FTA debated in the Dáil

feb 27th 2008 JOINT COMMITTEE ON COMMUNICATIONS, ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES direct link

did  Senator O’Toole ask the right questions? yes. did he get answers? no. Take 50% of RTE1 50% RTE2 50% TG4 50% Dail TV 50% RTE International and 45 years of archive, don’t think “Desperate Housewives” think “Desperate Broadcasters” We have what it takes to transmit FTA to Ireland via satellite no blackouts no encryption. Wake RTÉ up and smell the FreeSAT.

Senator Joe O’Toole:    Tá mé thar a bheith buíoch daoibh as ucht teacht isteach arís ar maidin. Gabh mo leathscéal nach raibh mé anseo an lá deireanach ach bhí commitment eile agam. D’éist mé leis an méid a bhí le rá agaibh, go háirithe an méid a dhírigh isteach ar chraoladh digiteach agus leis an míniú a thug Conor Hayes. Caithfidh mé a rá nach bhfuil bealach níos simplí ná seo – I have this nightmare of 190 sites, planning permissions, hearings and appeals with 190 groups writing letters to 166 TDs and it still will not be received in the Black Valley or the lower reaches of Mitchelstown. I raised this matter with Mr. Goan a couple of years ago. Does an easier way exist to do this?

Before we all fall off the table, the Astra satellite is up there along with 24 others, and this answers every issue raised here. I meant to check the legislation prior to this meeting but I did not get a chance to do so. I understand it requires us to have an all-Ireland reach for part of the multiplex. This is also reflected in what is loosely referred to as the Good Friday Agreement and they should mirror each other in some sense.

I want a simple answer to one question. Recently, I walked into a ordinary shop, bought an LNB and inserted it on a dish. I can now get free to air channels including BBC 1, 2, 3 and 4 and ITV 1, 2, 3 and 4. I can also receive Malta and Cyprus television free to air. I can take this as far as the Urals and receive every single station except RTE. We do not need a huge transmission network. Even if we do, if we also had it on satellite, all of the questions about the all-Ireland aspect and the problems on the east coast would be answered. People would be able to receive Welsh television but also Ulster television, ITV and London television along with all of the other channels.

I do not want Mr. Goan to respond to this with copyright issues. If he does I will tell him to let the screen go blank if it arises. It has been done before for football matches. I want to be able to tune in to “Prime Time”, “RTE News” and other programmes. The technology is there to allow a switch-off where copyright or cost implications are raised. I want to know, simply and cleanly, why we cannot answer all of the problems raised at this meeting by unencrypting the RTE signal. It is even more irritating because anywhere in Europe one can tune in and see the strength of the RTE signal but one cannot see or hear it, apart from the radio stations. This is because the arrangement RTE has with Sky is to have it encrypted.

I recall ITV had a major court case with Sky because Sky charged more to unencrypt rather than to encrypt. The outcome is that ITV is now free to air. This is a major issue. It would deal with the multiplex issue as well as the question of which station it would be on it. It would cover the legislative intention, it would get rid of all of the planning permission difficulties, cover everywhere in Ireland and deal with the all-island matter. Whatever it would cost, it would cost less than what we are doing.

I see Mr. Hayes is shaking his head. I will take a lot of convincing that building, maintaining and operating 190 sites is cheaper than the couple of million euro, a cost which is getting cheaper, we would pay each year to rent a couple of channels on a satellite. I have examined the cost of this and if people wish to discuss it we can do so. This is a simple issue. People have many reasons for not wanting to get into it but none of them make logical sense.

Mr. Cathal Goan:  The first reason is that we have a legal obligation under the Broadcasting (Amendment) Act 2007 to establish a national DTT—–

Senator Joe O’Toole:    Sure, and I asked these questions of the Minister when the Act was going through the Houses. I did not get a satisfactory answer at that stage either.

Mr. Cathal Goan:  There is another issue which we should not disregard entirely. DTT on 190 sites, and Senator O’Toole will be glad to know the vast majority of them have planning permission, is a national sovereign platform. Whatever else it is, a digital satellite platform is not a sovereign platform. One would have to share by agreement with others in terms of electronic programme guides.

