Public and Private broadcasting are quite different. A public serving broadcaster (RTE) is owned and financed by the public. This means that the TV license that is paid by us, the public, finances all of the public serving broadcasters. A private serving broadcaster (TV3) is privately owned and they have to finance themselves through advertisements. This means because the public is not paying the station, they can broadcast much more than the public broadcaster.
There are different reasons for broadcasting. For the public stations it is to serve the public who pay their license fees. John Reith said its roll was to:
“Educate, Inform and Entertain”
This statement is certainly true and explains why the public pays a licensing fee, to educate and entertain them. They want to know all that is going on in the world and the public broadcasting servers are there to bring the latest happenings to them.
Whereas a private broadcaster is not financed by the public and can broadcast much of what they want, within means of course. Private broadcasters have freer reign on but also have to make enough money on advertisements to pay for the station.
A private broadcaster is a commercial station, which wants to draw the biggest audience, which will promote their advertisements more and therefore adding more profit for the station. How well a private broadcaster does will determine how much the company will grow.
Private television did cause concerns when first lunched. There were fears that informational TV would be lost and replaced with entertainment TV. There were also fears that it would be a threat to the local economy. Concerns were that overseas programmes would be broadcasted more than local programmes, taking away money from the local economy. Private stations do have one major advantage and that is that the public does not fund it. This gives more incentive for people to watch private stations.
Public and Private broadcasters both have their good and bad points but there certainly is means for both broadcasters on the air.
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