RTE International on Sky Credit Crunched?

dougdub

Hi guys,

RTE was supposed to launch this in March but I have heard nothing on this for a while or have I missed something?

BeerNut

Shelved, apparently. Link.

Lennoxschips

Yeah, RTE were using it as an excuse to get more money from the government and pretending it would cost much more than it does. Feckers.

It would cost half-nothing to run. It might even turn a profit.

Buy up some frequency on Astra 2A, queue some home grown royalty-free programming, news, Late Late Show, soaps and archive programmes in the VT, turn on the switch. They need a team of about three full time people running it I'd say. That's 90-100 thousand euro a year in wages, and possibly a couple hundred thousand euro a year in Astra fees. They already have uplinking equipment.

It's cheaper than providing all the internet bandwidth needed for people overseas to view the news through www.rte.ie!!!!

Meanwhile they can afford to come up with 5 million euro to revamp the news room.

They have no interest in providing this service. Somebody needs to order them to do it.

byte

It wasn't planned for a launch on Sky anyway, but Freesat instead. While I'm sure a Skybox could've received it via Other Channels, it probably wouldn't have had EPG placement.

Moot point now anyway.

von Smallhausen

It has been posponed until further notice due to the financial problems.

this might shed a bit of light.

h_ttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT%C3%89_International

Lennoxschips

Funny how all the other channels on freesat broadcasting royalty free repeats and all the, shall we say, less refined channels, seem to have no problems surviving on a shoestring budget.

Lazy, that's what RTE are.

Mossy Monk

Bit of a difference between the shoestring channels and RTÉ. They have a lot more than just 2 channels to broadcast.

watty

Lennoxschips wrote: »

Funny how all the other channels on freesat broadcasting royalty free repeats and all the, shall we say, less refined channels, seem to have no problems surviving on a shoestring budget.

Lazy, that's what RTE are.

A lot of it is not Royalty free, just low royalties.

Some channels lose money.

RTE would have to pay more for local bought in and staff produced stuff even for RTE only content on RTE International as it's a 20x bigger market. They can't pay nothing extra to those involved making the stuff. Much cheaper than imports though.

rlogue

Apparently there's a facebook group proposing a flashmob protest on Paddy's Day outside RTE's London HQ.