I move:—
That a sum not exceeding £136,250 be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending the 31st day of March, 1952, for salaries and other expenses in connection with Wireless Broadcasting (No. 45 of 1926), including Public Concerts.
I have had no part in the preparation of this Estimate and the House will not, therefore, expect me to justify the provision made under the various headings. From the particulars supplied to me by the Department I shall, however, give factual information as to the causes of the variations in the sub-heads from last year, with a brief account of the working of the broadcasting service during the year and a reference to a few other matters to which attention should be drawn.
The net amount that will be required in the Wireless Broadcasting Vote for the year 1951-52 is £204,350. This is a net decrease of £42,830 as compared with the provision in the previous year. The true comparison, however, is between the gross totals for the two years as the fees estimated to be received from advertising programmes are this year being brought to the aid of the Vote as Appropriations-in-Aid. This is merely a change in accounting procedure. Comparison of the gross totals show that there is a net increase in the provision this year of £5,170. The main increase is in Sub-head B from which payments are made for the provision of the daily programmes. Hereunder I give the reasons supplied to me for the variations in the sub-head provisions where an amount of any significance is involved.
Sub-head A: Salaries and Wages.— The increase of £775 is of a casual nature and is due to a slight increase of staff, increments, changes in personnel and such normal matters.
Sub-head B: Cost of Daily Programmes.—There is an increase of £5,920 on this sub-head. Approximately £1,500 of it is intended to make slightly better provision for the payment of fees to playwrights to enable fees above the average to be paid for a small number of radio plays of outstanding merit if they become available. It also covers limited extra provision for variety programmes in Irish and English and to enable a few variety shows to be given in the provinces. The bulk of the remainder of the increase in the sub-head is for performing right fees (£1,600), which increase automatically as the number of licences goes up, and for payment of advertising agents who introduce sponsored programmes. A small extra sum of £250 has been provided to improve the news service from the provinces.
Sub-head C: Musical Instruments and Music.—The increase of £430 in this sub-head is an extra provision for musical instruments mainly to cater for additional studios which are being provided.
Sub-heads E and F: Heat, Light and Power and Plant and Equipment.—A footnote to these sub-heads explains that a sum of £1,700 provided last year, and rescheduled, for the installation of heating, lighting and ventilation equipment in new studios in the General Post Office has been transferred from sub-head E to sub-head F, to which it is more appropriate. The other changes in these sub-heads are of an incidental nature.
Sub-head G: International Conferences, etc.—The provision in this sub-head has had to be increased by £525 due chiefly to a higher subscription payable to the new European Broadcasting Union. The expenses of the former International Broadcasting Union were lower on the individual countries as there was a greater number of members. None of the Eastern European countries is a member of the European Broadcasting Union.
The receipts from wireless licence fees in the year ended 31st March, 1951, were £193,395, that is, nearly £11,000 higher than the Estimate at the beginning of the financial year. The revenue from sponsored programmes was £45,325 which is almost exactly the amount estimated. The revenue from wireless licence fees in the coming year is estimated at £209,000 and from sponsored programmes £48,000. The total estimated revenue of £257,000 is £4,650 more than the estimated gross expenditure of £252,350 from the Broadcasting Vote. As against this, however, an additional sum of about £62,000 is estimated to be expended from other Votes on work done for Broadcasting; the particulars are shown at the foot of the first page of the Broadcasting Estimate. The number of wireless licences at the end of March, 1951, was approximately 310,000 as against approximately 288,600 on the corresponding date in 1950. It is hoped to maintain this rate of increase in the coming year and the estimated revenue has been framed, accordingly. The saturation point for licences is now being reached gradually and it is not expected that the present rate of increase in licences will be maintained for many more years.
This completes the information about the financial provision in the Vote and the estimated revenue position and I shall now make a short reference to the programme operations. It is, as I said, based on what has been supplied to me by the Department. The outstanding feature of the programmes during the past year was the many broadcasts in connection with the Holy Year. These took the form of broadcasts and series of broadcasts from our own studios, broadcasts direct from Rome, and material recorded in Rome by the staff for a series of programmes at home. A member of the News Staff travelled to Rome with the National Pilgrimage and broadcast direct from the Holy City first-hand accounts of each day's events in the nightly news bulletins, and the head of the General Features department, accompanied by one of the mobile recording units, travelled to Rome in the autumn and collected recorded material for building into a series of descriptive programmes.
In the regular programmes there was a development of considerable interest to the Irish language revival. What was begun by way of an experiment in the line of variety programmes in Irish attracted such public interest and enthusiasm that the seating accommodation of the Phoenix Hall, from which the programmes were broadcast, was insufficient to meet the applications for admission, and the series had to be extended.
The policy of co-operating with efforts to organise public symphony concerts in various centres throughout the country has been pursued with increasing success. Concerts have now been given in Cork, Waterford, Limerick and Galway—and their success has been so great that further visits by the symphony orchestra to most of these places either have taken place or are expected to take place. The most notable development in this field was the very successful visit of the orchestra to Belfast some months ago, when the largest hall in the city was filled to capacity by a most responsive and appreciative audience. Apart from public concerts, there have been two symphony concerts broadcast from Maynooth College, where the visits of the orchestra have stimulated a lively interest in music among the students. This is considered to be a development with good possibilities for the advancement of musical culture, in due course, throughout the country.
The light orchestra has made a notable advance in the standard of its performances and has also taken part in public concerts in a couple of places outside Dublin.
