RTE - the end is nigh - high wages come home to roost

ronbyrne2005

Rte expenses are just mad. Why do they have to send irish commentators to many of the football matches in Europe and uk, can they not just watch it in Rte studios and report on it? George Hamilton has seen half the world at licence payers expense and added little to overall coverage of such games. I'd make exceptions for big International games but thats about it.

artvanderlay

I just don't want to be here in Ireland to witness Ryan Tubridy's attempt to break Gay Byrne's record number of years as host of the late late. Grow old with Ryan? Well his wife didn't want to so why should we? I don't want gaybo back either. Another smug annoying ****. The meaning of life...with ronan keating, breandan o'carroll ... oh jesus. I want RTE moved out of Dublin to some ****hole in central ireland like longford just to **** the D4 back-slapping brigade over. Also it just seems that anyone who is working for rte in light entertainment has zero talent or otherwise they'd have gone to the bbc or america. I watched literally 5 seconds of that vile catherine lynch's show last night and it angers me that such racist, unfunny crap is on our screens and she's regarded as being talented! Jesus wept, are they insane? Lucy kennedy had her own chat show as well? What mentalist could have approved that? I will never pay a cent for a license fee again to rte even if i have to go without a telly and I really don't care if they all lose their jobs in rte. Might bring a lot of them back to the real world for a while.

FlutterinBantam

copacetic wrote: »

cheers, fixed. of course if flutter could quote properly we'd be alright!

Sorry yes my fault. made a bit of a mess of that one.

Apologies for the confusion.

My name is URL

artvanderlay wrote: »

[...]

I watched literally 5 seconds of that vile catherine lynch's show last night and it angers me that such racist, unfunny crap is on our screens and she's regarded as being talented! Jesus wept, are they insane?

That was pretty piss poor tv. I hope to fcuk that horrible cnut is the first to be booted from the dregs of rte, she's not funny and she's not talented.

I'd rather read Flutt's poo diary than listen to that gypo

Terry

My name is URL wrote: »

That was pretty piss poor tv. I hope to fcuk that horrible cnut is the first to be booted from the dregs of rte, she's not funny and she's not talented.

I'd rather read Flutt's poo diary than listen to that gypo

Too far.
Banned.

General Zod

12k allowance to park their car in the RTE car park. No wonder the staff are refusing the pay cut.

WoollyRedHat

If it means that some so called high profile presenters have to suffer a wage drop so be it. They don't deserve these ridicolous sums they are being paid at present.

It is time for a huge overhaul of RTE, in every sense, from bottum up.

Degsy

I have it on good authority that Gerry Ryan is out on his fat arse after his contract is up.
Only about 20 years too late but better late than never.

SEPT 23 1989

Degsy wrote: »

I have it on good authority that Gerry Ryan is out on his fat arse after his contract is up.
Only about 20 years too late but better late than never.

when is his contract up? in days please.

Elmo

I think they should do away with all of their top stars. Tubrity should be given the Late Late Show and Radio show but only on 200,000euro anything more is extravagant in the extreme. TBH 200,000 is far more than he is worth.

If their wages are in relation to advertising revenues then they are going to have to suffer due to the downturn. Anyway the wages aren't the main reason for any loses incurred for 2009.

Have yet to see their 2008 Annual Report.

deadhead13

His current contract won't be up until july 2012. A lot can change between now and then.

The Recliner

syklops wrote: »

For your follow up question, what have I gotten from other channels I dont get from RTE, well, for a start, in my DVD collection, I have discs from 3 different series that were made by the BBC. These are Top Gear, Doctor Who and Spooks. I do not have a single disc from RTE. I have a set of discs from a series that was offered to RTE but they turned it down, the series in question is of course Father Ted.

I admit, the number DVDs a person has bears little relevance to how appreciated a show is, but I can not think of one single show made by RTE that I would care to watch over and over again like I do with the DVDs I have mentioned. Apart from news, current affairs and sport, I can not think of any shows that RTE produces which I would care to watch repeatedly (with the exception of Podge and Rodge but that is not produced by RTE).

Top Gear I will watch over and over. Same for Doctor Who and Spooks. I will and do watch them over and over.

As for the first part of your question, why do you want to know?

RTE were never offered Father Ted, Graham Linehan has confirmed this on several occasions, himself and Arthur Mathews were working in the UK at the time for Talkback

Elmo

In relation to the schedule. RTÉ's NEWS on TWO and An Nuacht never go out at the same time each day/week. It is rare that they are always at either 11pm or 5:20pm respectively. However it is rare that An Nuacht splits a movie and if it does it will only be for 5mins on a Bank Holiday.

