Just wondering , could TG4 go FTA ?

Capt'n Midnight

Since a lot of the stuff is in Irish there should be no rights issues especially for the homeproduced stuff. So couldn't they just get the encryption turned on and off when they show the US imports and films ?

Apart from SKY politics is there any reason they can't

Greenman

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Since a lot of the stuff is in Irish there should be no rights issues especially for the homeproduced stuff. So couldn't they just get the encryption turned on and off when they show the US imports and films ?

Apart from SKY politics is there any reason they can't

Why not RTE1 and 2 FTA aswell with encryption switched on when the rights programmes are on and when the local stuff is on switched off as us folks outside Ireland only want RTE for the local stuff.
Bring back TARA!!! Montrose you should be ashamed of yourself!!!
End of the day RTE are in bed with $ky!!!!

Read my sig!!!

Round Cable

^^ Also FTV cards should be provided to the people who pay their TV licence. :mad:

vsat

Must agree,
If this was france, the french would bring the country to a stop, paying twice for the same service.
TV licence= 160 approx,RTE1,RTE2,Tng. correct me if I'm wrong but TV3 don't get a piece of the pie.
sky = 28.50 per month, for the same service.ripe of Ireland.
:mad: :mad: :mad:

sceptre

vsat wrote:

correct me if I'm wrong but TV3 don't get a piece of the pie.

They're eligible to get a piece of the pie. Whether they take the necessary steps is up to them I suppose. I can't remember exactly what those are.

vsat

vsat wrote:

Must agree,
If this was france, the french would bring the country to a stop, paying twice for the same service.

You are not paying for the same service twice.You are paying extra for a different service, a satelite reception platform with its extra features applied to RTÉ and TV3.
RTÉ aren't charged for being on that platform,iirc Sky looks after everything including renting the transponder space.
300,000 plus people are paying for extra features like an electronic programme guide and guaranteed crystal reception and if you have sky plus one touch recording and series link facilities etc.

Therefore as none of your licence fee goes to sky, you have nothing to complain about.

Tom Dunne

vsat wrote:

TV licence= 160 approx,RTE1,RTE2,Tng. correct me if I'm wrong but TV3 don't get a piece of the pie.
sky = 28.50 per month, for the same service.ripe of Ireland.
:mad: :mad: :mad:

What about NTL? People in Dublin are paying NTL also and they get RTE too. As Earthman says, you are paying extra for the bells and whistles that come with Sky, it just so happens that RTE is included. You are not paying on the double.

This is one pretty lame Rip Off Ireland arguement.

Round Cable

I thought RTE paid for the space, if they don't well then things are 'Fair', RTE should wake up and look at the UK model.

Round Cable

tom dunne wrote:

What about NTL? People in Dublin are paying NTL also and they get RTE too. As Earthman says, you are paying extra for the bells and whistles that come with Sky, it just so happens that RTE is included. You are not paying on the double.

This is one pretty lame Rip Off Ireland arguement.

No it's not a lame argument, if you wish to receive your terrestrial channels digitally (The days of analouge should be behind us now) why should you have to pay twice? If you don't want another channel apart from the Irish ones, why should you have to pay double?

RTÉ don't pay to be on sky.
You are paying for the bells and whistles if you have RTÉ on sky.

In the UK some of the licence fee is going to Sky for regionalisation of the BBC channels and epg placement and of course the BBC are paying for the transponder space.

So to put it another way, why should you get all that for free?

Round Cable

Earthman wrote:

RTÉ don't pay to be on sky.
You are paying for the bells and whistles if you have RTÉ on sky.

In the UK some of the licence fee is going to Sky for regionalisation of the BBC channels and epg placement and of course the BBC are paying for the transponder space.

So to put it another way, why should you get all that for free?

Well here regionalisation is not required, however RTÉ should pay for their transponder space, and give out FTV cards, instead of saving themselves some money and screwing the people. TV licence and Ad's, I think we should be able to receive the channels in digital quality, for free (ie No extra cost) It's a disgrace, the British would never stand for it, why should we?

Round Cable

Round Cable wrote:

for free (ie No extra cost) It's a disgrace, the British would never stand for it, why should we?

