Plurality in media is important. It can cover the content and platform. Is the content shown in Irish media from a large variety of sources in society? or is it from a few sources?. Also is the platform the media is delivered on owned by a few big companies or is a wide diversity of ownership available?
from the BAI policy on plurality.
Diversity of Content means the extent to which the broad diversity of views (including diversity of views on news and current affairs and diversity of cultural interests prevalent in Irish society) is reflected through the activities of media businesses in the State, including their editorial ethos, content and sources.
Diversity of Ownership means the spread of ownership and control of media businesses in the State linked to the market share of those media businesses as measured by listenership, readership, reach or other appropriate measures.
Is your media more or less plural these days? Media Ownership Ireland is a database tracking who owns media in Ireland. As old media matures competition leads to buyouts and more and more media is owned by less and less companies. Is this ownership deficit offset by the public’s access to new media platforms? Does the ability to “broadcast yourself” on social media outweigh the importance of plurality in the media?
The ability to reach billions of people with messages online does not equate to the ability to broadcast to a nation’s airwaves given that broadcasting is the incumbent and dominant mass media platform where a few transmit to the many. Social media silos of content where users select their preferred catalogue of content, like subscribed podcasts or Netflix watch list does not have the same effect on society as broadcasting. Therefore the share of ownership in media remains important across all media and in particular in the broadcast sector.
Media Ownership Ireland database tracks ownership across Online, Print and Broadcast media in Ireland. But one sector it fails to track is Community Media. This sector is owned by the communities it broadcasts to. This means that this sector has a unique strength above all the other sectors that are listed. The strength is that the the media entity is owned by its public. Control and direction of the media is down to the people within the community. This goes a long way to demonstrate the lack of plurality in commercial and public media, which is evidenced in the content on air and access citizens have to their media.
Community Media which is recognised as the third sector in Irish media legislation might not yet be a large enough sector to rebalance the deficit in plurality in Irish media but if the sector was to grow to being in every town and county in Ireland (like pirate radio was in Ireland in the 1980s) then it could begin to be the necessary counterweight to large commercial multinationals owning and controlling Irish media.
With 30% of Local Radio owned by companies outside of Ireland, plurality in radio broadcasting in Ireland is rebalanced by the existence of community radio (another reason the sector should be listed in the Media Ownership Ireland database) . 100% of community media in Ireland is owned by its community. The ownership model transfers to the content on air, which on community media is as varied and diverse as the community it serves, unlike the formatted commercial offerings from local and national broadcasters.
Parity of each of the sectors of Irish broadcasting in legislation is required to make sure that the sector that values and spotlights the marginalised the most is not not marginalised itself when media codes, policies and legislation are being drafted. Equal recognition of each sector will allow for future funding and growth to happen and therefore allows community media to continue to out perform in areas on diversity of content and plurality of ownership.
Following the recent death of Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh (June 25th 2024) it reminded me of a post I wrote when he retired in 2010.
Irish Overseas Broadcasting was written in September 2010 for the website ilikeradio.net now archived here on radio.ie
It is still a good read and a bit dated, but it guessed the demise of DAB where RTE put Mediumwave funding after it closed that service to the UK (March 24th 2008) . In general it takes a look at RTÉ and how they are slow to move with new technology and are really bad and serving the Irish abroad, although their plan to put RTE Radio in UK cities with small scale DAB is now a legal reality, if though RTÉ may now not have the cash for this venture any longer.
Since the article was written RTÉ pulled the plug on DAB (March 31st 2021) and Longwave 252 (April 14th 2023 minutes after President Joe Biden gave a public address from Ballina Co, Mayo). These 2 broadcasting withdrawals were seemingly unrelated to the other controversies that have engulfed the national broadcaster. Now RTÉ has a 5 year plan and 3 year funding to continue in a slimed down state.
The internet is a healthier place for delivering content in a technical capacity, but as this medium has matured it has also become a more difficult place to disseminate content due to rights issues and geo blocks.
