Cutbacks required at RTE

Elmo

NIMAN wrote: »

I don't think he ever made the Top Ten but I think I seen a figure of 160k once. I'm sure thats not too far off if its not accurate.

Likes of Derek Mooney used to be on 190k too.

I would say that very few of the old timers in RTE are on anything under 100k.
For example, what do you think Larry Gogan's salary would be?

Hard to know, according to reports TV3's average wage was 61,000 in 2015! I think RTE had a similar figure in 2014.

Larry could retire as could many other old timers at RTE.

GreenFolder2

They need to be prepared to lose a few big names to the private sector.

RTE should be about nurturing new talent, not being a subsidised funder of old.

If you want to earn huge money as a broadcaster it really shouldn't be at a public service media outlet.

The same applies to BBC. Some very hard to justify stuff there too.

marno21

2FM is still the only "youth station" in Cork city and county.

There's a youth station in Limerick, Galway and Waterford, but none in Cork.

2FM is still not a consistent station. Game On has no business on a youth station, and Breakfast Republic still has questions over its head. The policy of demoting the older presenters to the weeeknd (Dave Fanning especially) is doing them no favours either because those presenters and their content don't belong on a CHR driven youth station.

Also, Colm Hayes earning 170k in 2014 is absoluely scandalous.

Elmo

marno21 wrote: »

2FM is still the only "youth station" in Cork city and county.

There's a youth station in Limerick, Galway and Waterford, but none in Cork.

2FM is still not a consistent station. Game On has no business on a youth station, and Breakfast Republic still has questions over its head. The policy of demoting the older presenters to the weeeknd (Dave Fanning especially) is doing them no favours either because those presenters and their content don't belong on a CHR driven youth station.

Also, Colm Hayes earning 170k in 2014 is absoluely scandalous.

Red FM.

marno21

Elmo wrote: »

Red FM.

RedFM is not a youth station. They reaffirmed that in 2014 when they took on Neil Prendeville and started playing 80s songs.

There is clearly a market for 2FM in places like Cork (and Wicklow too). But there has been **** all advertising in the last few years that it's now a youth station. How are people to know?

GreenFolder2

2fm is a youth station?!?!!!?

As for red fm their player shows what they play.

http://www.redfm.ie/player/

Looks more like FM104 playlist than aimed at teens.

gordongekko

AwaitYourReply wrote: »

They are accomplished and talented musicians to be fair but I'm just not sure they are an essential requirement every week (or most weeks) just for a few fancy introductions especially given that RTÉ is in major debt and needs to make tough cut back right across the whole operation. If I was charged with making huge cutbacks in an organisation, this would be just one of the many areas I would be considering.

Otherwise, if RTÉ does not achieve major savings, we will end up with yet more repeats of programmes like "Reeling In The Years" which is an excellent programme but is sadly ending up scheduled for broadcast during prime-time hours far too often. We liked it the first time and maybe the 2nd but after the 10th or 15th showing it starts becoming a bit ridiculous for a channel like RTÉ One.

Im not sure id classify getting rid of the LLS band as a "major savings"

gordongekko

NIMAN wrote: »

There's plenty of people on big money in RTE I'd guess. I'd say anyone in a long time is on the pigs back.

That list of big earners I gave, well a couple of years ago I also seen wages for the likes of Dave Fanning and George Hamilton as well, and they were between 160k-200k iirc.

Thats huge wages for the jobs they do. Remember George Hamilton is flown all over the world to the best sporting events, put up in best hotels and fed and watered on the licence payers money, and yet he still earns 200k per year!

Good work if you can get it.

He'd want some pair of binoculars to do commentary from the stadiums without actually being there. He is still the best commentator we have.

NIMAN

He's paid too much. IMHO.

minikin

Fair City ---> Bin.

Elmo

marno21 wrote: »

RedFM is not a youth station. They reaffirmed that in 2014 when they took on Neil Prendeville and started playing 80s songs.

There is clearly a market for 2FM in places like Cork (and Wicklow too). But there has been **** all advertising in the last few years that it's now a youth station. How are people to know?

Both FM104 and 98FM and national TodayFM have shows like Neil prendervill part of their news and current affairs programming commitment

Also Wicklow has BeatFM are they not part of that licence?

Walter2016

Sam Russell wrote: »

If my memory serves me right, Turbridy got the Late Late Show Orchestra (complete with violins, etc) when he took over, which shrank to the LLS House Band after the first or second season.

