Consultation
Submission.
Objective in undertaking this review as stated in Consultation document is
“to ensure that the needs of local communities and special interests are recognised in the Irish radio landscape”.
Comments on key questions posed in consultation document.
In reading the consultation document and the report of Review of Radio Licencing in Ireland there are a number of points that strike us at Kilkenny Communication Cooperative Society and I hereby submit them.
i. Radio Landscape.
a, Many examples are taken from countries that have a different size population and a different population spread from us in Ireland.
As stated in the report Radio is very popular in Ireland.
It has been developing in its own way and less interference rather that more would be a good thing.
We need to protect against the kind of thing that is happening in other countries, like for example the USA, where small radio stations are being taken over by bigger groups with the result that “Local” radio is really in name only in many places.
c. Independent radio in Ireland was developed by groups whether commercial or local community groups and this could continue if the controlling body let it up to the groups themselves to survive without the government bodies getting involved to promote one type over the other.
d. We feel that the weakness of the current system is that BCI seem to make the rules as and when it suits them and that they are answerable to nobody.
e. There should certainly be help and support for small community and special interest radio stations.
ii.
a When radio licencing became available in 1989 we understood that the main reason for having to licence stations was to have some control over the frequencies so that there wouldn’t be conflict between radio stations and the hospital and rescue services, for instance.
Policy objectives were also developed with which most of us had no problems. However in the intervening years BCI has introduced changes in the ethos of the whole business.
In Athlone radio was referred as “An Industry”.
We always considered radio as a “Service”
As an industry, and in to-days world of “Bigger being Better” it is quite evident that BCI is also following this pattern. This is not necessarily the best thing for communities in Ireland.
Plurality of ownership seems to be gone out the window when you see how some commercial interests are taking over in radio.
Diversity of view point is not promoted by having the same people and companies involved in the business of radio. Ensuring that licences are held by people with experience etc is not evidentially supported by BCI in the current climate when they preferred groups which were only formed to get licences, over groups which had been running stations in the particular area for years, as happened the case of Kilkenny and the North West.
To ensure the ethos best serves the audience.. This is not evident in to-day s climate either when an “Out of the Region” group more or less decides what the local people should be listening to.
Re-visit North West situation where derogatory statements were made and objected to!
d. Policy directives should be given by a minister at the time of setting up a body such as BCI ComReg or the Planning Authority , but everything should normally be done subject to the ministers agreement. In the normal course of affairs the minister would not become involved in the day to day running of these organisations but when matters arise which warrant investigation then the minister should not wash his or her hands of the matter by simply stating that the body they had set up was “Independent”. That’s a cop-out!
iii. Diversity and Plurality.
a. If, as we were told in Athlone, there is still quite an amount of free spectrum available for broadcasting why can groups not apply for a licence of their choice and supply the type of radio they think will be successful in their area. One for which they think there is a demand. If it works it works and they will get support for their service. If it doesn’t work then the licence should go back to BCI or The Department and may be given to another group which required it.
c. Community and Independent radio stations will contribute to enhanced diversity by being plugged into the needs of the community they serve and should presumably gain support if they come up with what is needed.
d. BCI could decide on new formats by leaving if up to groups to come up with ideas and not by imposing their ideas of what should or should not be out there although they could make suggestions too.
e. What really are the existing rules of ownership?
The existing rules seem to change anyway so it seems to be a case of what group of media people you belong to or who you know within the structures of BCI that influences ownership at present!
f. The nature of ownership does impact on the output of a radio station. For example owners who are in radio for the economic gain it will be to them are concerned primarily with making a profit and tend to broadcast the type of programmes that will attract most advertising. An example of this was that in the early days many commercial stations sneered at those which broadcast death notices. However they all soon discovered that people in a community listen to these notices and that they were also a potential source of income so now most stations now broadcast them. Policies in relation to cross-media ownership should hold that too much cross-media involvement is a bad thing. When our local station was set up, and because it was owned by the people of the county themselves, everybody felt that they had a voice and could express it on air. Local business people could afford to advertise to in their own locality and the range of coverage and costs of the advertisements suited them. Local radio should be local and other media interests such as other radio stations and newspapers should stick to their own areas. Here in Carlow/Kilkenny one of the shareholders in the radio owns of all of the newspapers in the south east, bar one. Then there are connections between all the radio stations in the area and some in Dublin. “ Independent” should mean that it is not part of a chain.