It takes vision to see beyond the roadblocks and see and hear the diaspora, so they can see and hear Ireland via its national broadcaster. Irish Overseas Broadcasting or content delivery is still much needed and there is a wonderful archive of content in RTÉ that should be on the RTÉ Player or opened up to be on any Irish Player that cares to serve this content with new context.
If other groups see a market in the gap to serve the largest national diaspora on planet earth, then every assistance of our national broadcaster should help make it happen, after all, we all fund RTÉ, it is our public service channel.
Technical changes means integrated streaming and broadcasting players which are truly cross platform (such as DVB-I) can deliver Irish content to wherever people want to see and hear it.
To many, Ubuntu is a flavour/distribution of Linux, a computer operating system. In Africa Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. Listen to this podcast first released in 2017 on how Youth Radio in South Africa focused on Ubuntu to examine its principles through radio reporting practice.
Many of the mission themes will resonate with those that truly understand the power of radio. Thanks to a podcast for bringing this gem to me. And as you read this, thank a blog for informing you. Content should never be left in silos, and media/platforms shouldn’t be either, it takes a village to raise a child, and a host of media can deliver the same ethos/content.
Pod Des:Brian Greene, Outreach and Training Coordinator at Dublin Community Television, talks about the world of community television, how it can provide an outlet both for community groups and for freelance journalists, the differences between television and radio production, and plans for the future. Brian also runs the websites radio.ie and pirate.ie
From time to time I post about podcasts, and the ones I listen to. The ones that I hit refresh to see if another episode has landed, often in hope, because I really wish it was a radio show if only to keep the publishing on a weekly or monthly pattern.
Decentered Podcast – An off-centre look at community, social and sustainable media.. With discussions about the role of media in sustainable and participative communities, providing an alternative to mass media. They look at how to build our capabilities to tell our own stories and think about the importance of what we become in producing and sharing our own media content.
Presented by Rob Watson, a pioneer of new approaches to community media production, communication for development, social media organisation and collaborative problem-solving. While academic in approach there is plenty of practical experience on offer here.
While I often think paper archive will out live digital archive (because we don’t value the zeros and ones of content) there is a website I started 29 years ago today, its still going, its still loved. Perhaps content will save digital archive from its own obscurity.
In 2016 I wrote this essay as part of a college assignment. Unpublished until now, it is a deep dive into media history of sport on radio and television and the future of sport with internet streams and betting getting involved in the sport we see and cannot see.
150 years of sport and media growth fuels a global sports betting industry worth an estimated $3 trillion (Mail Online, 2016).
In this essay the relationship between Sport and Media and Betting will be explored. From the early use of news print to fuel interest. Where sporting events become media events far from the location of the sport itself, in the late industrial revolution.
The use of carrier pigeon and telegraph to relay the results of sports fixtures. The advent and heyday of radio as a burgeoning reporting and broadcasting platform in need of content.
From the mass appeal of sport on television from the 1936 summer Olympics in Nazi Germany to the dizzy heights of Premier League soccer and its multi billion pound TV deals.
Finally a look to the future threats and weakness of internet powered media for the sports world and their media partners that sell subscription TV packages.
THE TV-BET-SPORT TRIANGLE
There is a triangle of power between sport, media and bookmaking. The 3 are connected by lines of communications served by technology. The troika feed off each other providing content and spectacle and audience. While sport can have a finite attendance at its sporting occasions, there exists a far greater audience beyond the event in areas where fans can access the sport via the media.
Betting also provides a more engaged audience. When money is wagered on a sporting event the interest level and stakes are higher for that engaged audience in search of media to deliver the event and its formal results.
As technology continuously gets more cost effective and easier to use there are warning signs that one member of the Troika could be frozen out. If the sporting associations and betting companies using internet technologies can deliver the packaged event to sports fans, then traditional media could well be on the sidelines or outside the gate without content.
Following the money, sports stars and their organisations have never had it so good. If corruption flows from money then the recent scandals in FIFA and the IOC can be seen as symptoms of a sporting world a wash with cash.
Another possible loser in these developments could be the fan. As sporting events are being planned as media events to suit TV schedules where which weekday and which season of the year are considered to maximise the ‘at home’ audience, event going supporters are being priced out of events often at times of the week least suitable to the fan.
