Funferal

SRH buys Donegal radio station

It appears that the BCI have approved Scottish Radio Holdings’ takeover of Highland Radio. If this proposal is approved by the Competition Authority and the Minister for Enterprise they will own three stations in Ireland.
Interestingly, this case raises an issue that I drew attention to last December. SRH describe their current holdings as follows:

SRH is already one of the leading independent radio broadcasters in the Republic of Ireland, owning the only independent national radio station in the Republic, Today FM, as well as the market-leading Dublin radio station, FM104. In addition, SRH publishes five weekly local papers in the Republic.

Although the BCI has addressed issues of concentration in its new policy on licensing of commercial radio services and has announced plans for a review of their ownership policy (to take place in June/July) the current policy is based on the number of licenses held. To quote myself,

It’s obvious, first off, that this is quite a crude measure – it doesn’t differentiate between licensees, so the national station is weighted the same as a local station in Dublin, which is weighted the same as, for example, NWR FM in the North West.

Under the current license cap, which is actually stated as percentage of the number of stations, owning up to four stations is unregulated, owning 5-7 requires review and no one can own more than seven stations. Here we have a situation where SRH holds the only national commercial license, one of the two largest commercial stations in Dublin, and is now buying the only (commercial) local station in north Donegal. Surely owning all the commercial radio outlets available in an area should be of concern to the regulators?
Incidentally, the BCI proposal that attention be paid (at least in the initial licensing process, if not in analysing takeovers) to the greater media landscape would allow the SRH newspaper holdings to be considered in their analysis, but since none of them are in Donegal it probably wouldn’t make any difference to this case.