TV Licence - ALL TV licence discussion/queries in this thread.

Sam Russell

Apogee wrote: »

Dee Forbes also pushing for this approach.

Originally Posted by Dee Forbes RTE
"This has happened in other markets. Italy had a very positive collection rate. They linked it to electricity and compliance was at such a level they ended up reducing the licence fee."

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/add-new-broadcast-charge-onto-household-utility-bills-rt-chief-dee-forbes-38370891.html

Well, if you do the sums:

Current collection by An Post: cost =5%.
Current (est) non liability = 5%
Current evasion rate (est) = 15 to 25%

So current yield = €160 - 5% -5% -15% = €122.74.

So a Household Broadcasting Charge on the region of €12/month would be less for those that pay, and for the few that are not liability, it is only a small imposition, but they get some benefits from other aspects of broadcasting.

Remember, the Gov are proposing €3 billion be spent on bringing fibre broadband to the rural areas not covered currently (but not spending anything for the urban dwellers that do not have it). Perhaps they should add a charge to this proposed levy to help pay for that.

Why should the general taxation be liable to provide Netflix, social media access and Twitter feeds for rural dwellers? Surely a decent mobile signal should be enough.

Stop moaning ffs

Not to derail but in no universe are the salaries of hosts and presenters in RTÉ justified. It’s not like there’s competition that can offer them competitive rates of pay. There isn’t.

If you saw the salaries cut to realistic levels you’d see a huge amount of people more willing to pay.

And can we drop the advertising on RTÉ after this? The iplayer is abysmally bad for constant ads in particular.

the dark phantom

The fear is big on this thread

Stop moaning ffs

the dark phantom wrote: »

The fear is big on this thread

Not really.
RTÉ isn’t fit for purpose on any single front. Maybe parts of radio 1.
The rest of it?
If we’re going to be forced to pay for something it’s completely reasonable to expect it be worthwhile and value for money. It isn’t at all currently and has never been.
If and when this charge happens it really has to be.

Bob24

Stop moaning ffs wrote: »

Not really.
RTÉ isn’t fit for purpose on any single front. Maybe parts of radio 1.
The rest of it?
If we’re going to be forced to pay for something it’s completely reasonable to expect it be worthwhile and value for money. It isn’t at all currently and has never been.
If and when this charge happens it really has to be.

Agree and I think this is why the new fee structure will be scrapped.

Management at RTÉ and politicians will quickly realise that discussions on the new fee structure inevitably bring scrutiny and criticism of the public service RTÉ delivers (or fails to deliver), which opens a can of worms for them.

political analyst

Why won't the government provide an exemption from the new charge for those people who can prove they have neither TV nor the internet?

political analyst

YFlyer wrote: »

If you have neither of those devices yet have a radio. Wonder would you still be expected to pay?

If they were still expected to pay then what about those people abroad who listen to RTÉ radio on the internet?

political analyst

Sam Russell wrote: »

It is proposed as a broadcasting charge, not a TV licence.

OK, the current licence provides funding for RTE and others to provide certain services including news, current affairs, drama, two orchestras, TG4, plus many cultural events. The new proposal, as far as is known, is to cover those who consume media using devices not covered by the current legislation.

You may currently not travel by public transport, but that does not stop some of the taxes being spent on subsidising it. You may not speak Irish, but there you go. Not everything is directed just for you.

Just one of the terms and conditions of living in Ireland.

The difference is that those things are funded by income tax, aren't they?


By the way, people who chose to use public transport buy tickets to be able to use it. So that comparison doesn't apply to the broadcast charge discussion.

Sam Russell

political analyst wrote: »

The difference is that those things are funded by income tax, aren't they?


By the way, people who chose to use public transport buy tickets to be able to use it. So that comparison doesn't apply to the broadcast charge discussion.

