RTE SUMMER SCHEDULES

auerillo

As we enter the summer, once more RTE will have its "Summer Schedules" which roughly translates as the main talent all abandon the station for 10 or 12 weeks. RTE seems to work to a sort of imitation of the academic year, giving its main talent long Christmas, Easter and, longest of all, Summer holidays.

I'm sure broadcasters like Joe Duffy (who broadcasts for 5 hours a week) Marian Finucane (who broadcasts for 4 hours a week) must be completely exhausted and probably need the 10 or so weeks holidays since they last had about two weeks or so off at Easter.

While I don't underestimate the time needed to prepare for a programme is not added in here, why do I feel cheated that we are paying these broadcasters with our money, and they feel its ok to take 15 or 20 weeks holidays per year.

I don't know of any other organisation in the world where employees are given such generous renumeration and also such lenghty holidays. Not only that but then we have to, presumably, pay other people to broadcast in the slots they leave vacant.

I think its getting close to the time when we should privitise RTE and stop subsidising it with our money, only for them to use it in this wasteful way.

mike65

Yay! Like the reporting of the first cuckoo in the Irish Times we have the first RTE/Summer sham thread.

All true of course, Pat Kenny is on leave for the next 2 months with Myles Dungan standing in, sadly he suggested that he'd be here the whole summer. Tom McGurk does my head in often but I'd take him over a fully paid up RTE inmate like Dungan.

Prime Time has gone on Tuesdays as well, its not like there is anything to discuss as the economy nose-dives, the Lisbon fall out continues, Zimbabwe goes to a sham poll, oil goes through the roof and a bunch of other issues that might be deemed worth some attention.

Mike.

jdivision

Hey just wait til the Irish Times gets All about August going again.

auerillo

mike65 wrote: »

Yay! Like the reporting of the first cuckoo in the Irish Times we have the first RTE/Summer sham thread.

All true of course, Pat Kenny is on leave for the next 2 months with Myles Dungan standing in, sadly he suggested that he'd be here the whole summer. Tom McGurk does my head in often but I'd take him over a fully paid up RTE inmate like Dungan.

Prime Time has gone on Tuesdays as well, its not like there is anything to discuss as the economy nose-dives, the Lisbon fall out continues, Zimbabwe goes to a sham poll, oil goes through the roof and a bunch of other issues that might be deemed worth some attention.

Mike.

While I hate to get personal, I tend to agree re Myles "wooden" Dungan. I went to see him interview Alan Bennett in TCD a couple of years ago and he merely read his questions, one after another, from prepared cards and didn't engage with Bennett at all really.

I had heard Bennntt interviewed by Mark Lawson on the BBC4 equivalent of Dungan's now defunkt Arts Show, promoting the same book, "Untold Stories", and the interview was lively and full of them both engaging and was a delight to listen to.

RTE really is not a very good radio station and it seems to revole around thre of four personalities rather than revolving around some really good programmes.

RayM

Does RTE1 still chop the 6-1 news down to 30 minutes at some stage during the summer? The one good thing about that is that Reeling in the Years usually fills the gap.

Elmo

Does RTE1 still chop the 6-1 news down to 30 minutes at some stage during the summer? The one good thing about that is that Reeling in the Years usually fills the gap.

Usually August only has a 30min six one. Perhaps everyone in RTE News takes their holidays during the same month.

FlutterinBantam

auerillo wrote: »

As we enter the summer, once more RTE will have its "Summer Schedules" which roughly translates as the main talent all abandon the station for 10 or 12 weeks. RTE seems to work to a sort of imitation of the academic year, giving its main talent long Christmas, Easter and, longest of all, Summer holidays.

I'm sure broadcasters like Joe Duffy (who broadcasts for 5 hours a week) Marian Finucane (who broadcasts for 4 hours a week) must be completely exhausted and probably need the 10 or so weeks holidays since they last had about two weeks or so off at Easter.

