Funferal

BCI launch consultation on news quota

The BCI has launched a consulation process on the news and current affairs quota on Irish radio. The full document (in Word format) can be downloaded from their site – the deadline for comments is 1st July.
Some background and then some comments. Under Irish legislation all independent (non-State-operated) radio stations must, unless granted an exemption by the regulatory authority (the BCI):

• Devote 20% of air-time to news and current affairs
• If operating for more than 12 hours per day devote at least 2 hours to current affairs between 7am and 7pm.

This is designed to ensure a minimal amount of public service in the programming of these outlets. A number of issues arise.

First, a quota based on percentage of time, while easy to quantify, is a necessarily rough tool. When I was station manager at Flirt FM we ran into problems in meeting our quotas – in our contract we were also committed to devoting 40% of total on-air time to speech. At one point we extended our schedule to something around 12 hours per day. When monitored we were found to be below our 40% mark and had to revert to our old schedule with around 7 hours per day. Our percentage talk went up, and we were told this was a success, but our total talk-time had decreased – much of the increase in percentage was because we had focused our cutbacks on music programmes. So under the metric used, less total output, and less total talk was seen as a success because we had improved in percentage terms.
Second, a minor point of process, again from my Flirt FM experiences. Most of our talk programming was concentrated at the weekend – I co-anchored a discussion programme with some friends that ran to two or three hours – which would in itself provide 5% talk (and news/c.a.) for a forty-hour weekly schedule. However, monitoring took place by way of random post-hoc requests for tape-logs from specific days, usually weekdays. So an inherent inaccuracy arose in the monitoring process.
Third, one might wonder whether the BCI do actually grant any exemptions. Why, yes, they do – but only to a certain extent. In recent years (since 2000) they have started to grant exemptions for the 1am-7am period – that is, broadcasting during those hours need not be included in the calculation of the 20% requirement. Exemptions have been granted to 19 stations, all of them commercial operations.
Fourth, one might wonder what exactly is considered by the BCI to constitute news and current affairs. Well wonder no longer dear readers:

While not an exhaustive list, news and current affairs content includes: news bulletins, news programmes, sports programmes, sports bulletins, community notices, weather reports, traffic and travel reports, phone-in programmes, paper reviews, business news, agriculture news, entertainment news and obituaries.

Yeah, obituaries – I think it’s the obits that most flummox visitors and occasional listeners to Irish local radio.
Fifth, the BCI suggest that the commitment to the AMARC Community Radio Charter for Europe that community radio stations must make may bar community services from being able to apply for derogations. The precise argument is here:

a community radio station, insofar as it operates within the Community Radio Policy and has committed to the provision of a broad range of programming, may be ineligible to apply for a derogation, as it may be inconsistent with its programme policy statement.

The thing is, this isn’t quite what the charter commits one to. The closest language I can find in it is:

Community radio stations…. 6. seek to honestly inform their listeners on the basis of information drawn from a diversity of sources and provide a right of reply to any person or organisation subject to serious misrepresentation;

though several other sections, in referring to the free flow of information and opinions would suggest a general commitment to news and current affairs (though not necessarily – if one was, for instance, a community of interest station specialising in arts or some aspect of culture). Depending on how one reads this section the BCI may be suggesting that only a total derogation may be impossible for a community station, and I would hope that student stations in particular would be eligible for the overnight derogation, as it would facilitate the growth of those stations.
Interestingly, perhaps, I had considered including a request for a derogation of the type currently being allowed, when applying for Flirt FM’s license renewal in 1998. The idea was either absent, or significantly watered down, in our final application, and I was talking about our commitment to talk programming rather than our current affairs requirements, but the idea was similar – that it should be possible to add late night and overnight programmes to a student station without having adverse affects for the daytime/evening programming.
In this consultation document the BCI are looking for comments on whether they should relax the regulations on place. Some thoughts come to mind – and I welcome the input of others. Since news is generally more expensive than music programming, perhaps broadcasters seeking to operator music-based commercial services might provide a subvention to local news services on which they are relying to demonstrate existing ‘diversity of services.’ Any other thoughts are welcome – I hope to make a submission on behalf of Scagaire and welcome relevant ideas.