Dee Forbes banging the RTE TV licence drum again 60m uncollected fee *poll not working - pl ignore*

Brendan Bendar

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122184672#Comment_122184672

And my guess is what will happen is a combo of licence fee and Govt subvention of maybe around 50mil.

And they would be kept to that!

retalivity

This is top comedy from someone who suckled at the RTE teat for years, yet somehow ended up in court trying to get millions written off.

I'd say that the 4 presenters are the perfect embodiment of "anti-talent".

https://www.irishmirror.ie/showbiz/rte-ex-musical-director-deplorable-32896887?int_source=nba

fplfan12345

Maybe Backhust is up to the job after all.

How is Dee getting about these days without her RTE funded chauffeur ?

Baba Yaga

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122191175#Comment_122191175

was that yer man that played the piano?and then married the hot blondie that was on a game show?

havnt a notion who the other 4 are so they mustnt have a whole lot of "talent"

aye…and what is dee up to?has she re-surfaced?or is she still "sick"?

RoTelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122183717#Comment_122183717

Pure politics. The public service that the Post Office provides yada yada yada.

RoTelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122184625#Comment_122184625

That article also shows how out of touch the normal reporter and RTÉ staff are with their audience.

Tubridy returned to the station to replace Ryan, and stayed for five years, managing to claw back some gains for the slot, before returning to RTÉ Radio 1 - where he stayed until last summer.

This did not happen. There was no clawing back.

RoTelly

@jmcc

Did the licence fee create a kind of Montrose timewarp while the real world outside moved on while RTE continued to operate in a pre satellite TV/Internet bubble? Ironically, Forbes had a background in cable and satellite TV. The problem in hiring her was that those battles against cable and satellite TV had been fought and lost by RTE decades ago. The competitor was and is the Internet and streaming.

I'd argue that streaming is just an continuation of this competition. I'd argue that Dee Forbes was largely cocooned in Discovery, much of her work was office work and overseeing other people's work, rather than adding anything major. Lots of higher ups are just coasting in their careers. I imagine she might be one of those types.

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122192638#Comment_122192638

Streaming completely changed the broadcasting model. It had been damaged by the introduction of VCRs in the 1980s and then DVDs. That changed the movie broadcasting from syncrhonous (where people had to watch at the time of broadcast) to almost asynchronous (where the viewer could decide when to watch the movie). That viewing shift has been going on for decades but what really changed things was when ordinary TV programmes and series became streamable.

For an organisation like RTE with a dodgy "Player" that frequently does not work, it is hard to compete with the likes of BBC (not available on Irish IPs), Channel4 On Demand (available on Irish IPs) and Sky. Even Amazon and Disney now stream series that previously might have been on RTE (in the middle of the night so as not to interfere with the airtime of the RTE "talent").

Ironically, Forbes was in charge of Discovery Channel in Europe. It introduced its own streaming service (Discovery Plus) a few years ago. On the audio side of things, services like Spotify have hit the broadcast radio model for music. In some respects, it was like the invention of portable transistor radios in the 1960s in that Spotify is available on smartphones. No Tubridy required.

Regards…jmcc

retalivity

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122192223#Comment_122192223

Thats him, married to Theresa Lowe who became a barrister after Where in the World.

RoTelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122192899#Comment_122192899

Do we think that she did anything really to help role out Discovery +, I'd say she's not even their market. She's a sales woman. She's looking at what is the product that I am selling to Sky, Virgin Media and to Advertisers, she see the shift over to OnDemand and a product Discovery + is launch again she's looking at how do we sell this to the consumer, advertisers and our partners. She might be looking at the tiering aspect of such services: -

1. How much FTA channels on broadcast should Discovery have?
2. How do we close broadcast channels?
3. What do we charge our partners for carrying our channels?
4. Should we get into sport as live broadcast repeat become less and less relevant?
5. Should we have a free advertising tier and then a number of premium tiers?
6. Can we do a deal to add discovery plus for all Sky customers, and what fee do we charge Sky?

None of this really talks about content or programme buy, rather its about sales.

I mean you can call the show Africa's Wildlife or Africa: Nature Unleashed! It is still the same documentary, just people might consider watching the second show title.

Perhaps I am naive as to her role in Discovery but I suspect it wasn't even half of the above.

I'd argue DVD's helped Broadcast and Distributors due to the lack or Recording feature.