While I don't underestimate the time needed to prepare for a programme is not added in here, why do I feel cheated that we are paying these broadcasters with our money, and they feel its ok to take 15 or 20 weeks holidays per year.

I don't know of any other organisation in the world where employees are given such generous renumeration and also such lenghty holidays. Not only that but then we have to, presumably, pay other people to broadcast in the slots they leave vacant.

I think its getting close to the time when we should privitise RTE and stop subsidising it with our money, only for them to use it in this wasteful way.

The REALLY funny bit is that if you e-mail them about this ,they won't even reply.:D:D:D:D:D

I'm tired tell yez, they are bleedin us dry,and we don't know the half of it.

Passenger

So Kenny et al get paid for time they spend in the south of France or wherever?

gogglebok

auerillo wrote: »

RTE really is not a very good radio station and it seems to revole around three or four personalities rather than revolving around some really good programmes.

I think you've nailed it. Someone suggested on here once that all the music should go to one station and the talk-based programmes to another. I think this is a good idea, but as RTE 1 is now it would probably just mean an endless sequence of personality-based programmes.

Radio 4 has strong programme identities with rosters of people involved, whereas RTE mainly has presenter identities.

Elmo

Does BBC Radio Four have a mix of music and talk.

I think it is important to have a mix of both of Radio services, really we have two talk based services NewsTalk and RTE Radio 1.

Today FM continues to dilute their talk base with Music driven shows and Most of the new channels are music based shows. Spin, FM104, 98FM, Q102, 2FM, Beat etc are all the same playing the same sets of "hits" while local radio (outside of dublin) is just a poor imitation of RTE Radio 1 most of the time.

Phantom will soon go down that road of non-stop hits.

www.4fm.ie might change it all for music and talk.

mike65

The only music on BBC Radio 4 is used as example or as a guest selection on Desert Island Discs. Thats it.

Mike.

Elmo

The Bizzard thing about this thread is that it is giving out that all of the RTE Radio personalities go on holidays over the summer months and yet this gives other non-RTE personalities a chance to present a primetime Radio show. Surely this gives some variety???????

But I am in agreement RTE Radio relies far too much on personality or should I say in some cases non-personalities i.e. Derek Mooney :mad:

auerillo

Elmo wrote: »

The Bizzard thing about this thread is that it is giving out that all of the RTE Radio personalities go on holidays over the summer months and yet this gives other non-RTE personalities a chance to present a primetime Radio show. Surely this gives some variety???????

But I am in agreement RTE Radio relies far too much on personality or should I say in some cases non-personalities i.e. Derek Mooney :mad:

,

I'm sure Derek Mooney is a great guy, but having tried to listen to his show a few times, it's pretty difficult to like. He does have the RTE hey-i'm-such-a-nice-guy-with-the-rte-nice-guy-voice-and-intonation, but the content is pretty missable. My favourite programme of the day is on RTE1 after the angelus at midday ( another great RTE invention - a bell ringing for a whole minute!), and then they have a guy with the same rte hey-i'm-such-a-nice-guy-with-the-rte-nice-guy-voice-and-intonation spinning disks and playling requests! in 2009, playing requests on our national radio channel!

It must be a problem for RTE Radio 1 to be up against BBC Radio 4, but in all fairness all the talent who dissappear for 13 weeks every summer is ridiculous and unheard of in the BBC. Some presenters in Rte are so stressed they have to ahve 17 weeks holiday, and means, fro example, marian funicane actually has to broadcast 140 whole hours broadcasting per annum in return for her salary of +-€400 000.

In addition to having the highest paid Prime Minister in the world, Ireland also boasts some of the highest paid radio broadcasters, with probably the highest in the world the aforementioned being marian finucane getting paid a whopping +-€2850 per hour. ( Compare that against gerry ryan's €558 000 per annum for +- 650 hours boradcasting, or +-€855 per hour).