I was particularly glad to note from the report of the Commission on Television set up by the Minister that clearly, if they had their way, they would have recommended that a public authority should have been established as the ideal method by which the television service for this country would be supplied. It was only because of their interpretation of their terms of reference that they came down, in a very qualified way, on the question of allowing a joint authority on which both State and advertising interests would be represented.
It is with this question of the degree of control which the advertising interests have in the Television Authority's activities that I am particularly concerned. The difficulties of setting up this television service are very great. There is no doubt about that. One of the things that cannot be over-emphasised, however, is that while the Television Commission interpreted their terms of reference that the service should not impose any financial burden on the State, in fact, this proposal here does impose the ultimate financial burden on the State, because, as the Commission pointed out, the cost of running this service will be passed on to the consumer and, in fact, will be paid by the people. It is merely a question of the interpretation of the word "State". One way or another, the consumer will pay for this service.
They pointed out on page 25 of their First Report, paragraph 47:
This point that the Irish purchasing public will bear the cost of the advertising programmes is apt to be overlooked, but advertisers on Irish television will pass on their costs to the consumer.
I do not think that is particularly desirable. The cost of a television set is about £70 or £80. I think the total ultimately hoped for is in the region of 300,000 which means there is a considerable percentage of the public who will pay, by having to use the essential commodities which will be advertised on this television service. They will have to pay additional costs for the articles they use in order to maintain the pool of funds to provide for the advertisements carried on television.
There will be people who cannot afford a television set and who will be unable to enjoy the television service. They will be the lowest economic and financial group in our community. They will have to pay because, as the Commission say, advertising costs will be passed on to the consumer. They are the people who are using anything from matches and cigarettes to tea, cocoa, sausages or any kind of food or commodity to be used or consumed which will be advertised on the television service.
That cost will be indirectly borne by people who will not have enough money to buy a television set or to enjoy it. It seems to me that the consumer and the State will pay for this service, even though the Minister appears to believe that by bringing in the revenue from advertising, he will relieve the State, or the consumer, or the citizen of the cost of this service. That is a complete illusion and the position is not sufficiently understood by the consumer.
I understand that the total expenditure on advertising in this country in the form of radio, cinema, newspaper and poster advertising is about £7,000,000 annually. That £7,000,000 is an added tax or additional cost on each article of consumption put forward by the advertiser. Advertising is one of the absurd taxations which are unavoidably associated with the private enterprise economic system which is costing us so much. I believe that it should be borne in mind that the advertisers have not got any bottomless purse in which to find the money to pay for the television service and that they will get the money from the consumer in the ordinary way.
I believe that the most equitable way to get money for a public service of this kind is to get it through taxation. Through the activities of the Revenue Commissioners, we can ensure that the burden of taxation will be borne by those most competent to bear it. This action of the Minister's is merely a device for removing that legitimate taxation from people who can readily bear it and placing it on the shoulders of the consumers and the old age pensioners and the under-privileged groups in our society who can never see television. In that way the Minister will be able to protect the wealthy persons, the taxpayer and the surtax payer, who should be paying more tax than they are paying at the moment.
The implications of this service are vast and very widespread. This is probably one of the most important Bills introduced in recent years. It has three potentials: the educational, the entertainment and the advertising potentials. One of the by-products of advertising on television must be its serious impact on the cinema industry. Many of the cinemas will have to close down and rural Ireland and the people in rural Ireland will lose one of the few amentities left. The provincial Press has been hit in Great Britain and it will very likely be affected to a considerable extent in this country. It will mean that those who can afford to pay £70 or £80 for a television set will do so but they will not pay the 2d. or 3d. per week for their provincial papers.
The most important question of all is that of the control of the service. The power of television needs no emphasis at all from me. According to the Commission, which considered the matter, it will become more and more influential as the years go on. When they were considering it, there were only 20,000 sets in the country and now, according to the Minister's statement, there are 40,000 and there will ultimately be 300,000. The number of viewers using these 300,000 sets will be multiplied enormously so that the supreme control of the programmes going out will be of considerable importance.