Nothing is exclusively funded by income tax. All taxation goes into a big pot and is doled out by various ministers and agencies as decided by the budget and various votes in the Dail. Some things are funded from ring fenced 'taxes' or charges, but most is just from general taxation.

Public transport is funded by the fare box and by various subsidies, just as RTE is funded by their share of the TV Licence and by advertising revenue. Not a lot of difference.

Bob24

Sam Russell wrote: »

Public transport is funded by the fare box and by various subsidies, just as RTE is funded by their share of the TV Licence and by advertising revenue. Not a lot of difference.

I think it does make a significant difference: in one case funding partly depends on members of the public directly and voluntarily paying to access the service, and thus actively and strongly confirming they see value in it. This does give the service more direct legitimacy from the public in terms of the value it delivers.

Now not all public services need that direct legitimacy (essential services such as policing, education, fire protection, justice, etc don’t) and people can argue RTÉ falls in that category (which I would disagree with), but in any case that is a clear difference.

Another obvious difference is that if you take two otherwise similar taxpayers with one using public transport everyday and the other one never using it, while both are chipping in through general taxation the person who is using the service everyday is expected to make a significantly larger financial contribution towards it than the one never using it (by buying tickets). Whereas if the first person never watches RTÉ and the second one watches it everyday, they are still both expected to contribute equally so as opposed to public transport the total contribution amount doesn’t depend on usage whatsoever.

Sam Russell

Bob24 wrote: »

I think it does make a significant difference: in one case funding partly depends on members of the public directly and voluntarily paying to access the service, and thus actively and strongly confirming they see value in it. This does give the service more direct legitimacy from the public in terms of the value it delivers.

Now not all public services need that direct legitimacy (essential services such as policing, education, fire protection, justice, etc don’t) and people can argue RTÉ falls in that category (which I would disagree with), but in any case that is a clear difference.

Another obvious difference is that if you take two otherwise similar taxpayers with one using public transport everyday and the other one never using it, while both are chipping in through general taxation the person who is using the service everyday is expected to make a significantly larger financial contribution towards it than the one never using it (by buying tickets). Whereas if the first person never watches RTÉ and the second one watches it everyday, they are still both expected to contribute equally so as opposed to public transport the total contribution amount doesn’t depend on usage whatsoever.

Well, that is one view.

However, if the funding of RTE was by general taxation, how many Governments would tend to cut RTE funding when they showed the Gov in a bad light? RTE funding must be ring fenced to protect democracy.

Already the Gov have reduced RTE funding by diverting licence fee money to TG4, independent producers, BAI, etc. They have also refused to increase the Licence fee for a decade.

Whether yo watch RTE or not is irrelevant as far as the legislation is concerned, and in fact the TV licence predates RTE. If you own a TV, then you must pay the licence fee.

By the way, I have no personal interest in RTE or the licence fee, just I do not want undemocratic interference in the media. The 'stars' in RTE are paid way over what is reasonable and are 'stars' just because they are on RTE. How hard is it to read the news?

Bob24

Sam Russell wrote: »

However, if the funding of RTE was by general taxation, how many Governments would tend to cut RTE funding when they showed the Gov in a bad light? RTE funding must be ring fenced to protect democracy.

I agree with this in principle. However I don’t think it is currently working in practice in Ireland.

The problem being that while RTÉ should not be accountable to any government, it still should be accountable to the public.

And currently the need to be independent of government influence is actually used as an excuse to operate with public money and without any accountability to the overall public (one exemple: the editorial team should include people who thing very differently from each other and represent the variety of opinions in the country, but since everyone in there tends to come from the same social and ideological circles this is not the case whatsoever).

Sam Russell

Bob24 wrote: »

I agree with this in principle. However I don’t think it is currently working in practice in Ireland.

The problem being that while RTÉ should not be accountable to any government, it still should be accountable to the public.

And currently the need to be independent of government influence is actually used as an excuse to operate with public money and without any accountability to the overall public.