But ITV and RTÉ TWO seem to think it is okay to nearly always interrupt a movie before the end. Even their viewing figures deny them this unlikely fact.


Links to TV ratings below:-
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=259312&page=3
www.medialive.ie
http://www.agbnielsen.net/whereweare/dynPage.asp?lang=english&id=393&country=Ireland

copacetic

Elmo wrote: »

In relation to the schedule. RTÉ's NEWS on TWO and An Nuacht never go out at the same time each day/week. It is rare that they are always at either 11pm or 5:20pm respectively. However it is rare that An Nuacht splits a movie and if it does it will only be for 5mins on a Bank Holiday.

But ITV and RTÉ TWO seem to think it is okay to nearly always interrupt a movie before the end. Even their viewing figures deny them this unlikely fact.


Links to TV ratings below:-
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=259312&page=3
www.medialive.ie
http://www.agbnielsen.net/whereweare/dynPage.asp?lang=english&id=393&country=Ireland

disagree on that, News on 2 moves around a lot but Nuacht always seems to be at 5.20, certainly it isn't true to say it never goes out at the same time. Unless you mean it drifts by a couple of minutes during the day?

Not very categorical but next week for instance it is scheduled to be at 5.20 every day.

Elmo

copacetic wrote: »

disagree on that, News on 2 moves around a lot but Nuacht always seems to be at 5.20, certainly it isn't true to say it never goes out at the same time. Unless you mean it drifts by a couple of minutes during the day?

Not very categorical but next week for instance it is scheduled to be at 5.20 every day.

News on 2 doesn't have a specific time slot it never has no matter how much RTE insist that it does go out at 11pm this is a blatant lie from the scheduling department. (I have had it out with them, did absolutely nothing for me TBH or the schedule).

An Nuacht as been more constant alright partly due to The Bill (see the police do have a job to do ).

Also just because something is schedule to be shown at a specific time on RTÉ doesn't mean that it will.

copacetic

Elmo wrote: »

News on 2 doesn't have a specific time slot it never has no matter how much RTE insist that it does go out at 11pm this is a blatant lie from the scheduling department. (I have had it out with them, did absolutely nothing for me TBH or the schedule).

Thats what I said, it moves around a lot. It's only scheduled at 11 one day next week? They seem quite clear that it isn't on at 11 the other days?

Degsy

deadhead13 wrote: »

His current contract won't be up until july 2012. A lot can change between now and then.

Yes,my guess is that he'll be told to take another paycut,will refuse and then will either jump or be pushed.
Once that happens he's out of teh game completly as no other network would be able(or would want) to pay the buffoon's exhorbitant wage expectations.
He may get a couple of ads to host but if its anything to do with food,he'll put more people off the product than he wouldve thought possible.
He may also get a couple of interviews in a few papers and that shall be it..praise be to Allah.

Jaysoose

Any organisation that can pay Joe duffaaaayyyy a six figure sum per year needs a serious overhaul from the top down.

Seriously that man gets paid an astonishing amount of money for shouting over people for an hour and a bit 5 days a week. He did earn his wages this week after his teary eyed speech in Pat's back garden on the late late, seriously why the fcuk would anybody want to watch that shower of wasters stuff themselves and get twisted on license payers money?

The amount of times on his own show were she gets shown up for having done zero research is laughable, anybody remember the ufc show were he let a guy come on and claim 10 people had died in the last year!! "sorry joe but nobody died last year" ........"ok lets move on, next caller"...uh hang on that guy was talking through his arse.....lets move on..

To be fair he does have the odd one off show were he regales us with his
encyclopedic knowledge of dublin.:rolleyes:

Add that to the money Gerry ryan and Tubridy get and its all a bit ridiculous.

RGDATA!

syklops wrote: »

For your follow up question, what have I gotten from other channels I dont get from RTE, well, for a start, in my DVD collection, I have discs from 3 different series that were made by the BBC. These are Top Gear, Doctor Who and Spooks. I do not have a single disc from RTE. I have a set of discs from a series that was offered to RTE but they turned it down, the series in question is of course Father Ted.

I admit, the number DVDs a person has bears little relevance to how appreciated a show is, but I can not think of one single show made by RTE that I would care to watch over and over again like I do with the DVDs I have mentioned. Apart from news, current affairs and sport, I can not think of any shows that RTE produces which I would care to watch repeatedly (with the exception of Podge and Rodge but that is not produced by RTE).

