Mr. Scott Williams:

The RTE report from last year is interesting, taking in arts, education, religion, factual drama, entertainment, music, news, current affairs, etc., across the services. There are entries for RTE Radio 1 but no entries for 2FM. It has €560,000 for "other factual" content and the rest concerns entertainment, music, news, current affairs, etc., on the station. Those of us of a certain vintage might remember that 2FM was set up as the State's antidote to pirate radio, the buccaneers of the airwaves, in the late 1970s, although all we did was give people what they wanted at the time. That is another day's work, but it has led to the sector we have. The brief of 2FM was to be a pop station for those aged between 15 and 34. Approximately five years ago, on the day of a report from the JNLR giving listenership data for radio, we read a press release indicating that RTE was to change the focus of 2FM to those aged between 25 and 45. We could not do this on any of our stations without approval from the BAI, but RTE could do that because it felt like it. The station changed without reference to the BAI because it deals with the Minister. It is a pop station and it receives €4.49 from every licence fee. Its ratings are low and it is not widely listened to. It faces much competition in the pop radio business from both music stations such as mine in Dublin and those across the country, as well as the likes of Today FM. It struggles to pull in a listenership.

I mentioned earlier cost of service, revenue inwards and holes being filled with public money, and this is intrinsically linked to that. The worse RTE fares in ratings with 2FM, the more public money will have to be poured into it in order for it to pay its way. It costs €11 million, but the new head of 2FM, a former colleague of ours, Mr. Dan Healy, stated that there are only 27 people in 2FM, with a running cost of €6 million. It does not stack up.