His pay has also shrunk.

And the lls is still the biggest proft maker for rte

Walter2016

NIMAN wrote: »

The No1 for me has to be wages, end of.

How we can have a handful of presenters/radio hosts earning in excess of the President of the USA for hosting a radio show is baffling.

I always laugh at this ridiculous type of comment.

Maybe do a tiny weeny bit of research on ridiculous statements before spouting them out.

I don't think any presenters have a private staff of 100+ people, all living expenses, multiple drivers, a few airplanes at the ready and massive speech circuit earning power after a few years.

irishfeen

Salary cap of about 120k should be imposed across the board in RTÉ.. if the private sector want the "stars" then so be it... its sh1t or bust for RTÉ if they don't start changing.

Close 2fm and Lyric fm, demand advertisement opportunities on News Now and if they are not given close it down too. Demand RTÉ Three's launch too with ad's - RTÉ must be one of the most restricted broadcasters in terms of running their own ship.

RTÉ need to start playing hard ball too, take the GAA for example... the GAA need RTÉ as much as RTÉ need the GAA - they should be hammering home for a very decent deal - TV3 will not and cannot broadcast the shear quantity of poorer games.

RTÉ is a very good broadcaster but things need to change.

Walter2016

irishfeen wrote: »

Salary cap of about 120k should be imposed across the board in RTÉ.. if the private sector want the "stars" then so be it... its sh1t or bust for RTÉ if they don't start changing.

Close 2fm and Lyric fm, demand advertisement opportunities on News Now and if they are not given close it down too. Deimand RTÉ Three's launch too with ad's - RTÉ must be one of the most restricted broadcasters in terms of running their own ship.

RTÉ need to start playing hard ball too, take the GAA for example... the GAA need RTÉ as much as RTÉ need the GAA - they should be hammering home for a very decent deal - TV3 will not and cannot broadcast the shear quantity of poorer games.

RTÉ is a very good broadcaster but things need to change.

And if such a cap was imposed, they'd leave, viewership would drop with resultant advertising revenue and that would continue to oblivion

Rte can have a max of 6 minutes of adverts, tv3 etc can have 12 and sky can have as many as they like.

irishfeen

Walter2016 wrote: »

And if such a cap was imposed, they'd leave, viewership would drop with resultant advertising revenue and that would continue to oblivion

Rte can have a max of 6 minutes of adverts, tv3 etc can have 12 and sky can have as many as they like.

Honestly - where would they all go? Ireland now has one loss making competitor to RTÉ.

Granted Newstalk may take one or two but your not going to get C103 in Cork or the likes paying 120k to a presenter for 10-15 hrs of radio.

Walter2016

irishfeen wrote: »

Honestly - where would they all go? Ireland now has one loss making competitor to RTÉ.

Granted Newstalk may take one or two but your not going to get C103 in Cork or the likes paying 120k to a presenter for 10-15 hrs of radio.

A hop across the Irish sea has tons of opportunity.

Only the very top presenters are on 100k+

All of their shows bring substantial advertising / sponsorship revenue that ensures their shows are profitable

Its the likes of sport, specialist programmes, children's programmes, arts such as the orchestra and the likes of lyric and also long wave broadcasting that cost money.

But this type of programming is needed and THAT'S why rte must exist.

They could easily go the tv3 route and strip out costs and double the number of adverts.

But do we always have to just go the populist route and ignore specialist areas?

Life would be so boring then.

dublinman1990

RTE News & Current Affairs should not have their presenters being rewarded with high wages either.

The days of Miriam O'Callaghan, George Lee & Bryan Dobson earning hundreds of thousands of euro a year should be well over by now as their current salaries are scandalous. A maximum of €120k for the news presenters & €150k for the head of RTE News & Current Affairs should be doable for them to live on to save some money in their wage bill.

That department should be able to make some sacrifices if they are really committed to make higher quality news programmes to meet their public service remit. Their Irish coverage is fine although a little too much on the government side. Their international news output is very poor from an Irish perspective. It should make drastic improvements to it's international news coverage to make it's more exceptional than other broadcasters like TV3 at a much higher level of accuracy & credibility.

RTE News Now should also make big changes to it's output by including advertising in it's channel. It is under the control of RTE Commercial Enterprises even though it doesn't make any advertising revenue. It should preferably be under the control of RTE News & Current Affairs. How it could make any money at all if nothing is coming in other than Licence Fee revenue to fund the channel.