IT WENT DOWN TO THE WIRE
The history of sport and media is constantly entwined. From the printing press and telegraphy to the pay TV and internet betting, sport and media have been partners of less equal power down through the centuries. Sport was needing media to propagate its popularity and results and media was in need of sport for its plentiful and popular content.
In The Story of Your Life: A History of the Sporting Life Newspaper 1859-1998, (Lamble, 2010) there is depictions of scenes outside The Sporting Life offices on St. Brides Street (off Fleet Street London) where sports fans would gather to see the results posted in the window of the newspaper.
The gathering of people to learn of sports results from far and near which were telegraphed to newspapers with morse code along cables that followed the routes of the newly installed railway networks in the United Kingdom. Prior to telegraph the carrier pigeon was used to relay the results of sport such as horse racing events which flourished during the industrial revolution.
Two years after the opening of The Sporting Life the first ever Melbourne Cup was run in 1861.
Four years after the founding of the Sporting Life The Football Association was formed and soccer began to rise in popularity. Today soccer is the most played sport in the world.
Delivering reports and results by wire to press was a major advancement for sport. While hard news can suffer with a supply and demand peaks and troughs, sport on the other hand provides endless amount of reporting opportunities from before during and after a sports event.
Different sports have different amounts of betting variables. From individual sports like athletics to jockey and rider and field in horse racing to team sports. The varying degrees of variables makes each sport more or less attractive for betting.
Before media were engaged in daily sports reporting and in a time before the telegraph it was possible to bet on a sports event after the event had finished because the result was still unknown. Awaiting the arrival of the carrier pigeon, and then betting would close.
Over time technology gets faster and telegraphy becomes wireless telegraphy which in turn becomes radio and television. Sports coverage and reporting get closer to a wider audience and speed up the time lag for betting and the issuing of formal results.
THE ROAR OF THE RADIO CROWD
Radio waves brought sport to life. Real time and descriptive radio was able to harness its broadcasting reach to bring important fixtures to mass audience.
The world’s first sports report was the Kingstown Regatta in Dun Laoghaire Ireland on the 19th & 20th of July 1898 (Owens, John W, 2006 p. 124). Marconi hired a ship and equipped it for transmission. The harbour masters office was also equipped to receive the messages and relay the race times to the Dublin Daily Express. This test broadcast worked. The test itself was part of a wager Marconi accepted and won. Sports reporting just got faster in July 1898. Often credited as the world’s first sports broadcast it would fall short of this claim as it was a point to point transmission with no receiving audience available in those years.
Radio’s ability to speed up news delivery meant the technology was invested in. With the advent of spoken word wireless telegraphy, radio sought content in sport.
The first baseball game broadcast on radio was August 5th 1921. The match between Pittsburgh Pirates and Philadelphia Phillies was on KDKA radio (Owens, John W, 2006). In America in the early 1920s there were radios in only 1 in 400 homes.
The first Rugby broadcast on radio was Wales versus England in 1927. The BBC aired the international friendly publishing a grid system in the Radio Times to help fans follow the commentary. Radio was seeking audience and with full attendances at games the audience could be increased and with radios reach. Radio could reach all of the home team’s country and the away team’s country too. What better way to establish a home nation’s radio network, with audiences that identify with the national broadcaster.
Big boxing fights and World Series Baseball provided the captive audience that radio needed to grow. But Sport was a willing participant growing the popularity of its game while broadening the interest and reach to a national audience.
By the late 1920s there were radios in 1 or every 3 homes in America.
90 years later Sports radio in the UK reaches 1.5 Million people daily between BBC Radio 5 Live and TalkSport (Telegraphy, 2015).
Sport is now available 7 days a week on radio. Sport enjoys primetime scheduling even on non dedicated sports channels like 2FM and Today FM in Ireland where live soccer is available mid week and at weekend.
“They Think It’s All Over…. It is now”
If radio opened the door for mass audiences for big sports it was only the warm up act for television. Where radio did ball by ball coverage where announcers describe the play book of sport, on TV, the audience can see everything, and the commentary is superficial.
