The Commission monitors all of its licensed services to ensure that they comply with their statutory obligations and terms of their contracts.
Monitoring includes:
- Assessment of statutory and contractual programming obligations
- Ownership and control structures
- Financial and trading performance
- Human resource management practices
- Studio and transmission facilities
Programme Monitoring
In 2004 the Commission monitored approximately 2200 hours of radio and television programming as part of its performance monitoring remit.
Programming monitored by the Commission is for the most part requested at random and assessed for compliance with statutory codes and instruments and for compliance with a station’s Programme Policy Statement. Community, Commercial, temporary and Institutional services are monitored.
Monitoring of all stations in 2004 indicates the following trends:
(a) News and Current Affairs
Broadcasting legislation requires stations to provide 20% news and current affairs programming across the total broadcast day and a minimum of 2 hours between 7am and 7pm. All but two stations were found to be operating in compliance with this provision. In both instances, the stations were notified of the problem and requested to take steps to ensure future compliance. Monitoring for 2005 will indicate whether the steps taken have been successful.
(b) Advertising, Sponsorship and Commercial Promotions
The Radio and Television Act, 1988 stipulates a maximum advertising minuteage of 10 minutes per hour and 15% for the total broadcast day while the Commission’s Community Radio Policy imposes a 6-minute advertising limit for community radio stations.
In 2004, 19 stations licensed by the BCI were notified of breaches; of these, two breaches were notified to community radio stations while the remainder were notified to commercial services; one commercial station received notification of nine breaches of the 10-minute limit. Where a station has been involved in significant breaches of Section 10(4) or indeed any contractual or statutory requirement, they are requested to respond to the Commission outlining measures proposed to ensure ongoing breaches do not reoccur.
(c) Programme Policy Statements
The Commission’s programme monitoring process also focuses on assessing broadcasters’ compliance with the requirements of their Programme Policy Statements. By far the most frequent issue highlighted in 2004 was the failure by stations to meet the Irish music targets detailed in their programme policy commitments to the BCI. This matter was raised with thirteen stations and meeting this commitment continues to be an ongoing challenge for broadcasters.
Compliance with speech/music ratio commitments was generally good apart from one community station and one institutional service being notified of deficiencies in this regard. Both were requested to address the issue which will be monitored again in the coming months.