I’ve been listening to some of the station’s documentaries recently – now that the Documentary on One is consistently available online – and reminded of some of the great colour pieces regularly produced, such as a touching portrait of the situation on Arranmore in light of changes in fishing regulations. This content doesn’t attract the attention – or audience – of the big name stars, but is at the center of the public service remit of the station.

In more sombre news, the station is launching a redundancy plan, with plans to lay off at least 70 staff. That’s not an incredible surprise, in light of a recent opinion piece by DG Noel Curran in which he blamed a projected budget shortfall of €17m for this year (after remedial action to cut it from a possible €34m) on a range of factors, including (State) budget decisions, unexpected expenses associated with the two major recent State visits (by Queen Elizabeth II and President Obama), and a number of other unspecified items. The redundancy will actually increase the shortfall in the near term, by an estimated €10m, but result in savings of €5m a year thereafter. The original €34m projected overrun for this year was split between €20m in annual costs (the Budget issues and “other recent cost impositions on the public side”) and €14m in once-off expenses, so after the €17 in savings made this year (if those are sustainable on an ongoing basis, rather than once-off efforts such as maintenance deferral), the station’s finances should be stable in the medium term – provided there are no other State visits, funerals, or other unexpected events! In other words, the numbers add up, but the station’s still looking rather vulnerable to outside pressures.

If we look beyond the short-term budgetary pressures, though, what might we ask of a world class public service broadcaster, as it looks to the future. I’ve got three items on my list:

1. The broadcaster recently announced it would make its TV news available for free to members of the National Newspapers of Ireland (NNI). This is part of a strategy to defuse pressure from the major newspaper groups, who claim that RTÉ is (and should not be) subsidizing its online operations from license fee (public service fund) revenue. A clever move (though it will be seen whether these commercial operations are able to both take the free service and continue to push for restrictions on RTÉ’s operations). Inspired by Simon McGarr’s attempt to be covered under the offer I would suggest that much RTÉ content should be made available for use, in non-commercial contexts, by outside users – and that in particular content produced with public funds should be made available to non-profit and non-commercial users on at least as favorable terms as they are made available to commercial users, such as the members of the NNI.
2. RTÉ should build new platforms and tools to provide improved services to the diaspora, drawing on the potential of digital (and internet) distribution technologies, including the ‘new’ emigrants of the post-Tiger age.
3. There’s a lot of attention paid to the ‘top 10′ presenters, focusing in part on their high pay (sometimes in contrast to their perceived, or actual, workload, though sometimes noting the tendency to find a talented person and place them in every possible part of the TV and radio schedule, in part on the varied quality of their output (with subjective readings of this element lending itself to a multitude of criticisms and critiques). There’s a more significant, and long-standing, issue – one that dates from the days of Sit Down and Be Counted – and which takes on a new significance and shape given the participatory potential of digital tools. RTÉ should take it upon itself to investigate how to facilitate a more multi-vocal, inclusive, and decentralized rendering of our national conversations. Public service broadcasting not just from D4, but threading more directions through and around our country. Documentaries such as that from Arranmore show what can be – and is – done, but there’s potential for far more ambitious undertakings here.

There are fears of (more) deaths, particularly of pensioners and the homeless, as Ireland undergoes below-freezing conditions. (That’s not a metaphor for the economy!) Local authorities are struggling to keep roads gritted, with limited budgets available for this purpose (and effect still being felt from repair costs after last year’s record freeze):

Concerns have been expressed about the fate of homeless people in the sub-zero conditions. The Homeless Agency said rough sleeping was being strictly monitoring on a daily basis to ensure there was sufficient bed capacity in emergency homeless accommodation.

At the same time, the manager of Ireland’s soccer team has agreed to take a 5% cut in pay, reflecting the stresses faced by the FAI:

Giovanni Trapattoni said yesterday he had agreed to take the cut, believed to be in the region of €100,000 per annum, after speaking with FAI general secretary John Delaney in Milan last month. … When the reduction is applied to the pay of Tardelli and Fausto Rossi as well as Irish members of the coaching and scouting staff like Mick Martin and Don Givens, the saving should amount to something in the region of €160,000. It is estimated a third of that saving would accrue to businessman Denis O’Brien, who currently pays half of the management team’s major salaries

Not coincidentally, “The Irish Sports Council has contributed €17 million to the FAI since 2004″ – that’s about €3m a year. The ISC is the state body charged with distributing funds to individual governing bodies in sport. The funds provided were earmarked for projects on increasing participation in soccer, and we’re promised that the funds were matched 2:1 by the FAI, but really these things are a matter of shuffling around funds – O’Brien might not have provided his funding for programs aimed at serving previously under-reached groups, but even without that €1.6m, it’s interesting to think about what quality of coaching you could get for €200,000 a year. Would it really be so deficient that it’s worth it for the FAI to continue to increase its €50 debt?