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122192948#Comment_122192948

Discovery Plus was launched well after she left. (2021)

RTE Player has been a problem for years. D+ is has most of the Discovery channels but the advantage is that a subscription gets some of the series months before they go to air on broadcast. Some of the Australian ones are up to three months ahead. One thing I've noticed with some of the Discovery advertising is that can be woefully off-target. The advertising isn't there (not surprising with a range of channels aimed at different demographics) or is generic with the odd bit of local advertising. With broadcast, the Discovery channels are typically on the lowest tier of Pay TV with a few on FTA.

I think that she was upper management rather than programming. The streaming aspect seems to have happened years after she left for RTE. Not sure when Virgin and Sky added the Discovery channels to their playback service.

DVRs (digital video recorders) began to replace DVDs and they are an integral part of Pay TV now. DVDs were a bit of a technological deadend in that they offered better quality than VCRs and video tape but less usability for the consumer. Once streaming and access to broadband Internet kicked off, the days of the DVD rental chains were numbered. Netflix adapted well. (It was DVD rental based initially.)

Regards…jmcc

Shan Doras

Tbh, I didn't get the backlash against toy show the musical, They took a punt and it failed but the fact that you have shops selling toyshow PJ's and toyshow night sweets hampers etc, it's easy to see why they thought the gamble might pay off. Personally I've never really understood the toyshow hype.

RoTelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122193074#Comment_122193074

I am not arguing the history of Media. I do think the DVD revolution was very fast in comparison to the VHS/VCRs. I think between 2000 - 2010 broadcasters and distributors were helped by the arrival of DVDs because for the broadcaster less people had access to recordable media / PVRs, and DVD sales boomed, far outstripping that of VHS sales. Considering that some movies of the period lived on DVD rather then in Cinemas on their release, e.g. Blade.

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122193398#Comment_122193398

The launch of digital Satellite TV in the late 1990s accelerated the decline of the DVDs. The typical release cycle for a movie was cinema - Pay TV (DVD/Video first then the subscription broadcasters like Sky) - FTA broadcast.

From a production point of view, DVDs were also physically smaller and lighter than video tapes. The price drops of the equipment also helped in that DVD players became disposable technology rather than repairable. Some of the DVD retail chains went bust in the early 2000s because the market was changing so rapidly. FTA broadcast was also struggling because of soccer matches being bought up by Sky (that was mainly in the 1990s) and they were not available live on FTA broadcast. The market has changed so much that some of the streamers have become studios themselves. (Netflix/Prime) Streaming also changed the lifetime of a movie or programme in that it was available for much longer than it would have been on the old cycle.

The irony is that RTE has a back catalogue that would be the basis for a good streaming service if it had a competent management and a reliable delivery system. It increasingly looks like Forbes was the wrong person at the wrong time for RTE.

Regards…jmcc

RoTelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122193565#Comment_122193565

You just have to go into a charity shop or a recycling centre today and see the effects of the 2000 - 2010 DVD boom.

RoTelly

I get this feeling that there are people in RTÉ annoyed that people on boards are giving out about them. Like they are basically saying we shouldn't complain about the service from RTÉ. And then they post attack replies to suggest in someway we should comment on a comments board because we might not be the right type of person to comment!

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122193691#Comment_122193691

A similar technological revolution in the 1980s destroyed RTE as a monopoly broadcaster in Ireland. From the 1970s onwards, Cablelink and some of the other cable TV operations brought crosss-channel TV stations to Irish audiences. That meant that RTE was seeing competition from BBC, ITV and C4. RTE got a bit of a reprieve because most homes had only one TV set so people were largely stuck watching what the adults wanted to watch. Then, in the early 1980s, the manufacturing costs of TVs started to fall as the Asian manufacturers geared up for the European markets. Families began to buy second TVs (often portables) for the kids. The kids no longer had the same loyalty to RTE as their parents. The audience for RTE was changing and RTE never noticed.

At the same time, RTE radio, even with 2FM/Radio 2, couldn't compete with the pirate stations. It now had a new generation of viewers and listeners growing up watching and listening to RTE's competitors. The VCRs made things worse for RTE as most people would have already seen the "big movies" that RTE would later broadcast FTA. Ironically, RTE and An Post/TE jointly owned Cablelink and its Dublin net was the biggest cable TV network in Europe in the 1980s.

Cablelink was testing cable broadband with bandwidth over ten times that of ordinary dial-up in 1998. Unfortunately, that kind of innovation takes money and vision. RTE decided to spend the money on its management and zelebrities rather than upgrading the cable networks and the RTE/TE run Cablelink networks were not upgraded for broadband. UPC and Virgin would later buy Cablelink, upgrade the networks, and effectively dominate the television market in Ireland.