I do not consider that we have that control in this Bill. As it is at present, with regard to Radio Eireann, we have here in Leinster House some measure of control. I have heard Deputies asking questions about the operation of Radio Eireann. They may not have got very satisfactory answers but they give the impression that they have the right to ask questions about the policy of Radio Eireann, discrimination, or the lack of reporting or incorrect reporting. I want to know whether the Minister intends that we should be given some direct control of this proposed public corporation. I do not see any such control provided for in the Bill.
I know well the difficulty of controlling State enterprises, the difficulty of trying to relate day-to-day activities to the procedure of Dáil Questions and the difficulty of controlling the day-to-day management of such a wide enterprise as this will ultimately become. This is a matter of the most serious importance because of the educational influence of television and the wide opportunities there are for its misuse. If this company to be established here is allowed to get into the hands of the advertising interests, all our experience tells us that the net result will be seriously deleterious to the best interests of such a service.
At the present moment there are many critics of Radio Eireann. I do not listen to it very much but I listen to it more often than I listen to the sponsored programmes from that station. It is quite clear from listening to Radio Eireann that the quality of programme presented, bad and all as it is, is infinitely better than that presented on the sponsored programmes which is practically 100 per cent. canned music, jazz music or bop music, practically continously, without any attempt at anything creative, or constructive, or informative or educational. That is something which we have, within our own knowledge, here in Ireland. One of the sad truths about our society is that one of our favourite stations, outside Radio Éireann, is Radio Luxembourg, which is unparalleled in any society for unadulterated rubbish. Their sponsored programmes are under the control of advertisers and private enterprise products, the standard being the lowest common denominator.
The awful danger of depending on advertising interests is recognised again and again in this Report. Nobody can call the Government, in the present phase of their development, whatever about their past, a socialist Government, or call them in any way advanced or radical in their outlook, but they had to admit they could not entrust this service, even though, apparently, it would not cost them a penny, entirely to advertising bodies. Because of that, they decided to have a mixed type of body, part State and part advertiser.
My contention is that sufficient control has not yet been written into the Bill in order to make certain that the advertising interests will not, in the end, overrun the interests represented in the Commission set up by the Government, and eventually leave us with a sort of sponsored, or Radio Luxembourg, type of television service in Ireland. It is all very well to say that one can switch the knob and go over to the B.B.C. That is true for most of us on the eastern side of the country but I am afraid that with the exception of the odd Sunday afternoon and evening, with the theatre in the evening, and the football matches in the afternoon, most people will turn over to the B.B.C. That is true of the eastern seaboard.
It is recognised in the Commission's Report that the B.B.C. picture has fringe reception. It is defective in many ways and uncertain in some ways. The new television service, with its five transmitters, can give a first-class picture, and first-class reception, to the whole of Ireland but there is a fair proportion of the country which is not covered by the B.B.C. and never can be. In fact, if we take the figure of 40,000, and the total potential of 300,000 if we have a service of our own, it would appear that a very considerable number of people will find themselves limited to this service which we are now about to establish. Because of that, we have not got the get-out which they have in Britain: "If you do not like I.T.V., switch to the B.B.C."
The I.T.V. have not reached the low level established by the American advertising interests in the disgraceful disclosures during recent months with regard to the racketeering that went on in the American advertising world, particularly in relation to the television service. If there was an exclusively independent television service in Great Britain with an advertising background, the public would be in great difficulty, because they would not have the opportunity of turning across to the B.B.C. which, in fact, runs a very superior service to the I.T.V., taken all round, and, indeed, a more successful one. Here, we shall not have that alternative in many cases, so there will be no alternative to the service we shall provide from our five transmitters.
That could be a good thing in so far as it is possible to provide a service of a very high standard, but the danger I see is that we will be at the mercy of the advertisers, and that the advertisers will do as they have done in other countries where they have absolute control—reduce the standard to the lowest possible level in order to make the maximum amount of profit—and the programmes will suffer as a result. The public will have no alternative but to suffer in silence.
The reason I am so disturbed about that question stems from Section 3 which provides that:
A member of the Authority who has—
(a) any interest in any company or concern with which the Authority proposes to make any contract, or
(b) any interest in any contract which the Authority proposes to make,
shall disclose to the Authority the fact of the interest and the nature therefore, and shall taken no part in any deliberation or decision of the Authority relating to the contract, and the disclosure shall be recorded in the minutes of the Authority.