At first – indeed, second – glance, the premise of the campaign seems flawed. Surely the energy and imagination of the many individuals who had tried to get Branson’s attention – the long distance swimmer was only the last of a long line – could better be spent in raising small sums from a larger number of individuals, than on this long shot. And digging deeper, it seems that those at the station recognize this point:

But our decision to ask a billionaire for financial support shouldn’t be the concern. What’s really concerning is this: a station commanding a listenership of nearly a quarter of a million can’t rely on the community to put their money where their preset is.

The story at the station is not so much a parable as a series of parables. The station spent AUS$0.5m on its legal struggle to get on air. The recession has hit their normal fundraising hard – youth employment has been particularly hard hit. The station now faces a AUS$1m hole in its finances. The station has been, in any event, getting limited direct financial support from listeners: “FBi has 219,000 people tuning in every week. 2% of these are financial supporters.” There’s a billionaire, with his own private island, based inside the station’s coverage area.

Still, seeking large donations of this nature is a rather long bet, and speaks to the need for more sustainable models of support. Community radio can be – and is, in many communities – an important tool for community building, something that’s perhaps particularly important in economically troubled times such as these. But because of the indirect, and not always obvious, linkages between community radio and such development, it’s difficult to solicit support – from government or individuals, let alone corporate donors – at times such as these, when budgets are stretched and there’s an increased demand for public support, and a need for quick-acting economic boosts.

This is why it’s important for community stations to develop mixed-funding models, including support from government agencies, tariffs on commercial broadcasting revenues, and direct listener donations. Some stations may also be able to develop side-businesses, such as sound recording and professional services (space rental, training). Each of these will be hit when the economy takes a turn for the worse, but diversification of revenue sources will minimize the risk to the operation as a whole.

In the meantime, best of luck to FBi in their fundraising campaign!

[I should note that I'm using two sets of data here - first the latest live register figures, which records those receiving Jobseekers Benefit and Jobseekers Allowance. As the CSO notes, it doesn't measureunemployment directly as it also includes some part-time and seasonal workers. However, insofar as we might think of these people as underemployed (particularly when we see such a rapid increase in numbers) it suits our purposes. The second set of data, the CSO's 'principal statistics' for Labour Market numbers, are, I believe, drawn from the Quarterly National  Household Survey (QNHS), treated by the CSO as the most reliable ongoing measure of economic activity/classification.]

Using the QNHS the CSO has estimated the ‘Standardised Unemployment Rate (SUR) at 10.4% in January – up from just 5.0% in February 2008, and just 9.4% a month ago.

Now, my first thought was that men make up a greater portion of the workforce, so one would expect them to make up more of those losing employment. But men, in 2007 (the latest figure I could readily find on the CSO site) made up 57.7% of those in employment in that year, so they are obviously over-represented in those losing jobs.

How to measure that over-representation. I figure ‘% chance of losing employment’ is a reasonable measure. Taking those 2007 figures as our baseline for ‘numbers in employment (not precise, but good enough for our purposes), the 164,952 increase in the live register last year represents 8.19% of the total number ‘at work’ in 2007 (2,013,300). Men stood a 10.4% chance of moving from work to the live register, while women stood a 5.66% chance.

That means male workers are 77.38% more likely to have moved to the live register than are female workers.

Maybe the fact that the proportion of women in the workforce has increased significantly over the past decade or two is playing a role here – perhaps older workers were more likely to lose jobs, and men were over-represented in that part of the workforce. Looking at a breakdown of age and sex for the 164,000 people we see that men under 25 made up 14.78% of the 164,000, while women under 25 made up 7.34% (just less than half as much as the men). Of the over 25 population, men made up 56.02% of the 164,000 while women made up 21.85% – about 40% as much. So, that would tend to support the suggestion that it’s jobs held by older workers,who are  disproportionately men, that are being most affected.

But that doesn’t account for everything. In February 2007 the number of women under 25 on the live register was about 67% of the number for men under 25. Now it’s 52% – the number of women under 25 on the live register has doubled in those two years, but the number of men has increased by 168%. In the 25-and-over population, in February 2007 the number of women on the live register was 66.62% of the number of men. Now it’s 47.04%. The number of women on the live register (in this age range) has increased 73.68% in this period, while the number of men has increased by 146%.