Pokemon Battle

Pat Kenny proves that it is ridiculous for RTE to be paying their stars big money, listenership has actually gone up on radio 1s today show since he left and his tv 3 show has flopped in the ratings, yet RTE were paying him 900 k per year in 2009.

Old Bill

There is no reason why anyone working in RTE should be paid more than a government minster.

marno21

Elmo wrote: »

Both FM104 and 98FM and national TodayFM have shows like Neil prendervill part of their news and current affairs programming commitment

Also Wicklow has BeatFM are they not part of that licence?

FM104, 98FM and Today FM are not youth stations. FM104 & 98FM are 25-44 target market? and SPIN 1038 is 18-34. Not sure what Today FM is.

Beat covers Tipperary South, Kilkenny, Carlow, Wexford and Waterford. Wicklow has no licenced CHR station but large swathes of the county are able to receive iRadio, Spin 1038 and Beat. They also have a new music type show on East Coast FM from 7-10 every evening (used to be 7-12 I believe but open to correction there).

Sam Russell

Old Bill wrote: »

There is no reason why anyone working in RTE should be paid more than a government minster.

Why are Government ministers so highly paid? They should have their salary capped. Also, their expenses are far too high and should be fully vouched. Maybe all public servants should have their salaries capped.

Where does this stop?

NIMAN

Walter2016 wrote: »

A hop across the Irish sea has tons of opportunity.

Only the very top presenters are on 100k+

All of their shows bring substantial advertising / sponsorship revenue that ensures their shows are profitable

Just on these 2 points, I'm sorry but got to take issue with them.

First, I would say very few of RTEs 'talent' would get straight into jobs across the Irish Sea. Many of them are not that great at their jobs to begin with, and I'm sure they isn't endless media jobs in the UK either.
Some like Ryan Tubridy, who has done some time on BBC Radio 2, might get work, but you can bet he wouldn't be offered the money he's getting here. But do you honestly think Miriam, Dobbo, Dave Fanning, George Hamilton, Marty Morrissey, Joe Duffy, Ray D'Arcy etc would be in high demand outside of Ireland? You're delusional if you think so.

Secondly, all of the top shows bring in substantial advertising revenue? Really? There's an ongoing laugh in the LiveLine and Ray D'Arcy threads here on Boards about how little paying adverts there is in their programmes. 50% at least of adverts on LiveLine for example are for other RTE shows, orchestras etc. The belief that Ray D'Arcy and Joe Duffy, between them being paid the guts of a million euro annually, bring in huge amounts of money for RTE is disinformtation I think.

learn_more

I made a suggestion about this over on this thread just last week: Court Reports RTE

learn_more wrote: »

I think it's totally outrageous. It's gratuitous and unnecessary. Both parties would be stressed out enough without dealing with television cameras as they enter and leave. God forbid I'd ever be in that situation but I'd be inclined to trip them over if they came too close.

There is so little big news in Ireland in comparison to the UK. Hardly a news bulletin goes by without 1 or more court cases being reported each day complete with on location reporter and crew.

Cut the 6/1 news to half an hour, ditch a presenter, ditch a cameraman and a reporter or 2, and lower the license fee.

political analyst

Walter2016 wrote: »

And if such a cap was imposed, they'd leave, viewership would drop with resultant advertising revenue and that would continue to oblivion

Rte can have a max of 6 minutes of adverts, tv3 etc can have 12 and sky can have as many as they like.

How would their departure cause viewership to drop? Surely, RTÉ would find good workers to replace them.

lawred2

AwaitYourReply wrote: »

If one is to believe today's edition of The Irish Times newspaper, it seems that music groups such as the RTÉ sponsored orchestras are under the microscope for some cutbacks. See below article link.

http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/rt%C3%A9-not-making-right-noises-about-musical-movements-1.2885367

There is speculation that RTÉ's teletext service, Aertel will face the axe as part of their drive to cut costs right across the board. Given that TV3's THREEText, BBC Ceefax, ITV/C4 Oracle have all long since departed the scene, I would think the end days for Aertel are probably not far off at this stage.