The collapse of the DVD rental chains meant that DVDs switched from being something people rented to something people bought. The record and CD shops benefited for a while. With the rise of Napster and music piracy on the Internet, these shops came under a lot of pressure. DVDs began to be sold online and often at a better price than those in the shops. DVDs required players. As laptop PCs developed, they also included DVD reader/writers so playing DVDs became more than just watching DVDs on the main TV. People were able to watch them on their laptops too. But then laptops got access to the Internet and as download speeds improved (early/mid 2000s), people started to download movies rather than buy DVDs. The RTE mindset was stuck in monopoly mode and oblivious to the way that people were watching TV and movies was changing.

Forbes was just another in that long line of RTE monopoly types even though she had experience of the Pay TV business. The problem for the Pay TV business was fragmentation (lots of people watching or wanting different channels), Piracy, and changing technologies causing new competitors (streaming). RTE's old viewing audience had been split with the advent of cable TV and satellite TV. But the range of channels available meant that specialist programming could be provided for audiences as part of a subscription tier. RTE had no such options and was never even likely to innovate given the size of the market and the lack of abilities of its management to innovate in a changing market. RTE Player was a reactive and quite poor attempt to hold on to some of its audience that it was losing to streamers. RTE needed someone who understood the challenges and was able to innovate. Forbes may have understood some of the challenges. The problem was that she was not able to innovate as the management of RTE was a millstone around the neck of any innovation. And as with the DVD boom and bust, if there's no innovation and adaptation by a broadcaster, its audience will dwindle.

Regards…jmcc

Karppi

Regarding the disappearance of Dee Forbes, does she really think that lying low, below the radar etc is a long term strategy? 'Cos it ain't.

Damien360

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122198786#Comment_122198786

this is Ireland. It has worked for many and in 6 weeks the government holidays will arrive until some time in October. By then it will be old news and off she goes.

Kingslayer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122198916#Comment_122198916

It is working for Rodders and Catherine Martin. She could also try the Leo strategy... leg it.

retalivity

She's gotten away with for nearly a year now, what's to say she'll just keep on keeping on?

Oxo Moran

It shows how pointless Martin is. All the big talk, RTE elite untouched, Forbes will waltz off.

RoTelly

A right thinking government minister would realise that the only option for them would be to split RTÉ up.

1. People are angry at RTÉ, historically RTÉ have always played the poor man, now we know we got bad content from a mismanagement organisation who just failed to do any work, or avoided working.
2. People have stopped paying the licence free for this reason, a small proportion may disagree with Public Service Broadcasting but that is a tiny minority.
3. RTÉ services have never been that good, better to understand what RTÉ currently has making each part smaller than it currently is and invest in content.
4. Changing the licence fee to support this reformed / broken up public service broadcaster, shows that the new service is moving away from the current mismanagement allowing for better content or at least what might be better content, allowing audience buy into the idea of direct exchequer funding for public service broadcasting.
5. Changes to governance and some of the Human resource suggestions are now largely changes that would have been made in any organisation, they aren't really new suggestion and they don't real address the issue of content at the broadcaster.

Martin and the government just sit on reports, and those reports really just relay what we've heard a thousand times before:-

1. The licence fee is broken
2. RTÉ does sports and news well, potentially punching above its weight
3. Implement governance reviews
4. And sure the future looks bright, lets move on.

saabsaab

The future is not bright. In fact T TV is not being seen by the new generation.

It's too expensive as is. Move most of it out of Dublin sell the site and start again.

Floppybits

Lottery Ryan hanging in there on 2fm getting the 2 Johnny's spot.

RoTelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122203217#Comment_122203217

But do we think that RTÉ could attract new viewers by ditching Broadcast services? Do we believe that an organisation that failed largely in both TV and Radio can provide a better non-broadcast service into the future. Honestly I do not believe so.

Brendan Bendar

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122199603#Comment_122199603

Junior Soprano tried that stunt too, not sure if he got away with it though.

Kingslayer

He had no choice though, he was under house arrest @Brendan Bendar The only time he got out was to go to funerals, funnily enough disappearing Dee was spotted at a funeral too.

RoTelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122207502#Comment_122207502

Yeah I think people are getting her mixed up with Moya Doherty. Though I wonder if Jim Jennings got to that Funeral.

fplfan12345

Is Dee Forbes the Irish Jane MacLeod ?

I hope she never gets a minute’s peace.