From the early filming of sport to multi angle interactive sports TV, the relationship between sport and media has come ever closer through TV.
Sport on TV began with the Berlin Olympics in 1936 hosted by Nazi Germany. TV and film were used as propaganda in the building of the Nazi state, not a fan of sport, Hitler saw the Berlin Games & television as a way to show off the Aryan race excelling in sport. Germany won the most medals but the world saw Jesse Owens with in track and field and be snubbed by Hitler.
The following year the BBC broadcast its first Tennis games from Wimbledon. By 1966 TV was in colour and BBC transmitted the World Cup Finals as the world’s first major sports broadcast in colour. The final between England & Germany was watched by 32.3M (Rayner, 2008). While the event will be remembered for the host winning the game, in media terms it is the iconic commentary that is remembered and not that the team in white played in a coloured TV broadcast. Kenneth Wolstenholme’s infamous “They think it’s all over! …. It is now”
Wolstenholme was the first presenter of Match of the Day in August 1964. The flagship TV programme has been the mainstay highlights package on television for 52 years. The highlights package was the most people would see of soccer on TV in the UK and Ireland via spillover of the BBC TV signal. Live soccer games on TV were restricted to major championships or international qualifiers.
Following the success of the 1966 World Cup on TV Independent TV in the United Kingdom started its own highlights soccer show at weekends called The Big Match in 1968. The programme ran until 1992 when Soccer started to move over to analogue satellite tv. The era of pay TV had begun.
British Sky Broadcasting bought the TV rights to the Premiership football games and money started flooding into soccer clubs at the top flight. This is turn widened the gap to the lower divisions who were starved of this cash. Big money was now only in the Premiership so smaller clubs needed massive investment to break into the top league. This changed the ownership of the clubs.
Started in the 1880s & 1890s these amateur clubs had turned professional but kept their working class origins intact until they were bought out by foreign oligarchs with limitless budgets to develop teams and stadiums.
HE WHO PAYS THE PIPER CALLS THE TUNE
The relationship between content providers (the sports organisations) and the distributors (the television networks) is getting closer, As Bookmakers take interest in books that take in large volumes of bets, they are dictating to media and sports organisations when, where and how often sport happens.
In the United Kingdom, championship side Leeds United AFC have become victim of a concentration of games on Monday nights. Leeds have a very large and wide support base worldwide based on their successes in the 1970s and 1990s.
Now in second flight football league they are the target of TV companies holding rights to their league. A game with Leeds United in the fixture is a more attractive billing for the media companies. This forces Leeds to play more Monday night games than any other team in their league which has a direct effect on the numbers of people able to attend the stadium on the night and the numbers of people willing to attend if the game is on TV.
Leeds would be on a fixed price from the TV rights holder for the season and see this situation as unfair. This led to a stand off in late December 2015 where a Sky Television crew were hold up in the Leeds United car park denied access to the ground for over 24 hours before a scheduled TV broadcast of their game. In the end the standoff was resolved and the game went ahead and was televised but it was possibly a sign of things to come in televised sports.
TV rights for Premiership soccer in the UK is rising 35 times faster than inflation. The latest deal for 2016-2019 is worth £5.136bn (BBC, 2015).
The newly merged Paddy Power Betfair has recorded profits of £108m off over €1bn in revenue. This values the company at €10bn. (Irish Times, 2016)
Top sports stars are earning 6 figure sums a week. In 1979 Trevor Francis became the first soccer player in the UK to be transferred for more than £1 million pounds. Now top players earn that fee every month.
Many top clubs could play to empty stadiums and still make a healthy profit for their shareholders. And despite this fact top clubs continue to price ordinary fans out of the ground.
So if clubs don’t actually close the stadiums to fans they could well be removing the fandom and passion from the stadium where the chant from the corporate box is unheard from inside its triple glazing.
ONES & ZEROS: INTERNET, SPORTS & PIRACY
TV has provided Sport with top down money. As sports on television moves online there are less geographic limits to its reach, Where terrestrial and satellite TV had known geographic footprints, internet television can be made available to paid subscribers wherever they roam. This can also cause problems for sports associations and television networks alike.
