that it is staffed by some of the most creative imaginations in the country
Genres like drama, comedy, documentary, children’s programming and even talk shows may also be social goods because they offer representations of experience which allow audiences to make sense of their history, identity, emotions, motivations and development. Public service media have also given us Derry Girls, An Cailín Ciúin, The Tommy Tiernan Show, Normal People, Ireland’s Fittest Families and Other Voices.
Some popular, some niche, they merit public funding because they variously reflect, interrogate and critique aspects of the culture and identity of the nation. The argument that such shows might also be produced by commercial media is moot – we wouldn’t limit public libraries to providing books unavailable in commercial book stores.
We need the fresh, the innovative and the challenging. Profit-oriented, commercially-funded media are sometimes regarded as the best means of driving content innovation. But their actual track record is mixed. TV3′s decision to trust Vincent Browne with an hour-long current affairs show from 2007 was successful both in terms of audiences and the new faces and perspectives it brought into the public sphere. By contrast, in drama TV3 initially focused extensive efforts on acquiring content that was already available elsewhere, literally selling itself to Granada television in a bid to steal Coronation Street away from RTÉ in 2000.
Streamers like Netflix, Prime and Now TV and digital media mean it has never been easier to access a wide range of commercial programming – but these multinationals here have no obligation to Irish culture and identity. Given that their centre of gravity tends to be in the US, their libraries are not especially concerned with ensuring that smaller markets like Ireland are specifically catered for. So while dramas like An Cailín Ciúin may still occasionally break through internationally we should not abandon the telling of Irish stories to the market.
Market-driven media systems tend towards reproducing the familiar because its appeal is already established and therefore financially predictable. Largely freed from the profit motive, the BBC has historically excelled at delivering the kind of risky, ground-breaking content that commercial broadcasters are incentivised to avoid. And few commentators would label the commercially compromised RTÉ as innovative, notwithstanding the fact that it is staffed by some of the most creative imaginations in the country.
Our narrow vision of what public service content means stems from our failure to consciously and comprehensively explore and debate what role public service media should play in contemporary Ireland. The Future of Media Commission in 2021 operated within terms of reference which essentially adopted a 1960s definition of public service content: informing, educating and entertaining the public regarding Irish culture and identity, unifying the nation, and maintaining an outlet for Irish creative talent. However, beyond providing “high quality independent journalism” there was no specific description of programme genres.
Now, more than ever, there is a need for public deliberation over what kind of informational, communicative and cultural space our society should enable – and how. That debate should be as expansive as possible. In re-imaging public service media for the 21st century we should go beyond discussions of genres to consider how such content should be made accessible and by whom.
Rather than identifying online spaces as threats we should consider how our public service media institutions might actively embrace and exploit the possibilities of on-demand and social media platforms.
Dr Eileen Culloty and Dr Roddy Flynn are members of the FuJo Institute at the Dublin City University school of communications