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. Adrian Lynch:

Mr. Esslemont made a point earlier on benchmarking public service media funding here against the UK and EU. Take what Mr. Farrell was talking about with that French streaming service, Salto. I will give an idea of the scale of the challenge. France Télévisions which is the public service media company in France has funding of €3 billion. It is not like it is running 20 stations; it is running a similar portfolio to RTÉ with €3 billion. It teamed up with T1 and M6 to launch Salto. I just read yesterday that they are looking at having to dissolve it because they feel they cannot compete against international streamers. That gives a sense of the kind of scale of the challenge that we face.