Imagine a few years ago you had said that Martin McGuinness – formerly of the IRA - would in 2009 be Northern Ireland’s most popular politician. Frankly, people would have thought you had been on a crack-smoking minibreak to Amsterdam.
But popular he is. Northern Ireland is changing at a dramatic pace, and not just on the political stage - in the TV business as well.
The BBC’s network supply targets have already enticed major indies into Belfast and Derry, while indigenous companies are burgeoning. Channel 4 too – via the entertaining and effective Stuart Cosgrove roadshow - is onto local companies, and hopefully bringing new opportunities.
But when it comes to Digital Britain – Northern Ireland is in the slow lane. In fact, it’s off the road entirely, parked in a service area, with a couple of flat tyres.
In public service TV production, Belfast is in the unique position of getting nothing at all out of Digital Britain.
We were promised that Ofcom’s Public Service Broadcasting review would be the driving force behind a new digital future for Northern Ireland. There was consultation - on issues from quotas and targets to local news and indigenous languages. Proposals were made on how public purpose content could be ring-fenced and protected for the next generation.
And then….nothing. Ofcom didn’t deliver. Now we’ve dropped off the government’s plans for pilots to inject seriously needed funding into local news and current affairs. In last orders at the Digital Britain bar, Scotland, England and Wales will all get a multi-million pound project to experiment with new and innovative digital newsgathering models. Northern Ireland will get a packet of crisps.
In a recession, with online advertising decimating local newspaper budgets, you can’t cover local news, police, courts, political and social sensitivities - in a country that for much of the past 40 years was at brutal war with itself - with no resources. You risk not covering the news in depth at a local level at all, and opening up a democratic deficit.
Our local Culture Minister, Nelson McCausland, has dived into the issues and called for a news pilot in Northern Ireland to be broadened to include current affairs. He is going head-to-head with his London counterparts, asking them to come up with firm proposals on how Northern Ireland is to be included in Digital Britain.
And we’ve got our own suggestions: Ten Alps (parent company of Below the Radar, which I founded and still run) has joined with one of Northern Ireland’s leading newspapers, the Belfast Telegraph, and suggested the government should fund an online news and current affairs pilot that can also feed traditional television slots, as long as any need is there. It’s not about supplanting UTV. It’s about supplementing it.
In a place where thinking the unthinkable is the norm these days, there is still time for the DCMS to think again and back these ideas.
They could tender out a cost-effective, online-only news pilot. They could put Belfsat back into gear, and back on the road - to Digital Britain.
A one off documentary marking the 30th anniversary of the murder of Queen Victoria’s grandson, Lord Mounbatten, by the IRA in 1979.
It was probably the most devastating attack of the Provisional IRA’s campaign and the moment ‘The Troubles’ claimed their highest profile victim: August 27 1979 when Lord Louis Mountbatten was killed in a bomb attack as he holidayed on a fishing boat off the coast of County Sligo, in the Republic of Ireland. He was Prince Philip’s uncle; the last Viceroy of India and the closest friend and mentor Prince Charles ever had. A decorated WWII hero to boot, if anyone embodied British Royalty at its finest and most decent, it was Mountbatten.
Two boys also died in the attack at Mullaghmore: 14 year-old Nicholas, the Earl’s grandson; and 15 year-old Paul Maxwell, a teenager employed as a boat boy. In recent years Paul’s father, John, has emerged as a champion of the Northern Ireland peace process. On the same day in August, the IRA killed 18 British soldiers in an ambush in the village of Warrenpoint in Northern Ireland. The attacks struck right at the very heart of the British establishment and the programme will reveal the effect on the British and Irish governments and Anglo-Irish relations.
This landmark documentary catches up with the key figures of the tragedy and assesses how well the scars have healed. Featuring in-depth interviews, news archive from the time and reconstructions, the programme looks at Mountbatten’s life and the impact of his death on the village of Mullaghmore.
Mountbatten: Return to Mullaghmore is an RTE/HISTORY co-production. It was filmed in full HD and will be broadcast on the HISTORY HD channel with the title Mountbatten: Death of a Royal.