iv .Citizen’s Voice.
a When Radio Kilkenny and Northwest Radio failed to have licences renewed there was strong support for them in their own areas. There were protest meetings and marches, letters to politicians and the minister and NOBODY really listened. Why would we expect it to change? In Kilkenny many of us feel completely devoid of our own local radio. We do not accept that the decision made by BCI was the right one. We do not feel that the new station is meeting our needs. And many of us do not listen to it.
v.Licence Applications
a, The cost of making an application at present is very expensive, both from the point of the fee and of the submission that BCI demands. They state, among other things, in their “Guidelines to Submissions” that
“ iv) The
commission encourages the presentation of applications to be clear, concise and
simple in layout and style.
v) The commission discourages applicants from submitting over-elaborate applications, including videos and supplementary promotional material. …….”
We would say that this is not followed through by BCI and that more elaborate submissions seem to be the order of the day.
. It cost in the region of €80,000 to make our submission and that is a great expense for a small group. This leads to a situation where only groups with lots of money are in a position to make submission for a licence.
b. Of course this procedure acts as a barrier to entry.
There should certainly be different application procedures for different categories of licence.
vi Licensing evaluation.
Work certainly needs to be done in this area, judging by the report and involvement of the executive members who are dealing with the radio stations on a day to day basis would be reasonable.
Subjective judgement should only come into play if a completely new franchise area is on offer.
vii Licenceing-Duration.
a. The duration of a licence could vary in that it would be reasonable to offer a shorter period to a group for the first time and then once they have established themselves they could be offered a longer period. However if a group set up a station and get a service up and running in an area they should be able to consider that the licence will be theirs again next time unless they have proved incompetent or have broken the rules substantially.
b. The BCI should have the powers to re-licence a station unless there is a reason why not to. We always understood that like all other licences once one was behaving properly in relation to the licence and the commitment made that the licence would be renewed. We always also accepted that a licence would have to be reapplied for so that if there were problems relating to the operation of the franchise the BCI could revoke the licence. What has happened in relation to licencing was certainly not what we had anticipated.
This would indicate that there is a certain level of dissatisfaction with the methods used in the re-licencing process.
Any group which feels that it has been unfairly treated should have a right to have its concerns investigated.
BCI’s opinion in the review that decisions relating to licencing are subjective certainly leads one to the opinion that some more satisfactory assessment of applications is necessary and that there could certainly be grounds for concern about the fairness of the decisions made.. I would agree with the opinions relating to appeals put forward in the review, page 41.
A “No appeals” procedure just is not right.
ix. Enforcement
a. What are the existing enforcement powers and are they ever used except to send a letter of comment and direction to improve? Structures should certainly be in place and the only option should not be to take the licence away, as a first and only step Another point I would make here is that I got the impression, in Athlone, that stations which were not re-licenced somehow lost out because of infringements of the regulations. That certainly would not have been the case in Kilkenny where on a number of occasions the station management had been complemented on the good job being done, both by BCI personnel and by Ministers of State.
b Can we afford another regulatory body?
x. Financial Returns.
The state should be entitled to some returns from the stations but one of the important things that should be remembered is that the scarce natural resource that is the spectrum belongs to the people first of all and the people of the country should have first access to this resource.
Community groups striving to improve things in their own area should be encouraged and if there are groups only in radio for the money and what they can get out of it should have to pay well for the facility they have. A claw-back arrangement should be equitable. After all everyone has to pay capital gains tax on any windfall they have and radio companies should be the same. Taxes will, presumably also be paid on profits. However if stations can sell the licence and make a profit stations which do not and which subsequently are not re-licenced should have some compensation paid depending on the value of the licence as calculated in the review.
xi. Digital Radio
a. This is still a type of service with an uncertain future and it may be superseded by more modern technology like satellite broadcasting before it gets firmly established and the size of our population probably doesn’t warrant a large input of resources till we see how it is going in other countries.
b. They should probably just hold back for a while and see how things go. They weren’t going so well in some of the countries that spent a lot in development.
c. Do we need to promote DAB as a format in radio?
d. We have no real way of calculating, that as the system is very different in range,
what part it will play in the whole format.
