RTE - One More Irish Scandal

elmex

One of the last great scandals in Ireland must be the situation which is RTE.

In all but name it’s rather like a branch of the Irish Civil service, funded by the Government, except that it has its own ability to raise extra cash through advertising.

When it comes to output, it compares very poorly indeed with other broadcasters around the world. It claims it is unfair to compare it to the BBC because the BBC’s budgets caused by the sheer size of its audience gives it much more cash than RTE could ever dream of.

However, when compared to virtually all other broadcasters around the world who are forced to be commercial enterprises due to the fact that they receive not a penny of public money, RTE give pretty rotten value for money.When was the last time it produced anything worthwhile which was sold abroad and generated income for the station?


If we compare the salaries of the talent in RTE, we can see they are vastly overpaid compared to any other broadcaster, particularly when one considers the potential audience. When one considers the actual audience figures, the talent is obscenely overpaid.

The main reason for this, it seems, is that the executives are similarly grossly overpaid when compared to executives in virtually any other broadcaster around the world, and that includes even the BBC. The executives in RTE justify paying themselves so much of the money they are supposed to be using to make good programmes by comparing their salaries to those of the top talent, the levels of which are set by the executives.

But, worst of all, the output from RTE is parochial, narrow, and does not stimulate much creative value outside RTE. The Father Ted writers, famously, did not approach RTE as they knew that RTE would have turned it down (and if RTE had agreed to do it they would have neutered the show to such an extent that it would have been killed off after one series).

Across the world we see broadcasters who have to pay their own way in the world, and this often produces wonderful TV which they then sell around the world and make vast sums of money. Paramount is an example of this which springs to mind and which most readers will be familiar. Paramount doesn’t receive any money from and “licence fee payers”. There are others who are similarly successful. RTE does not even have any ambitions to foster talent to write or produce successful shows abroad, as they prefer instead to suppress talent and produce shows which are parochial, safe and many of which are of poor quality.

Ireland is the land of writers and poets, where talent abounds if only it were given an opportunity by an organisation of vision. Unfortunately, the those who run RTE are too concerned with the security of their own salary “packages” to spend any time trying to produce something world class, and are too blinkered in their vision to want to do anything other than keep the whole show on the road, just as it is, to ensure no one examines its modus operandi too closely.

For far too long this situation has been allowed to continue, and RTE effectively has no body to which it is responsible for what it does with the Licence Fee Payers money.

I contend this is yet another Irish Scandal which is happening now, today, and it will continue to ignore Irish talent in the form of writers and producers, for many years into the future just as it has always done in the past.

Coillte_Bhoy

So, which other broadcasters around the world are you using as an example???

s8n

Why is this in the breaking bad forum ??

DeepBlue

s8n wrote: »

Why is this in the breaking bad forum ??

Because it's where the discerning TV viewers hang out.

Mr E

Moved from Breaking Bad forum to Broadcasting.

Sam Russell

Mr E wrote: »

Moved from Breaking Bad forum to Broadcasting.

You wouldn't move it back again, would you?

Markdub2000

How does one go about setting up a body to police its content and repremand it for shoddy rubbish.

The late late show and B.O. last friday was ridiculous - picking out staff from the canteen at lunch time is an absolute disgrace.

BrianD

Would agree with you regarding the bloated salaries. However, I don't think you're comparing like with like.

RTE's remit is to provide a national broadcasting service for the 4m or so of us living here. That means making programming relevant to this market and its tastes. That's pretty specialist to start with plus the production budgets are tiny in comparison to other countries where Ireland would be a small city. There's no remit to produce for export and hence why it's parochial. By the same standard, BBC and ITV are only able to export a small percentage of their output. Plus a lot of RTE programming is by independent producers so RTE would not be selling it abroad.

I don't agree with your rationale about Fr. Ted. Of course it would have been turned down by RTE. The reason is that it's humour for a non-Irish audience and needed a bigger stage. Plus at the time "oirish" stuff was going down a treat in the UK.

BrianD

Markdub2000 wrote: »

How does one go about setting up a body to police its content and repremand it for shoddy rubbish.