The technological advances in digital distribution is causing the convergence of broadcasting platforms toward Internet Protocol. See diagram 1. An illustration of convergence I made for a talk I gave to the Community Television Association in Ireland in 2009.
Diagram 1.
With this convergence and the reliance on Internet Protocol (IP) for delivery of sports via subscription packages, their exits the potential for piracy such as card sharing.
Card sharing is a form of McCormac Hack (Candelore, 2008) which was first discussed c1990 by John McCormac from Waterford in Ireland . This is where the unlock keys for the encrypted TV signal can be shared faster than the keys can be changed by the software encrypting the picture. This is now a reality and causes profits at television stations to fall and payments to sports clubs and associations to fall in turn.
SPORT v MEDIA v BETTING: WHAT’S THE FINAL SCORE?
The mass media, betting industry & sport worldwide have helped each other grow. They continue to do that. There is a possibility that traditional media could go the way of the travel agent who lost their day in the sun to internet booking airlines. Online streaming of sports events by bookmakers or sports organisations without the involvement of traditional media is a distinct possibility. Current deals are at all time high levels and will run their course, but if new players have the ability to attract a paying subscriber base mixed with some additional revenue streams that traditional media don’t have while not having the overhead of a transmission network, then new bidders can emerge to be successful.
The connection of fans and sports brands cannot be ignored. Fan loyalty transcends everything to a breaking point. Where fans are priced out of the game they will be outside of the game looking for something new.
Corruption, doping and financial scandals in sport will take their toll on the reputation of sport. The never ending commercialisation of sport while showing no signs of slowing down the growth of media, sport and betting will only move sport further away from its humble beginnings by the billion.
Sport as a global event will increase as the internet reduces the cost of entry to new media players online. While the internet heralds new ways to buy sports coverage it also facilitates secondary black markets of piracy that will not fill stadiums with fans.
The future is bright and so is the surface of the sun. The obscene wage bills being paid to top flight sport stars could be the beginning of the end for this triangle of sport, media & betting.
Higher wage bills funded by TV deals are leading to wider gaps in divisions. More TV money is leading to ticket price increases that price the ordinary fan out of the game. Rival TV networks are over supplying markets with more and more games. Where there is overproduction it is caused by the masses been unable to afford the products on sale, this in turn leads to slumps and crashes.
The fans are all important to the propagation of a sport, as much as transmitters or printing presses or Ceefax, Internet or TV red buttons. Cutting off the fans might be the wheel balancer the sports world finds it still needs so that it can be driven forward along a safe and straight path.
REFERENCES
AFP 2015, 2015/04/15-last update, Global sports gambling worth ‘up to $3 trillion’ [Homepage of The Daily Mail Online], [Online]. Available: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-3040540/Global-sports-gambling-worth-3-trillion.html [2016, 03/10].
BBC, B. 2015, 10/02/2015-last update, Premier League in record £5.14bn TV rights deal [Homepage of BBC], [Online]. Available: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-31379128 [2016, 03/10].
Candelore, B.L. 2014, Method for detection of a hacked decoder, .
Lambie, J. 2010, The Story of Your Life: A History of the Sporting Life Newspaper (1859-1998), Troubador Publishing Ltd.
O’Halloran, B. 2016, 2016/03/07-last update, Paddy Power Betfair to launch in US with betting exchange [Homepage of Irish Times], [Online]. Available: http://www.irishtimes.com/business/retail-and-services/paddy-power-betfair-to-launch-in-us-with-betting-exchange-1.2564517 [2016, 03/10].
Owens, J.W. 2006, “The coverage of sports on radio”, Handbook of Sports and Media, , pp. 124-137
Rayner, P. & Wall, P. 2008, As media studies: The essential introduction for AQA, Routledge..
Reynolds, G. 2015, 07/02/2015-last update, Radio 5 Live needs to keep moving to survive – Telegraph [Homepage of Telegraph], [Online]. Available: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/11395736/Radio-5-Live-needs-to-keep-moving-to-survive.html [2016, 09/02/2016].