It is obviously completely farcical to suggest that that clause can protect us from undue pressure from any member of the Authority who happens to be coincidentally a member of one or more advertising contractors. The idea that by standing up and going outside the door when his terms of Contract are disclosed, he would carry no weight with the members of the Authority, is so absurd, on its face, that it is quite remarkable that the Minister should have had the temerity to ask us seriously to entertain it. It is quite clear that the person with advertising interests will have definite problems and there is at least one person, already closely associated in the minds of the people with this whole concern, who has such interests.
It is quite wrong for the Minister to appear to defer to the many fears expressed in the Report of the Commission about the dangers in ultimate control by the advertisers of the Television Authority with regard to the type of programme which they will produce. This section contains no safeguard whatsoever to protect us from finding ourselves running a service for one or two advertising interests who find themselves on the board of this Television Authority.
We have that position together with the fact that we are not in a position here to control the activities of these people from time to time. I think we must have some control. If this section is being retained, we must have control. If there are abuses—and there can be functions about which the Minister might not be aware; that is one of the functions of this Assembly that because there are so many of us, it is possible for some of us to know of abuses of which the Minister may be genuinely unaware—I do not think it is sufficient that the Minister should be mentioned in the Bill as being in control. I do not think that is sufficient control, unless we get an undertaking from the Minister that he will be amenable to some form of Parliamentary control, preferably, of course, in the form of Parliamentary questions. There is a precedent already established for Radio Éireann. To the limited extent that it is there, it is a valuable curb on undue use or abuse of the very great powers which this Authority is to be given by this House.
I would ask the Minister to reconsider that section and to alter it so that it will be impossible for anybody associated with advertising contractors, at present or to be, to be at one and the same time members of this governing Authority for the television service. It is only in that way that he can be absolutely certain, or, at least, as nearly certain as is humanly possible, that he can protect the interests of the public on this Authority because, having read the Commission's Report, I am sure the Minister must be impressed by the repeated insistence that the advertising interests could be particularly damaging and particularly dangerous and that we must protect ourselves against them in every possible way.
It is significant that this Commission, composed of eminently respectable people, no doubt, who certainly could not be considered to be hostile in any was to private enterprise or to advertising interests, keep repeating throughout this grave fear which they have of the danger of the advertising interests taking control and reducing the quality and the standard of the programmes. Indeed, they end up by recommending that, if possible, it would be preferable that after a time this service should be run by a public board in the ordinary way, if there was the slightest doubt at all about the influence of the advertising interests on the quality of the programmes.
At paragraph 58, they mention this also, when they say:
A private organisation, however anxious its individual members may be to provide worthwhile programmes, will, on account of these forces, be primarily interested in reaching the largest possible audience most of the time, and with programmes intended primarily for mass entertainment. It will therefore be faced with a conflict of interests and motives, namely, whether to try and serve the public interest by treating television as much more than just another medium of mass entertainment, or to endeavour to please its advertisers by attracting maximum audiences and at the same time make greater profits for itself.
It goes on:
If the control is not effective, commercial pressure will probably prevail to the detriment of the programme material.
Anybody with the slightest experience or knowledge of this problem will agree with those findings. It is impossible to believe that, if accepted, under section (a) here the Minister will protect the community from the advertising interests and will ensure the level of broadcasting service to which we have a right.
I would put this point to the Minister in regard to the decision to accept the 405 line rather than the 625 Continental line. At this period, when we are at the beginning of the establishment of a service, with only 40,000 receivers in the country at the moment, would the Minister not consider, in view of the developments which are taking place in television, in view of the possibility and, in fact, the likelihood mentioned in some parts of the Report, that the B.B.C. may decide to go over to the 625 line—they are in channels 3 and 4—and the fact that through the 625 line we would be more in contact with Continental viewing, that it would be desirable at this stage to take what would be an unpopular decision? I am not suggesting that it would not be; it would be. As a television set owner I would hate to have to change to the 625 line. At the same time, the Minister will very likely be forced to take a decision affecting anything from 100,000 to 300,000 television set owners in the likely development of the 625 line superseding the present 405 line. Would it not be wiser for the Minister to take the decision now, unpopular though it might be, rather than wait until a time when people have acquired these costly sets and when, instead of there being a mere 40,000, there would be 150,000 or 200,000 or more, causing very much greater inconvenience to the public?
