Piaras Kelly PR – Public Relations in Ireland

The Sunday Business Post has carried a couple of interesting articles in the last fortnight about tensions between Irish print media and RTE, as well as moves to lobby Government to help address some of woes facing the media sector. Here’s the articles:

• Effect of online content on traditional media to be analysed
• Newspapers set to clash with RTE over web news
• End of a free press

The criticism of RTE by some quarters of the Irish print media essentially boils down to the fact that the RTE website is effectively subsidised by the license payer and that their free online news service is a threat to the paywalls that print media will soon erect on their websites. Adrian Weckler has a good post on the problems the RTE website is posing its competitors.

Looking at the numbers, you can see the cause for concern. Kevin Rafter reports in this month’s Marketing magazine that the RTE website has 2.9 million users, while the Irish Times and Irish Independent websites both have 2.3 million unique users.

Joe Webb, managing director of Independent News and Media (INM) Ireland, states in one of the Sunday Business Post articles that “The biggest issue for the entire newspaper market is [the] RTE [website].” I think Webb and critics within the print media are wrong though for a couple of reasons.

A number of commentators have pointed out that there isn’t the equivalent of the BBC or RTE in the United States and commercial media outlets aren’t faring any better. More importantly though, critics seem to be overlooking free commercial alternatives such as the TV3 website, BusinessWorld or Silicon Republic.

Irish print media need to accept the fact that not all consumers will pay for content. Some are happy to skim the headlines and read topline coverage that, while not as analytical as the Irish Times or Irish Independent, fulfills their needs. Whether the RTE website is free or not, the Internet is so diverse in terms of sources of content, it will make little difference to most consumers.