The late late show and B.O. last friday was ridiculous - picking out staff from the canteen at lunch time is an absolute disgrace.

Contact these guys? http://www.rte.ie/about/audiencecouncil.html

mike65

Paramount is a film and television production company not a broadcaster.

Most developed TV markets have a licence fee system.

Yes the famous names are paid over the odds for what they actually do and yes RTE is
run with all the wit of a dusty semi state body.

Exportable quality drama is very expensive to produce and so its hardly surprising that RTE has made very little of it - though they do have a half decent record with co-productions like that one about the Kerry cop.

Markdub2000

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BrianD

Markdub2000 wrote: »

Oh please sky back in the 90's was on a similar scale to rte and somehow didn't put out half the crap of this network on a smaller budget

Which Sky channel are you referring to? What is now Sky 1? Their programming was all bought it bar a few low budget chat shows. You'd be hard pressed to remember anything on the channel apart from The Simpsons.

Markdub2000

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Ash.J.Williams

I have some issues with RTE....mainly paying useless people too much money, and handing big jobs to the inept (ryan Tubridy)

however....i think RTE would P*ss all over most other countries national broadcasting output (bbc excluded as they are huuuge) I watched a German music awards show recently and it had 10 times the cringe factor of an Irish equivilent.

I also would hope RTE never turns commercial. Then it would be like all the other crap on tv...

I guess if RTE got it's house in order and paid it's staff what they are worth..then I would have no issue.

MarkK

Markdub2000 wrote: »

It had about a million households back in 90's

Plus millions of cable households, both here and in the UK.

BrianD

MarkK wrote: »

Plus millions of cable households, both here and in the UK.

... and satellite and Mr. Murdochs dosh. It's not comparable on any level to RTE. Firstly, it may have had only a million viewers but had access to many times that. On that basis it would suggest that its viewership was low because of output.

Look at the TV ratings - RTE still dominates with home produced programming in a market that has increasing choice via cable, satellite and Saorview (ok, you just a couple extra channels on sv over analogue).

Markdub2000

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MacGyver

elmex wrote: »

When was the last time it produced anything worthwhile which was sold abroad and generated income for the station?

Mrs Browns boys is sold to the UK very successfully and is doing a uk tour with lots of other stuff to go with it www.mrsbrownsboys.com

Markdub2000

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BrianD

Markdub2000 wrote: »

Just looked at the audience council - no wonder it's a pile of pretentious crap!!!

Not one of them with a "real life" degree !!

Volunteer yourself.

icdg

Markdub2000 wrote: »

Oh please sky back in the 90's was on a similar scale to rte and somehow didn't put out half the crap of this network on a smaller budget

Sky in the 1990s concentrated mainly on Sky News (which was and still is a loss leader) and Sky Sports (which had only one channel until 1994 and two channels up until 1996, and its live rights at the time mainly comprised the Premier League and cricket). Until Ibiza Uncovered aired in 1998 Sky One was almost 100% composed of US shows and likewise Sky Movies showed mostly American movies.

MarkK

Markdub2000 wrote: »

Come on, its very easy to compare.

Can't be that easy, since you said "It had about a million households back in 90's " and that was wrong wasn't it?

Markdub2000 wrote: »

Yet somehow Discovery have better documentaries, atlantic have better drama.

Newsflash, other countries outside the UK and Ireland exist.

If you want to talk about the funding for the programming on those channels you need to add up the subscribers in all countries.

Discovery is a multinational broadcaster so it funding does not just come from the UK and Ireland, but all the other countries it operates in such as the USA.

Similarly Sky Atlantic is a quasi "HBO UK and Ireland", a Sky loss leader to drive people to migrate from cable to Sky.

plasmaguy

If it's a semi state or publicly owned body and had links to Fianna Fail, then yes of course scandal will follow it around like a bad smell.

Personally think it's long past time RTE was sold off and privatised.

Nepotism has been rife in there for years, it's just a place where FFers set up their friends with jobs for the boys.

