RTE cost cutting plan predictions

Micheal Varadkar

What do you predict in the cost cutting plan that RTE are to announce next month? Saorsat & All 6 digital radio stations to close, Lyric to move to Dublin are my predictions.

zoobizoo

They should charge for Late Late tickets.

€20 × 200 would almost pay for Kielty's fee per episode.

MrMusician18

Any plan that doesn't include selling off 2fm is not a serious plan.

I don't think they'll close saorsat as isn't that needed the reach the handful of people outside terrestrial coverage

Rows Grower

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058318170/rte-cost-cutting-plan-predictions

Hopefully a cull on all the senior managers that obviously haven't a clue or a bit of interest in how to run a successful company. The thoughts that it's costing me more than the licence fee to subsidize these sloths is infuriating.

Micheal Varadkar

Is there anything in today's papers about it ?

Sam Russell

They need to change the licence fee to a household charge collected by ESB Networks, based on all Eircode addresses that also has an ESB connection. This would include businesses, so spread would be larger, and they could afford to reduce the charge from current €13 odd to €12, and still collect more.

Also a small monthly charge from broadband (to cover streaming) and a similar charge for mobiles (also to cover streaming).

RTE should then be obliged to drop 'sponsorship' of programmes, and only sell advertising in advert breaks. Why programmes are sponsored is beyond me. Equally, having presenter's names built into programme titles is unnecessary - particularly when they are not actually presenting the programme - it is daft, and only inflates their pay and their ego.

They also need to reduce their management, without dropping standards - a difficult call.

2RN needs separating from RTE. Perhaps it should be moved to Eirgrid.

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121244291#Comment_121244291

....should go down well with households that dont use rte services at all!

zell12

RTE to be abolished. Govt will have achieved savings of almost 100%. TG4 and RnaG left untouched.

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121244363#Comment_121244363

...yup, should work well in maintaining some element of democratic control in the country....

Furze99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121244363#Comment_121244363

Well you're right on one thing - the gaelgeoirs are untouchable!

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121244326#Comment_121244326

I doubt that many households are not using RTE services in one way or another. They could be exempted by a scheme similar to the 'off the road' declaration with penalties if it is untrue, including paying back charges.

The licence fee was introduced prior to the setting up of RTE, so revenue collection was the original idea.

The licence fee does not all go to RTE but most does. It is important to keep RTE out of political control but that is always questionable when the Gov is the one to decide the level of funding. The licence fee has not risen for years, and has driven RTE into 'unusual' ways of raising funds.

There is no need to keep it that way, and if RTE were to become like TV3/Virgin Media then heaven help up. Fuzzy unwatchable channels filled with imported low quality unwatchable programmes with wall to wall low value advertising that are unwatchable and irritating - no thank you.

RTE needs to drop the +1 channels, and improve the RTE News channel and be allowed to sell advertising to pay for it.

lertsnim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121244291#Comment_121244291

A charge on electricity and also on broadband and mobiles would be taking the piss.

Expunge

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058318170/rte-cost-cutting-plan-predictions

I doubt that they'll bring all that 'Lyric leaving Limerick' business upon themselves again for fairly small money. There are more ways to skin that cat. Most of it to be automated and voice-tracked by a skeleton on air and production staff would probably be a better saving in the long run.

It comes back to the fact that there are too many bodies everywhere in RTE, considering the production and playout technology available today.

Redundancies are really the only way to make the savings required. No-one wants to entertain this though.

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121244442#Comment_121244442

the non use of rte services is more than likely rising, and more than likely rising rapidly with younger generations, with the use of more modern legal and illegal streaming based services, so if we force charge them for this non use, you ll just further stoke rising tensions and anger occurring, i.e. best of luck with trying to actually put this in place!

Sam Russell

RTE needs to be funded to maintain an Irish cultural identity - either by direct charging a fee or by Gov subsidy, or it becomes a commercial station like VM. The latter option appals me because of their basement standards , with the lowest cost programmes (which usually means cheap imports) and rubbish advertising. Just look at the satellite only channels. RTE does an amount of this.

Raising fees/taxes ring fenced for media/arts is necessary to maintain an Irish identity and culture. A small amount levied on several related areas is preferrable to a single avoidable one.

Taxation of any sort is always unpopular, as is giving handouts to other groups that one is not a beneficiary of the particular hand out.

However, RTE is a national asset that has, in general, served us well over the sixty years they have been broadcasting TV, and the hundred years of radio broadcasting. For most of that time, they were starved of funding.

rob316

I'd keep the news and current affairs and bin everything else. The stark reality is most people don't watch live broadcasted TV anymore it's all on demand now.

Radio keep but burn 2fm to the ground.

Micheal Varadkar

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121244529#Comment_121244529

That's exactly it, closing say RTE Gold makes no sense unless the 3 or 4 lifers behind it are made redundant.

justmehere

The problem is that the people at RTE have the mentality of civil servants, and not as members of a commercial organization. Thus going on jollys around the world and spending money like water is seen as a God-given right, and not a process that first demands a cost-benefit analysis.

Next, dump overpriced staff. For example Geoge Lee who's on €180,000 and not a single climate qualification, yet being RTE's "Environment Correspondent". At best he just regurgitates without being able to add any expert insights, only opinions. We can get them for free. And that's after he resigned in 2009, and somehow got his job back a year later!? That's the yearly license fee from 1,132 homes. A Google search shows that the salary of a QUALIFIED Environmental Correspondant reporter ranges from €56,000 to €62,000. He's on more than twice the higher scale with no qualifications. Before expenses. Crazy and infuritating.