Senator O’Toole is right that many broadcasters across Europe are unencrypted. RTEs broadcast schedules are approximately 45% home produced and 55% acquired programming. Senator O’Toole may dismiss the copyright issue and state we should leave the screens blank. Frankly, it would untenable for us to have a blank screen for 50% of our afternoon children’s programmes, and a blank screen for all our sporting activity because we only have rights for the sports programmes we have for this territory.

Of course it would be good to have RTE programming available internationally. We intend to address this separately, through the other part of the 2007 legislation, which requires RTE to set up a television broadcast service for communities living outside the island of Ireland.

Senator Joe O’Toole:    Why can we not provide this service now? The question of a sovereign channel is easily dealt with. There are other satellites, including Eutelsat and satellites owned by the European community. I am not interested in paying money to Mr. Murdoch or his like. I agree with Mr. Goan on the sovereign ownership issue but it is not an insurmountable difficulty. How can places such as Malta and Cyprus deal with it? I do not understand.

Mr. Cathal Goan:  I do not know how Malta does it because I have not asked the Maltese broadcaster. I am sure the programming they broadcast is only the programming over which they have rights. As I stated, the screen may be blank more often than it is full.

On the issue of why we cannot do this already, we are actively pursuing the establishment of a service for the Irish abroad. I am not committing to a date but we are in active talks with operators of satellite services so a free unencrypted version of RTE, together with programming from TG4, will be available to the United Kingdom.

Senator Joe O’Toole:    Could not every one of Mr. Goan’s difficulties be dealt with by RTE doing what Sky does? In other words, allowing everybody within the jurisdiction to watch a satellite-transmitted programme from RTE free to air but with a card.

Mr. Cathal Goan:  It might deal with some of them but again, the legislation is for digital terrestrial television based on a number of sites which have been internationally co-ordinated so we can have a terrestrial television solution in the future. This is what we are legally obliged to do and this is what we will do.

Senator Joe O’Toole:    I thank Mr. Goan.

Mr. Ed Mulhall:  Another point is that this solution requires everyone to have a satellite dish. A major challenge with digital terrestrial is that we want to have a universally available free to air service. This is one of the basic principles of public broadcasting. The real challenge for us is that because of the switch over and the technological change, we face an uphill battle to close the gap on the competition from a strongly embedded satellite system and a long-lasting culture of cable services in the main cities.

Mr. Conor Hayes alluded to the policy challenge in terms of ensuring that if digital terrestrial is the model, it happens in a viable way and all parts of the platform happen at the same time so the consumer is not faced with multiple choices for the basic services or unable to access the complete range of services from the start.

Mr. Conor Hayes:  The primary television reception mechanism in Malta is DTT, not satellite. In 2002 we examined the satellite option. The Senator is making a common sense point, in that satellites are already there and can achieve widespread coverage, so why not make use of them? We examined that option but it is much more expensive than one would think, there is not much space available and there are significant costs involved in the encryption technology one must use. For us to broadcast on a continuous basis would be prohibitively expensive. We broadcast “Desperate Housewives” last night but we could not make that free-to-air because we only buy the rights for that for the Republic of Ireland, for 4 million people.

Deputy Liz McManus:    Now, that is a serious matter.

Mr. Conor Hayes:  Absolutely. There are 65 million people in the United Kingdom. What we would find, ultimately, is that we would not be able to purchase rights for Ireland.

Senator Joe O’Toole:    I accept that point.

Mr. Conor Hayes:  It undermines the viability of the overall project. It pushes in a direction we cannot go. The Department and the Minister have decided that DTT is the model and that has been enshrined in legislation. We are working on the basis of trying to put —–

Senator Joe O’Toole:    RTE could restrict the satellite reception to people living in the jurisdiction. That is not difficult.

Mr. Conor Hayes:  Yes, but we would have still have to use encryption technology and we would have all of the same problems. People would have to have satellite boxes and so forth. As for the issue of planning permission, I hope we will not have planning permission problems, but one must bear in mind that we have already got —–

Senator Joe O’Toole:    Masts.