Who will get the new TV licence tender?

Zird

And how are they going to realistically make people who refuse to engage with an post pay ?

Elmo

Zird wrote: »

And how are they going to realistically make people who refuse to engage with an post pay ?

Probably some British company.

An Post might get it. The real problem is the cost of collection, can anyone show how the department caluclates the payment given to An Post, its a major part of An Post's finances.

Could go like the property tax and be deducted at source!

JDxtra

Current system suffers from wastage during collection and high evasion - not to mention the constant costs of marketing. Giant waste of time. If we must pay it, slice it out of tax at source.

JDxtra

JDxtra wrote: »

Current system suffers from wastage during collection and high evasion - not to mention the constant costs of marketing. Giant waste of time. If we must pay it, slice it out of tax at source.

When i lived abroad and got my payslip, there was a charge called metropolitan tax which paid for rubbish collection and tv licence. It was very small maybe a tenner a month but was such a more sensible way to do it.

The TV licence made some sense in the sixties when not everyone had a TV. Not even every home had one. But now practically every home does have one. Surely a better way of collecting it is required.

In a previous post i estimated collection of the license costs a million a year minimum, and could be several multiples of it.

Elmo

JDxtra wrote: »

Current system suffers from wastage during collection and high evasion - not to mention the constant costs of marketing. Giant waste of time. If we must pay it, slice it out of tax at source.

Who markets it?
A RTÉ
B Dept of Comms
C An Post

Answers on a postcard

Elmo

[Deleted User] wrote: »

The TV licence made some sense in the sixties when not everyone had a TV. Not even every home had one. But now practically every home does have one. Surely a better way of collecting it is required.

They also had a Radio License

decky1

Elmo wrote: »

They also had a Radio License

many many years ago there was a 'pipe' license, when tobacco was in short supply, mayne the war years?:eek:

Elmo

decky1 wrote: »

many many years ago there was a 'pipe' license, when tobacco was in short supply, mayne the war years?:eek:

My point was in tandem with the introduction of the TV license we already had a Radio license it was dropped in the 1970s, it didn’t come from the 1960s, the fee was introduced in the 1920s.

I am not arguing that the collection method doesn’t have to change.

liamo1979

Zird wrote: »

And how are they going to realistically make people who refuse to engage with an post pay ?

Today I bought a 4K monitor 43'' (philips bdm4350uc) - I dont watch tv nor have i done so for a number of years, i stream everything through an android box which is not capable of recieving a television signal. So there you go, two devices not capable of recieving a tv signal.
The new broadcast charge is coming into affect in 5 years.
thats €160 x 5 = €800 saved.

Paul Pott

Iirc until 2002 an post got very little from the license fee and were even talking about getting out of the business but when Dermot Ahern increased the license fee substantially in 2002, he also put up the commission to an post significantly.

GreenandRed

Forget a licence. Add the charge into broadband charges per provider so when you pay the monthly bill your TV licence fee is being paid. And give an option where you would like the money to be split. RTE TV would get none of mine if I had a choice.

Elmo

GreenandRed wrote: »

Forget a licence. Add the charge into broadband charges per provider so when you pay the monthly bill your TV licence fee is being paid. And give an option where you would like the money to be split. RTE TV would get none of mine if I had a choice.

Over to Virgin Media?

GreenandRed

Elmo wrote: »

Over to Virgin Media?

No, thou gh their Champions League coverage usn't bad, bar Souness. RTE Radio Sport is good. Would give some to podcasts. GAA Hour, Mayo News, The Examiner, The Stand, Balls.ie

dulpit

GreenandRed wrote: »

No, thou gh their Champions League coverage usn't bad, bar Souness. RTE Radio Sport is good. Would give some to podcasts. GAA Hour, Mayo News, The Examiner, The Stand, Balls.ie

So basically only what you would use? And nothing else - so ignoring the whole point of public broadcasting?

GreenandRed

dulpit wrote: »

So basically only what you would use? And nothing else - so ignoring the whole point of public broadcasting?

Yes. Why can't I decide where my licence fee goes?
Is the point of public broadcasting keeping RTE TV afloat even though it's well past it's sell by date? Sell off any part of It that an interested party could turn a profit and stop wasting taxpayers money.

NuttyMcNutty

Get the drug dealers to collect it, if ye don't pay your debt you get shot, wiping out half the audience and probably solve the housing crisis at the same time.

dulpit

GreenandRed wrote: »

Yes. Why can't I decide where my licence fee goes?
Is the point of public broadcasting keeping RTE TV afloat even though it's well past it's sell by date? Sell off any part of It that an interested party could turn a profit and stop wasting taxpayers money.

Because one of the reasons public broadcasting exists is to facilitate the coverage of non-commercially viable elements.

GreenandRed

dulpit wrote: »

Because one of the reasons public broadcasting exists is to facilitate the coverage of non-commercially viable elements.

I think it's one of the reasons it has existed until until 2019. But there are a lot more alternative forms of briadcasting and media available now to make RTE TV les relevant. They're already outsourcing their Childrens TV programs. If they have lesz viewers year on year government should downsize RTE TV, scrap the TV licence, and fund them for the reduced output they'll produce.

icdg

GreenandRed wrote: »

Yes. Why can't I decide where my licence fee goes?
.

