Bringing the RTÉ Player in line with industry standards will likely cost “several million euro” in terms of capital investment, the broadcaster has said.
As the Irish Examiner reports, in correspondence with the Public Accounts Committee, RTÉ’s head of public affairs Vivienne Flood said that such an investment would be a “minimal requirement” in order to bring the online player up to standard.
The RTÉ Player allows streaming of RTÉ exclusive content and syndicated programming, together with live broadcast streams, for those viewing online. Such a player is a standard offering for broadcasters in modern times.
However, RTÉ’s version has come in for consistent criticism due to its perceived instability and unreliability in recent years, especially in terms of live sporting events with large audiences, with its performance highlighted repeatedly at RTÉ’s two appearances before the Oireachtas last month.
Ms Flood said that “further evolution” of the player would necessitate the acquisition of “additional specialist skills which will require increased operating expenditure”.
She said that in order to put a precise figure on how much would be needed “further product technical scoping and benchmarking” would be necessary.
On-demand players
Nevertheless, she said, in order for on-demand players to deliver parity of service with legacy broadcast services “which have been in operation for many decades”, “extensive investment and infrastructure” would be required.
At a recent hearing of the Oireachtas media committee, RTÉ’s director general Dee Forbes said that the broadcaster had spent “a lot of time and resources” improving the performance of the player for live broadcasts, adding that RTÉ “almost broke the internet” in terms of the numbers of people streaming the Euro 2020 tournament via the player last summer.
She said that the ways in which the consumption of media has changed in recent years requires that “we have to be at the table in this space”, and said that, assuming the funding was provided, improving the player would be “top of our agenda”.
At the same hearing Ms Forbes bemoaned the “scale and resources” of the largest commercial streaming services such as Disney and Amazon, and compared it to the diminishing returns of RTÉ’s budgetary commitments over the past decade.
“We do not have the resources or money of some of the streamers or the likes of Channel 4, which has invested significantly in this,” Ms Forbes meanwhile told the PAC on January 20.s.