There is no doubt that from the point of view of the manufacturers it is not a bad idea to get people to buy a set which after a year or two will be useless and, taking the public interest into consideration, it is a serious decision which should be pondered by the Minister and with a certain amount of courage. There is a case for going straight on to the 605 line. There is a suggestion that the British are going to do that in channels 3 and 4.
The other interesting thing to me in this retention of the 405 line by the B.B.C. is that I understand the British is the only service to use this line which, of course, gives lower quality reception than any of the higher line types of receivers, and that we are going to have our programmes censored by the B.B.C. For people who keep talkings as readily as we do about the necessity for establishing our own independent line, about our traditions and all the rest of it, that seems to me to be a rather retrograde decision to take. However, I am not interested in that side of the question. I do not accept that introverted, chauvinist narrow-mindedness. I am interested only in the point that the greater the scope we have for receiving pictures from other Authorities, the better I should like it. By restricting ourselves to the 405 line, we happen to be restricting ourselves to taking the continental view and we happen to be restricting ourselves to a rather small output of programmes and material.
Talking about the quality of the Irishness of the programmes there seems to be a tremendous amount of schizophrenia on the part of the Commission in their recommendations because at one place they point out that for the reason that we cannot afford it—the same old reason—we cannot afford anything else from health services and an educational service to T.B. eradication—that we cannot afford to provide our own service, they say the service in the early stages will be necessarily of American or British origin and recorded programmes. Any of the American programmes I have seen are of an unbelievably low standard. The type of British programme varies very much and the quality of the B.B.C. is at times remarkably high; I have no experience of the other service but it is envisaged that our service will in the initial stage be composed of 75 per cent. of taped programmes leaving a very small amount of live television broadcasting.
Various dangers can arise here. The Commission have pointed out that television is habit-forming, that once people get into the habit of looking at a particular service or programme it is difficult to break them off that habit. It is very likely that in the initial stages, because of the novelty and the general interest of seeing what success is achieved, a number of people will look at our own service. However, if it is decided to run the service largely on British and American-type taped or recorded programmes, a certain habit of viewing will be formed by the Irish viewer and it will then be difficult to curb that habit. In these circumstances I do not see how a national outlook, the development of which is recommended in the Commission's Report, can be developed through this Authority—as the Minister appears to think it can— after they have established in the Irish people a habit of looking at these British or American canned programmes to a total of 75 per cent. of the whole service.
It would be much wiser for the Minister to concentrate on putting out a much shorter programme of the type be ultimately wants with the national hallmark on it rather than give the people, as the Minister proposes here, 75 per cent. of canned programmes. There is a great danger that when the time comes to introduce the slant of a native kind which he wants, the public will not be prepared to take it. When I say "public" I mean particularly the advertising interests who will not sponsor any programme which will not sell the maximum amount of the product in which they are interested.
The protection of the Irish language is mentioned here. Perhaps the Minister would be able to tell us whether the Chairman or any or all of the members of the Authority, must have a competent knowledge of Irish. I was given to understand that I could not ask a Parliamentary Question because this Bill was before the House. Therefore, I hope the Minister will be able to tell us whether a competent knowledge of Irish will be demanded from the Chairman or the members of the Authority. If we follow the precedent set in regard to the other boards and statutory authorities set up, it will be clear none of them will have any knowledge of Irish. Consequently I doubt if they will be in a sound position to judge the quality of the Irish programmes which will be sent out.
I understand that in sound broadcasting it is possible for the advertisers who use the Irish language in their advertisements to get better terms and conditions for their advertisements. Occasionally, when waiting for the news, I hear these programmes, but I rarely hear one of them broadcasting in Irish. Therefore, I doubt if this pious reference here to the need in relation to the language revival movement, to which there is reference in the Commission's Report and about which the Minister expressed some sentiments, will cut any ice with the advertising interests.
