Radio and how to improve it
62Where to from here
I wish I had all the answers to the question about what is wrong with radio today but then nobody does. Suffice to say that the system that keeps American radio stations from sounding too similar, is having the opposite effect in places like Ireland. Too many stations in the Emerald Isle have adopted the formatted style of radio and stick regidly to telling their presenters what to say and what to play. The result is that there are no suprises and no room for inovation. The Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) introduced The Sound and Vision Funding Scheme some years ago and this allowed both stations and independent producers to make programmes which broke the enforced barriers and which hetherto had proven too expensive to make but it is about to run out this year .
The problems arose when some stations saw this as a golden goose for grabbing money and making the programmes themselves, even the state broadcaster whose take of the licence fee was reduced to provide the funding, suddenly took an interest in the work of indpendent producers as long as they could achieve S & V funding. A case of jumping on the band wagon to recoup some of their lost revenue.
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I would imagine that Sound & Vision funding has already been allocated to The Broadcasting Commission for this year already and won't be affected by the bail out or do you know different?
No! I live in Western Pennsylvania, US, and don't know much of anything about Ireland. I just read your article and wondered how the economic decline in your country would affect the continuing participation of government in things like the arts. We, in this country, are about to begin in earnest to butt heads over excessive government growth and spending. It will be easy for our representatives to chip away at things similar to your S&V program ... they're already fighting over funding of National Public Radio (NPR)and the National Endowment for the Arts. But when taken in context these are small dollar programs when compared to our Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid and other social welfare programs. However, the most expensive (and most expansive) social welfare programs are the least likely to be cut ... sacred cows that no one has the balls to take an axe to. We also have to do something with the recently enacted “Obama Care” nationalized health-care. No, I was just writing to get an "off shore" perspective and maybe some insight into what to expect as we begin to work our way through what will likely be contentious times. Randy
We Randy,
The as with The US, the arts are an easy target, however, there is a lot of mis truths being bandied around at the momnent all in the name of Selling media space and wrestling political power. Our Government have made mistakes, our population has (largely) been greedy and S & V has been abused in a lot by a lot of quarters but to answer your question Sound and Vision is funded by clawing back a percentage of the licence fee from RTE (State broadcaster) and is not part of the arts funding.
On a separate note: May I suggest you check out www.podcasts.ie
rcbeltz 16 months ago
Will there still be Sound & Vision funding now that the UK (teetering on the economic brink along with the US)has had to "bail out" the Emerald Isle?