Media Network Blog sourcing RTE states

Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has said that the country’s public broadcaster RTÉ should be able to transmit a dedicated Dáil channel on television. Mr Ahern said that he had assisted the station with a healthy package of a licence fee for public service broadcasting and that if showing the Oireachtas (parliament) and its committees was not public service, then he would give up.

He insisted that RTÉ should be able to carry such a channel within the public service remit. He said compared with ‘a lot of tripe that is on TV’, the Oireachtas channel would be far better and very interesting.

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Dáil TV services are not televised by RTE (its under contract to a private company) the service falls under the remit of the leader speaker of the house (Ceann Comhairle) and should not be interfered with by party political of governmental influence. RTÉ international may well carry Dáil proceedings in the future but independent TG4 carries more Dáil hours than RTÉ does at the moment.

Bertie lets get the smoke and daggers out and get RTE & TG4 FTA and Dáil TV may well happen, but stop interfering in day to day Irish TV.

over on the petition kevin posted a comment along with his petition signing

“Thank you for your email. RTÉ has no current plans to make its television services available on a satellite free-to-air service. Approximately 50% of our programming is acquired from UK and American sources. RTÉ only purchases Irish rights to these programmes. If we were on a free-to-air basis these programmes could be viewed outside of Ireland and RTÉ would be in breach of its rights agreements with the suppliers of this source of programming. Being available on a subscription satellite basis on Sky enables encryption which prevents access to RTÉ outside of the island of Ireland. This means that availability on Sky satellite is within our rights agreements. RTÉ is obliged by law to provide a transmission network for its radio and television service. Our analogue terrestrial network fulfils this obligation. Looking to the future the Government has authorised the beginnings of the provision of a digital terrestrial television service.”

these questions are not for Kevin but I ask aloud

Island of Ireland! 32 county, Northern Ireland - starting to sound very new SF, next TV of the equals?

yes RTE are on the EPG up north - rights issue ? nope!

does RTE have programming rights for the island or Ireland?

Obliged by law[1] - RTE International!

Obliged by law[2] - UN declaration (read post #1 of this blog)

Stick the imports on terrestrial and broadcast Irish TV in the clear over DVB satellite?

50% - ok RTE TWO imports ~ RTE ONE FTA! Lets have it 50/50

How much does RTE pay to be encrypted? EPG? Dish Tax? The Deal with Sky?

DTT  is on trial – no owners – no vision – no business plan – no certainty of FTA. (but likely to be FTA)

DTT no 100% role out for a decade? (guess) DVB-SAT 100% available now.

maybe RTE have the answers to these questions, but they aren’t telling me.