Well, that is where the BAI comes in. If there is a lack of accountability, then beef up the BAI. But RTE is not the only broadcaster or media producer to benefit from Licence Fee income.

Bob24

Sam Russell wrote: »

Well, that is where the BAI comes in. If there is a lack of accountability, then beef up the BAI.

I’d be very happy with a public consultation to clearly redefine RTÉ’s mission statement in terms of what type of programmes it should favour and how it should represent the variety of opinions in the country within its editorial staff, with then strong power and public accountability for the BAI to enforced these. In exchange of broadening the TV licence collection.

But I honestly doubt RTÉ would be happy with that deal (or that many politicians would dare pushing it forward given the can of worms it would be).

And until this is happening, RTÉ still does have the legitimacy issue I was talking about. And as I was saying I think this is why the new fee will never happen (the more people talk about it, the more RTÉ’s legitimacy will be questioned with no good answers to those questions).

Sam Russell

Bob24 wrote: »

I’d be very happy with a public consultation to clearly redefine RTɒs mission statement in terms of what type of programmes it should favour and how it should represent the variety of opinions in the country within its editorial staff, with then strong power and public accountability for the BAI to enforced these. In exchange of broadening the TV licence collection.

But I honestly doubt RTÉ would be happy with that deal (or that many politicians would dare pushing it forward given the can of worms it would be).

And until this is happening, RTÉ still does have the legitimacy issue I was talking about.

Well, that is a political view. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who would guard the guards?) It does not work like that.

Bob24

Sam Russell wrote: »

Well, that is a political view. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who would guard the guards?) It does not work like that.

How is it a political view?

Sam Russell

Bob24 wrote: »

How is it a political view?

Politics is based on a question of legitimacy. If you agree with me, then that is legitimate and that is fine, otherwise, you are being political.

See what I did there?

Bob24

Sam Russell wrote: »

If you agree with me, then that is legitimate and that is fine, otherwise, you are being political.

See what I did there?

Agree this is indeed what you did in your previous post - but isn’t it more personal disagreement that public legitimacy you are referring to here?

There is such thing as being legitimate to the general public and it is separate from personal agreements and political opinions. For exemple a TD is legitimate because they have won an election and are only handed power for a limited time until they need to either leave or renew that public vote of confidence. It doesn’t mean everyone politically agrees with that particular TD, but people accept all TDs as legitimate because overall they feel the Dail is representative of the diversity of opinions in the country. To say it simply: there might be TDs in the Dail I always disagree with and which I even consider my political enemies, but I still find them completely legitimate because I know that 1) they do represent a good chunk of voter’s opinions and 2) there are other TDs in the Dail which broadly represent my opinions (assuming a few percents of voters do share those opinions).

Now with that in mind, to be legitimate to me RTÉ certainly doesn’t need to only hire journalists I agree with or to always say things I agree with (doing that who actually ruin their public legitimacy as many people who think differently from me would feel their views are never represented by the public broadcaster). What matters for public legitimacy is not that a member of public always agrees with what RTÉ says or with the politic opinion of all RTÉ journalist. What matter is that most people feel RTÉ is representative of the diversity of opinions across the county, including their own opinion. And as I said I think we are far from it. To be fair this is not an issue specific to Ireland though.

Sam Russell

Bob24 wrote: »

Agree this is indeed what you did in your previous post - but isn’t it more personal disagreement that public legitimacy you are referring to here?

There is such thing as being legitimate to the general public and it is separate from personal agreements and political opinions. For exemple a TD is legitimate because they have won an election and are only handed power for a limited time until they need to either leave or renew that public vote of confidence. It doesn’t mean everyone politically agrees with that particular TD, but people accept all TDs as legitimate because overall they feel the Dail is representative of the diversity of opinions in the country. To say it simply: there might be TDs in the Dail I always disagree with and which I even consider my political enemies, but I still find them completely legitimate because I know that 1) they do represent a good chunk of voter’s opinions and 2) there are other TDs in the Dail which broadly represent my opinions (assuming a few percents of voters do share those opinions).

