David Norris (Independent)

I strongly support Senator O'Reilly's amendment. I was concerned when I received the initial brief on this in case it meant commercial pressures within radio stations would lead them to seek to increase the revenue by expanding the amount of advertising but this is not the case. It is exactly as Senator O'Reilly described. From my inquiries I realised that radio stations do not want to increase advertising revenue because over the ten minutes advertising operates as a disincentive to listenership. Advertising revenue is mathematically related to audience penetration. Radio stations want to maximise their audience and not put them off by saturating them with advertisements.

Exceptional occasions do exist and I am not sure they are quite as infrequent as Senator O'Reilly suggests. It may be that they are. I do a certain amount of broadcasting and on a couple of occasions I filled in for other people with far more glamorous programmes than mine with live feed to Hollywood for the Oscars. One does not break that because if one does the people on the other end will buzz off. With regard to coverage of the US elections, stations in the US break in with advertising right at a vital point and this is regrettable.

The idea of averaging out the advertising time in a manner which ensures no increase in advertising is good. It would be silly to penalise a station simply because it had an important item and did not want to break the link. If a programme has a feed from Iraq or Afghanistan by satellite phone and connection is lost it can be difficult to re-establish it. It might be lost if a commercial break is taken. This is a reasonable and non-threatening amendment and I hope the Minister will be able to consider it.