Because there are 5,000,000 people in this country who would have 5,000,000 different ideas about how the license fee would be apportioned? How do you think that system would be administered?

If people want public service broadcasting, they need to accept that the general public consists of many different groups with many different interests, and that the role of a PSB is to service as wide a range of those interests as possible. Some advocate the “narrow PSB” - that does news, current affairs and kids and not much else. If anything that would only result in more calls to do away with the license.

If people don’t want public service broadcasting, they need to accept that the only programmes which will be aired will be ones that will attract the highest portion of advertising revenue or that enough people are willing to fork out a subscription for. Or both. Don’t expect Lyric FM, TG4, or RnaG to survive in that world. Have a look at TVNZ to see what a fully commercial RTE would look like. TVNZ1’s entire prime time schedule for tomorrow night (aside from the news) is Australian and UK programmes.

GreenandRed

icdg wrote: »

Because there are 5,000,000 people in this country who would have 5,000,000 different ideas about how the license fee would be apportioned? How do you think that system would be administered?

If people want public service broadcasting, they need to accept that the general public consists of many different groups with many different interests, and that the role of a PSB is to service as wide a range of those interests as possible. Some advocate the “narrow PSB” - that does news, current affairs and kids and not much else. If anything that would only result in more calls to do away with the license.

If people don’t want public service broadcasting, they need to accept that the only programmes which will be aired will be ones that will attract the highest portion of advertising revenue or that enough people are willing to fork out a subscription for. Or both. Don’t expect Lyric FM, TG4, or RnaG to survive in that world. Have a look at TVNZ to see what a fully commercial RTE would look like. TVNZ1’s entire prime time schedule for tomorrow night (aside from the news) is Australian and UK programmes.

There aren't 5 million people in Ireland eligible to pay a licence fee. Good question on how people decide how the licence fee is appo rtikned. Maybe by having options of various broadcasters to allocate a percentage to. For me it's criminal the way RTE TV get the bulk of the money, plus licence fee money, plus government fundingvto prop them up. They don't produce anything worthwhile for me other tgan some sports and news. I'm happy enough with RTE radio. TG4 is prmoting the Irish language and their GAA coverage is good so keep funding it. I don't want RTE TV to be fully commercial. I want it closed and fir taxpayers to stop funding a lossmaker same as they cut some national bus routes because these public service routes were not viable.

Outkast_IRE

Nobody should get it , there should be a small charge on the broadband & mobile phone bills. If everybody was actually paying it the charge would be minimal

lertsnim

GreenandRed wrote: »

They don't produce anything worthwhile for me other tgan some sports and news. I'm happy enough with RTE radio. TG4 is prmoting the Irish language and their GAA coverage is good so keep funding it.

I on the other hand watch more than sport and news on RTÉ. Should viewers like me not have our opinions considered? There are others who think TG4 is a waste of time and money so should it be shut down for them?

GreenandRed

lertsnim wrote: »

I on the other hand watch more than sport and news on RTÉ. Should viewers like me not have our opinions considered? There are others who think TG4 is a waste of time and money so should it be shut down for them?

Can you find a way to make RTE TV profitable in a time when more and more competition make that unlikely? But if a majority of licence fee holders want RTE TV closed, TG4 closed of the opposite jn each case they should be listened to.

dulpit

GreenandRed wrote: »

Can you find a way to make RTE TV profitable in a time when more and more competition make that unlikely? But if a majority of licence fee holders want RTE TV closed, TG4 closed of the opposite jn each case they should be listened to.

Public broadcasting shouldn't be profitable though. Ideally it should't make losses either, obviously...

gibgodsman

Exactly why should we pay the TV License? RTE is woeful viewing, no one uses it, the RTE Player never works.

They should completely scrap the License, we are already paying far more in taxes than people did when the TV License came out. €160 is a lot of money to spend every single year on something you do not use.

If the government want their own broadcaster, they can figure a way to pay it via the part of my salary that they already take, as well as the supposed USC charge that was supposed to be scrapped ages ago.

GreenandRed

dulpit wrote: »

Public broadcasting shouldn't be profitable though. Ideally it should't make losses either, obviously...

Even break even seems a long way off. I think that's partly because they're not singing for their supper, under no pressure to pull another Love Hate out of the hat. The government money and licence fee money has them in the comfort zone, are they under pressure to make their jobs accountable if they don't hit advertising revenue targets?

I don't know the tech reasons why the player has buffering, coverage issues. I saw a poster elsewhere saying the ads run ok but the stream doesn't. A pity as the look of the player and content has improved and in 2019 online coverage is more and more important. TG4 Player is great, can download programmes too but, even though it has less content than RTE Player, to help coverage, possibly they learned from any RTE Player mistakes.

Elmo

GreenandRed wrote: »

I don't know the tech reasons why the player has buffering, coverage issues. I saw a poster elsewhere saying the ads run ok but the stream doesn't. A pity as the look of the player and content has improved and in 2019 online coverage is more and more important. TG4 Player is great, can download programmes too but, even though it has less content than RTE Player, to help coverage, possibly they learned from any RTE Player mistakes.

TG4 were well a head of RTÉ with their current player. Also TG4 have been providing full shows online since before RTÉ, though using Windows Player initially, unlike RTÉ's Realplayer!!!