Now with that in mind, to be legitimate to me RTÉ certainly doesn’t need to only hire journalists I agree with or to always say things I agree with (doing that who actually ruin their public legitimacy as many people who think differently from me would feel their views are never represented by the public broadcaster). What matters for public legitimacy is not that a member of public always agrees with what RTÉ says or with the politic opinion of a specific RTÉ journalist. What matter is that most people feel RTÉ is representative of the diversity of opinions across the county, including their own opinion. And as I said I think we are far from it. To be fair this is not an issue specific to Ireland though.

Or even this thread.

Bob24

Sam Russell wrote: »

Or even this thread.

Sure it could also be discussed on other threads, but it is relevant here and has been recurrent on the TV licence thread (I remember multiple discussions over the past few years) because when you are asking people to contribute to a public broadcaster through a TV licence, it is natural for the public to then question how legitimate that broadcaster is and what value it is delivering to the overall population.

This stuff usually goes under the radar most of the time because people have other things to think about, and then tends to resurface when anything related to TV licences appears in the media (such as the proposed new broadcasting charge this week, but 2 years ago we had the same type of discussions when the head of RTE suggested the TV licence cost should be increased).

Johnboy1951

It is also obvious from posts that people do not understand the purpose of the 'tv licence' and how diverse the distribution of those funds are.

A large number seem to equate it with paying to watch RTE programming and nothing else.

Bob24

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

It is also obvious from posts that people do not understand the purpose of the 'tv licence' and how diverse the distribution of those funds are.

A large number seem to equate it with paying to watch RTE programming and nothing else.

Fair point. Here are the 2018 figures from this link so that everyone is on the same page: https://www.rte.ie/news/2019/0802/1066686-licence-fee-breakdown/

* 86% was received by RTÉ
- Of that revenue, 54.2% was spent on TV (RTÉ One and RTÉ2)
- 20.5% on Radio (RTÉ Radio 1, 2fm, RnaG and Lyric)
- 5.7% on the online section of RTÉ
- 4% was spent on TG4
- the rest (15.6%) was allocated to the orchestra, "other channels and services", as well as governance (no breakdown for these is provided)

* 7% were allocated to the Broadcasting Fund (which supports the production of TV and radio programmes and is used by independent producers and commercial broadcasters)

* 7% were retained by An Post as the collection agent to cover operational expenses to collect the fees

political analyst

Sam Russell wrote: »

Well, that is one view.

However, if the funding of RTE was by general taxation, how many Governments would tend to cut RTE funding when they showed the Gov in a bad light? RTE funding must be ring fenced to protect democracy.

Already the Gov have reduced RTE funding by diverting licence fee money to TG4, independent producers, BAI, etc. They have also refused to increase the Licence fee for a decade.

Whether yo watch RTE or not is irrelevant as far as the legislation is concerned, and in fact the TV licence predates RTE. If you own a TV, then you must pay the licence fee.

By the way, I have no personal interest in RTE or the licence fee, just I do not want undemocratic interference in the media. The 'stars' in RTE are paid way over what is reasonable and are 'stars' just because they are on RTE. How hard is it to read the news?

I wonder why our constitutional convention, which paved the way for the repeal of the 8th amendment, hasn't examined the issue of public broadcasting, i.e. the idea of making RTÉ constitutionally independent of the government, just like the judiciary.

political analyst

Sam Russell wrote: »

The 'stars' in RTE are paid way over what is reasonable and are 'stars' just because they are on RTE. How hard is it to read the news?

Isn't the problem with entertainment presenters on RTÉ TV and radio as opposed to newsreaders and journalists?

political analyst

Sam Russell wrote: »

Nothing is exclusively funded by income tax. All taxation goes into a big pot and is doled out by various ministers and agencies as decided by the budget and various votes in the Dail. Some things are funded from ring fenced 'taxes' or charges, but most is just from general taxation.