A new departure in the programmes was the launching of a weekly news feature devoted to provincial news. It had long been realised that there are always many happenings and items of interest throughout the country, which, while not being of sufficient importance to call for inclusion in the regular news bulletins, reflect many valuable and often educational and entertaining aspects of the national life. It is only comparatively recently that the facilities became available to make this special kind of news coverage possible. Much of the material is of an unobtrusive character and has to be located and written up. Considerable use is made, in the compilation of the feature, of the mobile recording units and local correspondents, and the organisation, editing and production of these weekly broadcasts, called "Provincial News Round-Up," calls for a good deal of detailed attention.
The number of broadcasts of particular interest to farmers has been increased and their scope considerably widened. The weekly talk for farmers, broadcast on Wednesdays, now has a large and steady public. Evidence of this is provided by the volume of correspondence and queries on farming matters with which the broadcaster has to deal. Farming features of a more diversified character have been broadcast regularly on Saturday nights many of them dealing with farming topics and methods in other countries as well as in our own.
The need for the technical balancing within the studio of all that is broadcast is something of which many listeners may not be acutely aware, but which plays a vital part in deciding the quality of transmission. In a small organisation it is difficult to command the conditions necessary for the training of expert staff to concentrate on this aspect of broadcasting. The British Broadcasting Company lent valuable aid in this matter, however, and a balance and control officer is about to be appointed who was given a period of training with the corporation. This will undoubtedly result in an improvement of the balance of programmes and of the musical programmes in particular. An important matter related to this is the acoustical character of studios and this, also, has been receiving close attention. Improved equipment for measuring the acoustical characteristics of the studios has now been supplied and many improvements have been effected, notably in the Phoenix Hall.
These are all the matters of a programme nature to which I need refer, but the Department would like me to call attention to a few matters which are not concerned directly with programme building, but which are at the same time of importance for broadcasting.
Listeners on the Dublin wavelength will have observed that there has been serious interference with reception for some time past. It is believed that this is being caused by a station working on power higher than that authorised under the European Broadcasting Plan. Representations are being made in the matter, but it is not known what effect they will have. It is proposed to purchase a new transmitter for Dublin which will work on somewhat higher power than the present transmitter. When the transmitter has been obtained and installed it should help to get over the interference, if it has not been removed in the meantime. It has also been decided to purchase new transmitters for Athlone and for Cork, but owing to present supply conditions, there is no certainty about the time of delivery of the three transmitters. No provision has been made for them in the present year's Estimate.
Local interference by electrical apparatus is also increasing, due to the wider use of electricity. The Department's staff for helping in locating the cause of this interference has been strengthened, but quite obviously it would take a huge staff to attend to every individual complaint of faulty reception. The Department would like to urge the public that, before making any complaint, they should first have their own sets, including the aerial and earth connections, examined to make sure that the trouble is not there. It would also be well if neighbours would co-operate to see if the trouble is general in the area and also by making representations to the owner of any plant which they think might be causing the interference. If local efforts fail to remove interferences the Department's engineering officers will be glad to help in every way possible. They carry stocks of suppressors which they are prepared to fit at cost to any apparatus which is found to be causing trouble. The Department is also doing everything possible to try to have interference removed at the source, that is, before electrical apparatus gets into the hands of the users. Distributors of such apparatus who have been approached have promised the utmost co-operation in regard to getting suppressors fitted to the apparatus they supply.
The Department would also like to make a special appeal to set-owners about the renewal of their licences. The organisation for dealing with wireless licence work is much more costly than it need be if all set-owners obtained their licences promptly. In Britain the Post Office retains 7½ per cent. of wireless licence revenue to defray the cost of collection. As Deputies will see on page one of the Broadcasting Estimate, the Post Office charge here for work for broadcasting this year is put down at £45,000 or more than 20 per cent. of the estimated licence revenue.
The comparison between 7½ per cent. and 20 per cent. is not a strictly fair one as the British licence costs £1 as against our 12s. 6d. Moreover the Irish Post Office performs a good deal of work for broadcasting which in Britain is done by the B.B.C. itself. Allowing for these factors, however, the cost of collecting licence fees here is unduly heavy. I am afraid the main reason for this must be found in the reluctance of our set owners to meet their licence obligation as it arises. According to the recent Report of the Beveridge Broadcasting Committee, over 99 per cent. of set owners in Britain respond to postal reminders for the renewal of their licences. About 20 per cent. fail to respond to the renewal notices here. That is an unsatisfactory position. It gives no pleasure to the Department to have to institute legal proceedings against wireless licence defaulters, but it is obliged to see that the provisions of the Wireless Telegraphy Act are complied with. The expenditure on broadcasting is also increasing considerably and it is most important that the revenue should keep pace with it. Through the House I would like to urge the Department's appeal to the public to co-operate in this question of licence renewal. If full co-operation is given it will avoid unpleasantness for the Department and for set owners and will save a great deal of expenditure on correspondence and inspections that should be unnecessary.
There are many broader and more fundamental matters connected with broadcasting, such as broadcasting accommodation and the short wave station, on which I cannot usefully comment as I have not had an opportunity of examining them. I shall do so, however, as early as possible.
I understand from the Department and the Director of Broadcasting that the staff generally connected with broadcasting gave unfailing attention to duty during the year and I want to thank them for it. I would also like on behalf of the Department and for myself, to thank the members of the Broadcasting Advisory Committee, who, I am informed, continue to contribute most useful advice on a variety of matters connected with the broadcasting service.