This is completely new ground. It is a completely new experience in which every country has had to feel its way. I can appreciate many of the Minister's difficulties but this happens to be a particularly important development. It is possible that many people will not bother to look at the service and that consequently it will not have as big an impact as it could but this legislation is, as is the legislation of most other countries, of an experimental kind. Because of that I wonder whether the Minister has given consideration to the point made in the Commission's Report that this legislation should lapse at a particular time and that it be submitted for reconsideration by the Oireachtas. That is a very sensible recommendation and I wonder why the Minister has not included it in the Bill.
In the provisions of this measure the Minister may have devised the best possible system whereby one could run a television service. Nobody knows that for certain. Our circumstances are particularly difficult. We are going in, as we have gone into most things, very much later than anybody else. We are facing the competition of the established fringe reception from the B.B.C. and U.T.V. While we have those disadvantages we have the advantage that a considerable number of our people cannot get any service and will therefore be completely new to television. However, on the credit side we have the benefit of the experience of other countries. We have the shocking reports from the United States of complete control by the advertising interests. We have the fact that many people believe that the standard and the quality of the similar service provided in Britain, even with the competition of the B.B.C. to keep it up to the mark, are nothing like as high as the B.B.C. standards.
Because television is experimental, because it is completely untried, because it is a completely new and powerful medium with tremendous possibilities, I suggest to the Minister that he should accept the proposal to allow this legislation to lapse for a time, a fixed number of years, five or seven years, whatever period he thinks desirable, and that the question be resubmitted to the Dáil. If his provisions here prove themselves to be satisfactory and to be successful then, of course, the Dáil will accept them as they find them. It will be possible for him and the rest of us to suggest amendments in the light of our experience. That is a reasonably intelligent suggestion and it is one the Minister should follow.
Another suggestion that should be written into legislation is that programme advertising time should not take up more than six minutes in the hour or a maximum of ten minutes in the hour. We should be given some say as to where advertising appears in the programme. Some of these advertising people are such savages that they would be prepared to put their advertising into the mouth of an Othello or a Hamlet, into the middle of a piano concerto or wherever they think they could sell their stuff. We ought to protect ourselves against the moronic standards of most of the advertising we know—the press advertising, the poster advertising and the cinema advertising. The Minister should lay down—it is mentioned in the Commission's Report—the type of intervention the advertising interests will be permitted to make, its length and type of programme they will be permitted to sponsor.
The Minister is handing over much too much control to this new body, in view of the untried nature of the enterprise. I should not be as concerned about it if it were completely amenable to this House, if we were permitted to ask questions about it and to criticise it. I am not interested in the annual Estimate of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, or of whatever Department may be responsible in this case. This is a problem that must be taken up immediately it arises. It is not enough to tell us we shall be able to discuss the matter on the annual Estimate.
The Minister should write into legislation the minimal requirements of the House on the question of the intervention of advertising interests. Whether it be newspaper advertising, the horrible hoardings which defile the countryside, the dishonesty of their activities in the American stations or the general rubbish that comes from Radio Luxembourg and sponsored programmes, the fact that advertising contractors might possibly be represented on this body is a very serious menace to the undertaking and enterprise.
Television could be an invaluable asset to the nation, particularly from the point of view of the rural areas which are so isolated and from which people have been fleeing for so long. Tremendous advantages could flow from such a service to the people in rural Ireland. Some real and positive attempt could be made through this service to help them. One of the greatest reasons they feel they have to get out is the lack of entertainment. This body, properly operated, could provide an answer to the need for entertainment, instruction and education.
I welcome the suggestion, and I think it is a good thing that we should now try to establish this service. I deprecate the fact that I believe that, through Section 8, it will be possible for the advertising interests to inflict their own form of cretinised advertising methods on the unfortunate public and that they will leave us with nothing but the low standard of service they have provided in other countries where they have had the opportunity to do so. I would ask the Minister to reconsider Section 8 and to make it mandatory on those who have any financial association with an advertising contractor to declare any such interest and thereby disqualify them from sitting on the Authority.