So, what’s up – why do men appear to be harder hit by the economic fall-out, if one looks at live register figures? Are women less likely to appear on the register if they become unemployed? Are sectors with greater male involvement being harder hit? What other measures should we look at to examine the impact of the economic decline – poverty rates from the QNHS and elsewhere? The QNHS, when it’s next published in June, may also allow us to break data out by family type. Earnings reports for the public sector and construction are due out by the end of March, with ‘business services’ numbers due in April. That will give us more granularity on certain industries and sectors – though the decline is now so rapid (from 9.6% to 10.4% in one month?!) that the numbers become out of date as they become available to us.

Following on from news that the economy fell into recession in the second quarter of 2008 (with two consecutive quarters of declining GDP), new figures out today (but not yet reported on RTÉ!) put the exchequer deficit for the year to date (the Irish government now operates on a calendar financial year) at €9.4bn, with full year predictions of €11.5bn. Some of that deficit is for capital spending, which is, of course, seen as an investment, and therefore worth borrowing for (on the basis that increased capacity in the future will more than counteract the cost of borrowing the money today). However, much of the – unforeseen – deficit is for current spending, and results both from cost overruns and decreased tax revenues.

There is, of course, a difference between government spending and the broader economy, but in this case the government figures reflect trends in the economy that are quite worrying, as well pointing to the contribution of government policy to our current difficulties. Tax revenue is already €3.6bn behind budget, reflecting declining economic activity (as VAT and stamp duty revenue declines), weaker markets (with falls in capital gains taxes), and substantial job losses. Current spending is €600m above target, despite well-publicized spending freezes, due at least in part to the increase of 80,000 in the live register (=unemployed). The Irish government will breach the EMU deficit limits this year, with, as Joan Burton of Labour notes, “a General Government Deficit of 5.5% of a falling GDP.” Figures would be worse were it not for significant increases in non-tax revenues (which includes dividends from semi-state companies among other things).

A large part of the problem for Ireland has been that Ireland is a small ‘open’ market economy, making us particularly responsive to changes in the global economy. When the dot com bubble burst, the spectacular economic growth of the mid-1990s disappeared. Now that the global economy has entered a period of serious crisis, the Irish economy risks catching pneumonia.

With a 50% rise in the numbers unemployed in the past year – to their highest rates in 10 years – the St Vincent de Paul Society (one of the larger charities providing aid to the poor in Ireland) has seen a 40% increase in calls for help to its offices in Dublin in the past year, and expects to spend €50m on aid this year. Next year, for the first time in a decade, Ireland is expected to have net outbound migration.

The government response so far has been to bring forward announcement of next year’s budget (widely expected to be an austerity budget) and to issue guarantees on savings in Irish-owned banks – itself not a bad way to calm nerves and improve confidence, but not a well-thought out plan, as it immediately fell foul of EU rules, which means the government is going to have to extend guarantees to banks with an Irish presence (though hopefully only on savings held by Irish residents), which will bring the potential exposure to well over the initial estimate of €440bn. By contrast, Irish GDP last year (and remember, it’s dropping) was €190bn.

Anyhow, while simultaneously cursing my luck, trying to think of solutions, eating my lunch, and feeding my news junkie habit, I came across a BBC article on lunch-breaks. Specifically, the declining number of English workers who take them, and the proven benefits associated with taking them. Noteworthy:

In the 1970s the British were the laziest men of Europe. Now they are considered the workaholics of Europe, thanks to an adoption of the American work ethic in the mid-80s, says Professor Cooper. But tellingly, productivity per capita in the UK remains lower than many of its European neighbours.

Now, I’m already familiar with the fact that the US performs well on productivity per capita, but less well on productivity per hour worked, as does Ireland (which is something like 2nd on productivity per worker, but 5th on productivity per hour worked). Essentially, the US and Ireland do particularly well in productivity because of the large number of hours worked per person – linked to fewer holidays and longer work weeks – but not so well, relatively, on productivity per hour. There’s obviously a trade off made between extra hours worked per person (which leads to higher per capita productivity, allowing higher wages/pensions) and increased time away from work (which is, so to speak, good for the soul) – though the decision is often not made at an individual level, but by a mixture of employer dictates, public policy (mandatory paid leave, public holidays, etc.), and social mores.

What’s interesting to see here is the claim that despite erring towards more hours of work per person, the UK hasn’t necessarily reaped the reward of greater productivity. I’m having difficulty locating easily digestible statistics online today – the OECD and Eurostat sites, while comprehensive, aren’t always the easiest to navigate, and I don’t want to spend that much time right now – but I’d love to see some historical trends for several countries, including the UK. Maybe there’s something in the Baker book, which I’ve been relying on as a wonderful compendium and tool ever since we used it in teaching Media, Money, and Power…