Public transport is funded by the fare box and by various subsidies, just as RTE is funded by their share of the TV Licence and by advertising revenue. Not a lot of difference.

But motor tax and the universal social charge do fund public services in general - a broadcast charge wouldn't.



To say people who have neither conventional TV nor the internet should pay a broadcast charge is like saying people who don't have motor vehicles should pay motor tax.

Furthermore, I remember reading about a retired public sector worker who had to go on the dole after mandatory retirement until reaching the newly-raised pension age. That person gave up TV for at least the period between the retirement and pension ages because of the cost of a TV licence. Do you think it'd be fair to add a broadcast charge to the predicament of people in that specific situation?

the dark phantom

Stop moaning ffs wrote: »

Not really.
RTÉ isn’t fit for purpose on any single front. Maybe parts of radio 1.
The rest of it?
If we’re going to be forced to pay for something it’s completely reasonable to expect it be worthwhile and value for money. It isn’t at all currently and has never been.
If and when this charge happens it really has to be.

This is Ireland where there is a way around everything, I'v never paid the stupid thing and I won't be paying it in 5 years either. They even tell us in the TV license advert how to avoid paying for god's sake. The only way they can get the money is if they force us to pay it to our service providers and that wouldn't be an easy thing to organise right especially here in Ireland, In five years time who knows what technology will be there for the ordinary person to use to get internet by bypassing service providers obviously people hack internet as it is now but it will probably get much easier for the non computer savvy folk to use in 5 years.
Where there is a will there is a way I wont pay :pac:

Stop moaning ffs

I recently got a letter threatening me that a search warrant was imminent ( if I didn’t pay my tv licence I guess)
This was above and beyond anything I’d ever heard of.

I had been summoned to court a few years back for no tv licence.
The letters had my surname wrong. Let’s say it was Curran when It should have been Cullen. I tried repeatedly to let an post know I don’t have a tv. You’re sending me letters with a different name on it. They didn’t respond.

Went to court on the day anyways just out of fear and sat listening to a licence inspector lie to the court saying he saw a tv in my house and I couldn't produce a licence when asked.
He did knock that day. I told him we don’t have a tv. I didn’t give him my name and closed the door.

Cut back to the court room I was able to show the judge the many emails I’d sent an post, with no reply, also pointed out that they’d somehow gotten my name wrong but how did they even have my name?

Judge threw it out there and then.


That was three years ago or so. Now I’m getting search warrant threats? From an post? I sent them a polite enough reply telling them they can come round and search the house any time they want to. They’ll find no tv and then I’ll present them with the ‘go fvck yourselves’ muffins I’d made specially for them:)


So how is this new regime going to work? I’d happily pay it if it meant quality broadcasting. Not to single him out but we have Ryan Tubridy on a salary over €9000 a week. Nine thousand euros. a week.

I’d pay twice that to have zig and zag and Bosco host the late late in future. They’d be better suited to it.
But
Pic attached of the ‘search warrant notice’

Tubridy-€495,000 pa
Trump - $400,000 pa
Varadkar - €185,350 pa

Sam Russell

Which is why it should be on the ESB Networks bill - if you have a lecky connection, there is a broadcast charge on it. If you don't pay, they'll disconnect.

Simples.

Some people do not want to pay for anything. TV, water, Motor Tax, car insurance, etc, etc.

65535

We already pay for Water - a full payment - go to your tap - you will see.

We already pay for Insurance - so as people can fall off swings.

We already pay for TV - most of us are forced to pay for RTÉ State Pravda

We already pay for Motor Tax - which in turn also pays for the laughing yoga quango - yes you know the one.

Capt'n Midnight

Sagitt wrote: »

But then detatch RTÉ from it and distribute to other content providers.

It already is.

Virgin and TV3 before them didn't do content that qualifies.

TG4 do.