Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 18 January 2023

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media

Future of the Media Sector: Discussion

Mr. Paul Farrell:

It is a challenge. As Mr. Coveney said, we put a lot of effort into social media as an amplification and growth opportunity for audiences and new audiences. Equally, we found it as a platform to try to build new content solutions. For example, the group chat product that is now on television started off as a podcast, then went to a vodcast and then went to television. We find it is a good way to explore and try to bring, as Mr. Coveney said, younger audiences and new audiences into content.

Similar to what Mr. Coveney said on sport, in particular, we found some opportunities to monetise it. They are relatively limited but there is a way to do it. The challenge for us goes back to regulation and guidelines. If one looks at how most people made money out of social media, it is the influencers and how they have almost contrived a model to endorse and support products and get paid for that without any real clear guidelines that they are selling, endorsing or promoting something. There are opportunities for us in terms of the content we create in that shorter form to have some commercial relationship with parties, as Mr. Coveney said, with those such as Twitter seeing the benefit of what we bring with that content and what that drives in the overall model. It is evolving a bit like Google, in how it changed its attitude to newspapers. Some of the social media platforms are starting to see broader benefits but it is slow. It is a lot of work for a relatively modest effort but it is a place one has to be, particularly if one is to engage with younger audiences.

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