Top Gear I will watch over and over. Same for Doctor Who and Spooks. I will and do watch them over and over.

As for the first part of your question, why do you want to know?

Fair enough. As someone who seems very dissatisfied with RTE, I was curious about what channels you did watch to see how it differed from the that of the "average" Irish person (as per the neilson ratings).

You mentioned some BBC shows - I think the BBC is excellent but I'm sure I don't need to point out to you that if you were living in Britain you'd be paying them a license fee too. Would that bother you like it does quite a lot of people over there (who I would contend don't realise how lucky they are)?

You mentioned you do watch Irish news/current affairs/sport: that actually represents a fair chunk of RTE's self-produced output. Those categories would cover the majority of what I watch on RTE, along with various Irish documentaries (say Reeling in the Years, Scannal and other once off series like the recent one on suicide, or the Bertie one), and the odd arts show (The View/One on One/the special on Heaney) or drama (The Clinic, Irish movies/short films, one off stuff like Prosperity). I think the quality of a lot of these shows is pretty high, and I think I get good value for my license fee. Of course, there's a lot of stuff they put out that I can't stand - Tubridy & Gerry Ryan for example - but I can hardly expect their entire output to suit me.

It seems like you don't value the news/current affairs/sports you watch as much as maybe I do, and you also have an issue that RTE can't produce original shows to the same quality as the BBC. I think in comparing the two you have to appreciate that the BBC is much better funded, has a much bigger pool of talent to draw on, and obviously this is going to impact the relative quality of their original output.

In general I think there are a lot of unfocussed and unfair criticisms of RTE in this thread.

RGDATA!

ronbyrne2005 wrote: »

Rte expenses are just mad. Why do they have to send irish commentators to many of the football matches in Europe and uk, can they not just watch it in Rte studios and report on it? George Hamilton has seen half the world at licence payers expense and added little to overall coverage of such games. I'd make exceptions for big International games but thats about it.

I have a feeling a lot, if not most, of the Premiership games are commentated on in studio. If they're covering games live then the only way to do it properly is to have two commentators there. The quality of commentary just wouldn't be the same otherwise. I think you're also probably overestimating the expense involved in relation to the viewing figures the Champions League pulls in and the money it makes for them.

Elmo

RGDATA! wrote: »

I have a feeling a lot, if not most, of the Premiership games are commentated on in studio. If they're covering games live then the only way to do it properly is to have two commentators there. The quality of commentary just wouldn't be the same otherwise. I think you're also probably overestimating the expense involved in relation to the viewing figures the Champions League pulls in and the money it makes for them.

Which is exactly what many of RTÉ stars would say. RTÉ Radio saw increases in the JNRL stats this month.

But RTÉ and their stars need to realize that the money the earn from Advertising isn't theirs it still remains public property and should be used as carefully to provide extra funding towards many of their shows that don't do as well so that they may improve.

Lets face it if RTÉ reduced the pay of their top 10 stars to 200,000 euro they could produce one more drama series a year.

thebman

The reality is the actual shows they produce (not sports coverage or national issue coverage) is extremely poor.

How many comedies/dramas do RTE make and how many of them have they been able to sell on to other stations at home or abroad?

Now compare that to the BBC.

RGDATA!

thebman wrote: »

The reality is the actual shows they produce (not sports coverage or national issue coverage) is extremely poor.

How many comedies/dramas do RTE make and how many of them have they been able to sell on to other stations at home or abroad?

Now compare that to the BBC.

no doubt the drama/comedy output pales in comparison, but you may as well compare apples with oranges

Elmo

thebman wrote: »

The reality is the actual shows they produce (not sports coverage or national issue coverage) is extremely poor.

How many comedies/dramas do RTE make and how many of them have they been able to sell on to other stations at home or abroad?

Now compare that to the BBC.

Again you can't compare RTE to the BBC. The BBC is a very very very commercial entity. (It owns 50% of the UKTV channels e.g. Dave, Gold etc etc. and has many other commercial properties under its BBC Worldwide arm).

The Clinic is sold to numerous channels around Europe.