I often wonder can RTÉ really afford The Late Late Show house band week in, week out. In bygone years when RTÉ once held a national TV/Radio monopoly, The Late Late Show might have had a musical director in the form of Jim Doherty or Frank McNamara all on his own on the piano as they had no resident band even though RTÉ would have been earning considerably more throught TV licence fee and commercial advertising revenue and faced little or no competition in it's earlier years especially if viewers were not based along the East Coast/Border Areas. The band only arrived when Tubridy pulled the concept over from his previous Tubridy Tonight show that went out on Saturday nights. Pat Kenny had no band or musical director if memory serves me correct from 1999-2009. Most music on the show will come from performing artists anyway so; it's a luxury they can hardly afford if they are forced into making major cutbacks in quality output across RTÉ. If I hear any more jazzed-up versions of The Late Late Show signature theme played by that band, I think I'll puke as it is unnecessary and almost nauseating at this stage.

In today's radio marketplace, I see absolutely little or no reason why RTÉ still supports 2FM as nowadays you have the whole independent commercial radio sector providing this choice and sometimes often better quality. After several unsuccessful revamps at 2FM it is now clear that 2FM has lost it's purpose, identity and the affection is once had with many radio listeners now aged in the over 35+Yrs category. The tide has been turning for quite some time but was never more apparent after the late Gerry Ryan had passed away around April, 2010. The best thing RTÉ could do now is to closedown 2FM altogether and request permission to transfer the "RTÉ Gold" digital station onto the FM frequency currently used by 2FM. This would make sense as you are likely to find a bigger audience tuning into the service if it was more freely available and for those on the move. Larry Gogan, Dave Fanning, Rick O'Shea do not fit well in the current younger age demographic targeted by 2FM but I'm not sure enough younger people are gonna tune in to the likes of Nicky Byrne, Ruth & Co. either as today's youth have so much more devices to choose to hear their favourite music unlike it was when 2FM was a huge player from 1979-1997. RTÉ closed Cork Local Radio (RTÉ Radio Cork/89FM) in the early 2000's and expanded FM3 Classical Music (was once one of the Radio One opt-out services) and RTÉ Lyric fm was established at the same time so; there is a precedent for closing one operation while expanding another!

I would not like to be Dee Forbes as she is likely to face lots of criticism no matter what she is forced to axe or cut back but they need to make serious progress on multiple fronts from TV Licence Fee evasion, selling off expensive lands at it's Montrose Campus HQ or even moving to a much cheaper site if they can get significant income from an outright sale. RTÉ needs to outsource right across the board and be allowed to stop having to do everything as they cannot continue to expand services on much less income/revenue coming in.

That said, if nobody else is performing a function they currently provide, it needs to be carefully considered and explored. If however; there is competition and no shortage of something they already provide then maybe it needs to be under scrutiny...does RTÉ really need to be purchasing EastEnders soap opera from the BBC while most viewers across Ireland now have easy access to BBC One across the country as it is available free-to-air on digital satellite and also on cable tv systems. Many viewers will probably choose to watch it over on BBC One as they won't have to wait for the commercial break half way through an episode of EastEnders on RTÉ One!

Aertel is still there? Jesus wept

icdg

They want to close it, but unfortunately someone decided in 2009 to put a clause in the Broadcasting Act which could be read as requiring RTE to operate a teletext service. It wasn't there in the previous Broadcasting Authority Acts of course which makes the fact that it was put in as late as 2009, when teletext was already a dying technology, really bizzare.

GreenFolder2

They also force eir to maintain pay phones for similar reasons.

Elmo

icdg wrote: »

They want to close it, but unfortunately someone decided in 2009 to put a clause in the Broadcasting Act which could be read as requiring RTE to operate a teletext service. It wasn't there in the previous Broadcasting Authority Acts of course which makes the fact that it was put in as late as 2009, when teletext was already a dying technology, really bizzare.

On this: I get the impression that it is analogue Aertel they are retaining when in reality those people still using the service are on saorview which only provides Digital Aertel.

BuilderPlumber

GreenFolder2 wrote: »

2fm is a youth station?!?!!!?

As for red fm their player shows what they play.

http://www.redfm.ie/player/

Looks more like FM104 playlist than aimed at teens.

All them stations are the same. They have overpaid presenters who think they are god and force whatever their agenda is on the people. Whether 'aimed' at young, middle aged or old, the same old same old is pushed to the limit. As a person who lives in Cork a lot of the time I know only too well about Red FM. It is your typical city based local station complete with a few obnoxious presenters, very poor music and silly talk shows.