Markdub2000

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BrianD

Markdub2000 wrote: »

Back in 90's many of the networks only existed on sky

The revenue from cable subscribers was even smaller again - almost negligible for analysis above.

There is no excuse for the absolute hog wash rte are putting out.

They have an excellent revenue base, prime epg position for nothing and a hell of a lot of advertising revenue - current ad breaks often exceed 5 mins - if u used a video machine it would shut off pause to prevent tape damage.

Most of their problems are bad acting, poor scripts, awful cliches, state propaganda and bad management.

If it really did have to compete commercially it would flop

Mark this is kind of a pointless arguement as you are being selective in your comparison criteria. Both are TV stations but both have entirely different remits and access to audience.

The fact of the matter is that RTE programmes are right "up there" in the ratings in a market that has been multi-channel for years. Even rural Ireland has a high penetration of multi-channel services because of overspill, deflectors, mmds and satellite since the '90s. So people are choosing with their remotes.

I don't think you'll whatever the government of the day is that they would agree with the view of "state propaganda". Most of them seem to spend their time complaining about RTE are nobbling them - FF in particular.

On the other hand, Sky have been putting out hogwash for donkeys years and there by the grace of Mr. M it goes.

Minstrel27

MacGyver wrote: »

Mrs Browns boys is sold to the UK very successfully and is doing a uk tour with lots of other stuff to go with it www.mrsbrownsboys.com

Isn't Mrs. Browns Boys a co production with BBC Scotland?

lawhec

Certainly until the late 90's there was very little Sky produced for themselves for Sky One - they did short lived revivals of Blockbusters and Sale of the Century (which infamously had Simon Cowell on as a contestant), had Pat Sharp presenting a Top 40 music show on Sunday afternoons which was hardly high budget (and was replaced by a show called The Hitmix presented by Terry Christian) and I'm struggling to think of much else, I'm thinking. Ibiza Uncovered was perhaps the beginning of the "reality tv" series that has infested all television since for at least a decade! :eek:

I'd be very certain that had BSkyB not won the rights to the fledgling English Premier League soccer, Sky as it exists today would not do so - there would only be so long that investors would tolerate heavy losses before pulling the plug and by the time the next round of rights came up it might have been too late. The EPL is Sky's golden egg, and have made sure they've paid a lot to keep it because they know punters will shell out for it. If they were to say lose two of their current five rights packages in the next set of bidding rights, they'd be starting to panic and will protect it at almost all costs. Rumour is that Al Jazeera is sniffing around, but nothing is certain until the time comes.

SalteeDog

IMHO compared to other national broadcasters, RTE punches way above it's weight. Certainly it's no match for the BBC, but in fairness the BBC is probably the best national TV station on the planet and as others have pointed out operates on a budget orders of magnitude greater than RTE.

Other than that, comparison with cable TV channels is totally unfair.

popebenny16

SalteeDog wrote: »

IMHO compared to other national broadcasters, RTE punches way above it's weight. Certainly it's no match for the BBC, but in fairness the BBC is probably the best national TV station on the planet and as others have pointed out operates on a budget orders of magnitude greater than RTE.

Other than that, comparison with cable TV channels is totally unfair.

I agree. I am paying around €70 per month to sky = €840 per year. I pay only €160 (or whatever the licence fee is) to RTE. Sky have customers all over europe RTE is restricted to income here. Both have advertising as well.

Ash.J.Williams

yeah definitely shop around and compare RTE to other state broadcasters and you'l see they are not too bad!!!....just stop paying muppetts all that money and fire Tubridy!!!

watty

Seen Italian TV? Makes TV3 look good.

elmex

I find it hard t believe that someone on here pays €840 per annum to Sky tv. Any time I've seek SKY tv I wouldn't let in in my house if they paid me! :-)

The point about RTE is that they seem to be poorly managed. The salaries they pay their "talent" are probably amongst the most generous in the World.

Creatively, the station is very poor, and so long as they continue with the we-are-a-national-broadcaster-with-a-remit-to-do-that attitude, things will remain the same. It's possible to be a national broadcaster and make successful programs which can be sold elsewhere, stimulating creativity and innovation.