Drama's in 2008 where Whistleblower (*2), The Clinic (*10), Single Handed (*2), Raw (*6), Kinnanskully (*6) and of course Fair City. They also invest money into animation, film and short film. And the provided money towards the Broadcasting fund which funds many TG4, TV3, Channel 4 and BBC productions. Including:

Hunger (Channel 4)
The Running Mate (TG4)
School Run (TV3)
Afric (TG4)

Dyr

How about this, rather throwing as much license money at RTE as their directors and fat useless celebrities can gobble up, we make them compete for licence money on a program by program basis along with all the other stations. News current affairs and maybe some sports gets funding if they're up to scratch (memo to GAA and FAI: Hai guys, you need tellyland as much as tellyland needs you. Adjust figures accordingly). The other sh*e they pump out is only funded in exceptional cases, where it proves itself to be worthy first.

The era where the taxpayer funds some monolithic luvvie playground should be long gone.

Elmo

Bambi wrote: »

How about this, rather throwing as much license money at RTE as their directors and fat useless celebrities can gobble up, we make them compete for licence money on a program by program basis along with all the other stations. News current affairs and maybe some sports gets funding if they're up to scratch (memo to GAA and FAI: Hai guys, you need tellyland as much as tellyland needs you. Adjust figures accordingly). The other sh*e they pump out is only funded in exceptional cases, where it proves itself to be worthy first.

The era where the taxpayer funds some monolithic luvvie playground should be long gone.

Should we fund commerical entities such as Setanta and TV3? They make enough money to fund themselfes, look at how much they have lost should we fund the fat cats of those companies, companies that we have no control over?

The BCI runs a fund as mention already which allows independent producers with the backing of Free-To-Air broadcasters gain access to 5% of the license fee each year. Most of TV3s prime time schedule is fill with such productions. Some of which are as questionable as RTÉs muck IMO.

Who runs the fund only another bunch of people in an office call them the BCI if you want it doesn't make a difference.

newbie2

RGDATA! wrote: »

I have a feeling a lot, if not most, of the Premiership games are commentated on in studio. If they're covering games live then the only way to do it properly is to have two commentators there. The quality of commentary just wouldn't be the same otherwise. I think you're also probably overestimating the expense involved in relation to the viewing figures the Champions League pulls in and the money it makes for them.

This is correct.
Facts are very important in a discussion like this - even if it's in AH.
For example:

General Zod wrote:

12k allowance to park their car in the RTE car park. No wonder the staff are refusing the pay cut.

is not true.

Elmo

Some of these losses could be due to their development of DAB (digital Radio) and DTT (digital Television). They also have network costs so that can transmit across the country.

newbie2

Elmo wrote: »

Some of these losses could be due to their development of DAB (digital Radio) and DTT (digital Television). They also have network costs so that can transmit across the country.

FACT
The EBU have requested that all european countries go Digital. The development of DTT coast €40mil per country. Every other european government has funded this - The Irish government stated that RTÉ must fund this themselves. Thats €40mil outta the coffers.

FACT
RTÉ has a remit to fund independent Productions to a sum of €40mil in 2008. RTÉ in fact funded IP's to a tune of €80mil. That's an extra €40mil outta the coffers

thebman

RGDATA! wrote: »

no doubt the drama/comedy output pales in comparison, but you may as well compare apples with oranges

How am I comparing apples and oranges? They are both TV companies making programs and sponsored by the state via TV license fees. They belong to the same set. It is a valid comparison. They are the same thing in two different countries.

Elmo wrote: »

Again you can't compare RTE to the BBC. The BBC is a very very very commercial entity. (It owns 50% of the UKTV channels e.g. Dave, Gold etc etc. and has many other commercial properties under its BBC Worldwide arm).

RTE isn't commercial? News to me, they sure as hell act like a commercial company.

They maybe a failure of one but they are a commercial entity. The BBC didn't always have Dave, Gold etc..

The Clinic is sold to numerous channels around Europe.

So they manage to sell one series outside Ireland successfully, why aren't the others selling? Why does only a minority of one country watch their programming? Could it be that it isn't up to most peoples standards?

Drama's in 2008 where Whistleblower (*2), The Clinic (*10), Single Handed (*2), Raw (*6), Kinnanskully (*6) and of course Fair City. They also invest money into animation, film and short film. And the provided money towards the Broadcasting fund which funds many TG4, TV3, Channel 4 and BBC productions. Including:

Hunger (Channel 4)
The Running Mate (TG4)
School Run (TV3)
Afric (TG4)

Did they get a cut from their investment in these things or were they just giving money to Channel 4? Presumably they got a cut. Kind of flies in the face of them not being a commercial entity.