Next, stop sending journalists all over the world for once-off reports to stupid events. I'm guessing they don't exactly travel in economy class and stay in B&Bs either. I just saw Sandra Hurely in Rome, giving a 2 minute report from the "World Food Forum". WTF? Who cares and how much does all that cost, including camera crew and equipment?! Getting a report on a load of well-fed windbags talk about the urgency of feeding the world before retiring to their 5-star restaurants meals is not something I want my money spent on.

I think the final straw for me was when David McCullagh went to London in 2022 to have a chat with John Kilraine, their own London correspondant. They were literally 6 feet apart, chatting to each other beside the Thames for 2 minutes. What the actual f**k. Kilraine is a highly respected and comptent reporter who is quite capable of delivering reports live back to the studio, as he does often. David added absoutely NOTHING by being there. Another waste of money.

Dump the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. For my own sanity, I don't want to work out how many homes are needed to make up the €17.2 MILLION a year running cost... 😭

On the plus side, they won't go on strike, as is the default position of the rest of the civil service. Why? Because they know no one gives a damn.

Micheal Varadkar

In RTE's defence for a moment, the government hamstrung them a lot during the 2010s, refusing them permission to have advertising on the news channel resulting in it never being developed properly and refusing them permission to have programs for adults on daytime RTE TWO after ASO for example.

LambshankRedemption

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121244291#Comment_121244291

Or just abolish the license and pay for it out of normal taxation like most countries do. A small percentage of the VAT take on phones, computers and TV's, plus broadband subscriptions. would easily cover it.

icdg

Very good article by Laura Slattery in todays Times that illustrates the problems with any cost cutting. A plan may well be proposed, but how much of it will be politically implementable?

https://www.irishtimes.com/media/2023/10/17/government-doing-everything-to-distance-itself-from-job-losses-at-rte/

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121248131#Comment_121248131

RTE will just demand more and more money if they go down that route, and politicians will just take the easy route and give it to them. There'll be no cost cutting. It'll be spend spend spend. It'll cost way more than the licence fee in the long run.

LambshankRedemption

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121250397#Comment_121250397

The government are standing up to them at the moment. A change is gonna come.

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121252124#Comment_121252124

Are they? This government are justabout holding the line right now because RTE are on the backfoot but are on the hook to bailout RTE.

It would be a ratchet effect with RTE funding only going in one direction and never being cut. They would be pleading the poor mouth and getting their fellow travellers in media to harangue the government for more money. RTE need to be kept in a box to stop that and the licence fee is one way to do it.

I havent heard any alternative so far I would trust. Any regulator would immediately suffer industry capture.

LambshankRedemption

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121252157#Comment_121252157

Thats what RTE are doing and have been doing for years WITH a license fee. Spend, spend, gold plated flip flops, and then arriving upto PAC cap in hand, poor mouth.

And yes, the government have been standing up to them in the last couple of months. Have you watched any of the PAC hearings? The atmosphere at times could be described as frosty.

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121252173#Comment_121252173

And yet RTE have been getting supplementary funding havent they and more due in the budget...

If all their funding came direct from government it would be even worse.

LambshankRedemption

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121252220#Comment_121252220

Well we are talking about reforms and changes to the current system. If you watch any of the PAC hearings of late, you will see the PAC are not amused. I would hope the outcome of these hearings is they are given a budget, and told thats your lot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtOWIPJe0i4

fritzelly

Drop RTE2 - does anyone watch it anymore?

2FM - which is costing money when it should be self sufficient

All overseas correspondents abolished - every TV station liaises with overseas channels for news reporting, we're a tiny country, why do we need correspondents all over the world to cover a story that might happen (this includes the jaunts for things like elections)

Ditto for sport - do we really need someone outside a stadium interviewing a few fans as they enter?

End of all contractors (since most of them seem to drop in to cover when other contractors are on their extended breaks) - any contractor should be a short term basis only.

Hotels and the like should pay based on number of rooms/tv's - reduce the burden on the general public.

All expenses abolished - FFS if you're on 150k+ year can you really not afford to fill up your car???

All broadcasting positions are put to an open competition with an outside recruiter, no more nepotism, how that will work I don't know but it's all very much an inside job right now with who you know. No new faces are given a chance.

2RN should be separated as a cost neutral operation.

Jaysus I could go on and on but need to go to bed

justmehere

Get rid of all the newscasters, sports readers etc. it would save an absolute fortune, and replace with an AI broadcaster.

Also replace the camera operators with automatic cameras that run on rails - the BBC do this and are operated from a control room.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-j9jQ6JyRg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHPI1uH9llU

NIMAN

We need to drop the 3 levels of news reading.

When Dobbo starts the News At One, he tells us about the main 3 or 4 main headlines.

He then passes over to Brian Jennings, who tells us the same stories again, adding a few extra sentences to pad them out.

And believe it or not, Jennings then hands over to a 3rd person, usually a 'special correspondent' who reiterates the story again, with even more extra padding. If you've never heard it, it's worth a listen tomorrow.

In the great scheme of things, Dobbo could simply read out an extended version of what he usually says, and we could do without the layers of readers after him.

LambshankRedemption

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121256972#Comment_121256972

I'd love to know how much the regional correspondants cost. Pascal Sheehy in Cork and Teresa Mannion in Galway. Considering both places are a 2 hour drive from Dublin, do they really need a regional correspondant for the once in a blue moon when something happens there? Is there really a need for a regional studio in Cork? If so, why is it not in an industrial estate on the outskirts of Cork. Why is it in a prime location in the city centre?