Further comments I wish to make
Terms used in the document and their meanings.
Beauty contests.
I didn’t hear this phrase in relation to relicencing stations until after the submissions had been made. Then we heard that the licences were to be given out on a Beauty Contest basis.
Beauty contests may be alright when a new franchise area is being licences and all the competitors for the licence are competing against each other for the first time. Then BCI would have to give the licence on the presentations made to it by the various groups since they have no record to go on.
However when areas are being re-licenced and a group has been running a station for the period of the last licence then surely the track record of how the station was operated and received should be taken into account.
It doesn’t seem fair, by any stretch of the imagination, that when one is re-applying and has been doing a good job for a long number of years that the record and expertise should have no value in the new competition and that it all depends on who writes the best book!
Licencing/ relicencing.
At the meeting in Athlone on Tuesday 14th September, the gentleman from the Department stated that
“ nobody lost a licence” “They just failed to get a licence”!
When we all read the Broadcasting Act we accepted that the Department of Communications etc., had to put in a clause limiting the life of a licence. I would suggest what nobody expected was that having put years of work into a station it could be given to some other group at re-licencing time. We would accept that if a group were not fulfilling the terms of the licence in some way that it might not get the licence back. It was not thought that if a station were successful from a financial point of view and if it was satisfying the listeners needs, (the first almost depends on the second) it would have its licence to broadcast withdrawn.
When did the right to sell a licence arise.?
In the beginning when groups failed to make a success of their licence they handed them back and IRTC gave them on to another group. Sale of licences only arose when the Cork and Dublin stations started changing hands. See page 11 of document.
We were told that a licence only belongs to a group for the life of the licence. Can we really foresee a situation where a commercial licence e.g. one of those owned by UTV of SRH is given to another group in a Beauty Contest next time round.
And if it couldn’t happen to them why did it happen to two groups this time?
Words use in the documents.
Page 11.
This section seems to say that groups OWN a station.
“A company may own %100 of a commercial radio station”
Do they own it or not?
If they own it they should be able to sell it. If they don’t they shouldn’t be able to sell.
In some cases in Ireland the BCI have allowed stations to be sold. In others they gave them away.
Is it the franchise area or the station that is being re-licences .
If groups own the station relicencing should mean giving a licence for another period as in a Public House licence. The minister himself mentioned dog licences on the day in Athlone. ( If you don’t relicence the dog does it mean that the licence for a particular dog can be given to someone else .
And does that person also get the dog? Or does the person who loses the licence have to have their dog put down?!)
If relicencing means “relicencing the franchise area” then that may be different. But from the documentation this point isn’t clear.
Modified franchise area.
This term was used in BCI literature leading up to the submissions for relicencing. In one case, the case of Kilkenny, BCI advertised a Modified Franchise area of Carlow/Kilkenny.
They later claimed that it was an entirely new franchise.
My dictionary gives
Modify: to change the form or quality of: To alter slightly: to vary
If I modify my house by adding an extra room I don’t have an entirely new house.
I contend that a modified franchise area in the case of Carlow/Kilkenny is not a new area but the larger county, Kilkenny, with the addition of the smaller one, Carlow, added to it.
Independent :
Dictionary definition is
Independent; not dependent or replying on others: not subordinate: completely self-governing: not affiliated or merged with a larger organisation.
In the discussions at the meeting in Athlone it seemed to me that Independent meant “Not RTE”
When we worked for Independent Radio in Ireland in the 1980s we meant radio stations that were individual stations not controlled by other stations or by the media in general.
It was even incorporated in the act that media interests would not have a controlling interest in the stations.
Now it seems that there is cross-media involvement in most of our radio stations, and the ideals and ambitions that the early broadcasters had have gone out the door.
Greed seems to have reared its head in the whole broadcasting arena.
Station owners see that they have a chance of selling their station to a bigger entity and some have made millions on the situation.
When the government suggested there should be a “claw-back” for them from stations which were sold for huge sums the CEO of a Dublin station was reported as saying that it would not be fair for the government to take money from the companies who had taken the risk of setting up the station in the first place and that it was in sales of stations that the owners stood to make money.
The Government, when it saw huge sums changing hands for the radio stations decided to get in on the act of getting it’s cut from the profits and looks on the whoe business as a source of income.
See page 52 of the Final Report.