Digital TV on new broadcast body’s agenda
By Catherine O’Mahony
The board of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland meets for the first time tomorrow with the much delayed contract negotiations over Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) among the main items on its agenda.
A proposed levy on broadcasters to help fund the BAI’s activities is not expected to arise.
A BAI spokesman said the efforts to finalise a contract with the OneVision consortium to provide DTT services were ‘‘at a critical stage’’, but he could make no further comment.
OneVision, which includes Eircom and TV3, has been seeking flexibility on the financing of DTT, which is due to take over free-to-air broadcasting here when analogue transmission ends across Europe in 2012. RTE, itself under financial pressure, has asked for a guarantee of €20 million from OneVision to ensure that the commercial partners will stick with DTT if RTE builds the network at a projected cost of more than €100 million.
The meeting will also discuss framing the BAI’s strategy document for the next three years. This is due for publication in September, and a number of internal issues will also be discussed.
The new BAI board was formally appointed on October 1.
Eventually, it will have nine members, but so far, just five members of the board have been confirmed and will attend the meeting. They are chairman Bob Collins and journalists John Waters, Maria Maloney, Paula Downey and Michelle McShortall.
The board members who have been proposed by an Oireachtas committee, but who have not yet been approved by the government, are Larry Bass, managing director and chief executive of Screentime Shinawil, Michael Moriarty, general secretary of the Irish Vocational Educational Authority, Colum Kenny, professor of communications and journalism in DCU, and producer Siobhán Ní Ghadhra.