Well you see theres the kicker, it couldn't be for free.
Either the licence fee would have to rise to pay for it, or the resources would have to be taken out of programming.

Round Cable

Earthman wrote:

Well you see theres the kicker, it couldn't be for free.
Either the licence fee would have to rise to pay for it, or the resources would have to be taken out of programming.

Well how can the BBC offer 7 channels, with no ads, provide freeview. While RTÉ with the licence fee and ad's can't provide a similar service here? Where does the money go?

kramlq

I find it really annoying that on a non-sky receiver I can receive BBC from UK and various other terrestrial channels from countries all over the place but cannot get RTE.

@earthman, you forget that in some areas, terrestrial receiption is just not good enough to get a proper picture (bad RTE1, ok RTE2, no TV3 or TG4 where I live). So satellite is the best option. Also, most people in Ireland have more than one TV, and subscribing to sky for two would get quite expensive.

I agree Sky are certainly not obliged to give us anything for free, but RTE should certainly try to make our licence fee value for money. If you cannot get their broadcasts without subscribing to sky then I would say it certainly isn't - about 360 for sky (whether you want the other sky channels or not) + 150 for the license. By allowing RTE channels to be part of Sky's subscription they enhance their ability to arbitrarily set prices and leave people with no option but to pay up if they need to receive RTE via satellite.

FTA isn't necessarily an option for them, but could they not have used:
- partial FTA broadcasts
- A FTV scheme using sky cards
- Simulcrypting in another encryption and issuing FTV cards

JohnC.

Round Cable wrote:

Well how can the BBC offer 7 channels, with no ads, provide freeview. While RTÉ with the licence fee and ad's can't provide a similar service here? Where does the money go?

Didn't their licence fee increase? And they have other streams of revenue, like exporting their own shows and whatnot. RTE don't make much worth exporting. DVD sales in recent years probably contribute a bit too.

Round Cable

Round Cable wrote:

Well how can the BBC offer 7 channels, with no ads, provide freeview. While RTÉ with the licence fee and ad's can't provide a similar service here? Where does the money go?

UK-60 million plus people
Ireland - 4 million people
It's called economies of scale.

kramlq

kramlq wrote:

@earthman, you forget that in some areas, terrestrial receiption is just not good enough to get a proper picture (bad RTE1, ok RTE2, no TV3 or TG4 where I live).

RTÉ have several self help schemes where in areas of bad reception from the main transmitters,they provide local low power transmitters free of charge.
Enough households just have to petition RTÉ to have it installed,I've seen it done for less than 20 households in an area.

By the way,I know of many households that cant get sky either for various reasons, some are in appartments and I know of one house that can't get it because of its aspect.
I doubt if those households got together that they would be able to petition BskyB to move to a different satelite or use an additional satellite for them to get the service.
Again thats because of economies of scale.

Round Cable

Earthman wrote:

UK-60 million plus people
Ireland - 4 million people
It's called economies of scale.

Indeed no-one will disagree, the UK licence fee will generate more revenue, however they spend more money on home programming than RTÉ, and foreign rights are a fraction of the cost here. Plus ad's on RTÉ, I'm sorry, but I'd like to hire their accountants.

While this is going way off topic...

Seriously, they have 15 times the population so doing the maths, they either have 15 times the channels or we have 15 times less the channels.
They actually when counting ITV,4 and 5 have only 3 times the number of digital "free" ITV and BBC channels than we have, so effectively we are well served, its just that the digital options arent being provided unless you buy them with the bells and whistles as part of an existing package.

Advertising income? Well heh I beg to differ with you there, it's being spent on programming and the existing service as a matter of fact some advertisers were likely to leave or pay less if RTÉ was not on sky.
Thats because invariably sky users were not in the habit, the advertisers said of switching back to analog to watch RTÉ.

So explain to me where the money is going to come from other than from a reduction in existing services, if theres no licence fee hike to pay for this free to view service you want?

Round Cable

Earthman wrote:

While this is going way off topic...

Seriously, they have 15 times the population so doing the maths, they either have 15 times the channels or we have 15 times less the channels.
They actually when counting ITV,4 and 5 have only 3 times the number of digital "free" ITV and BBC channels than we have, so effectively we are well served, its just that the digital options arent being provided unless you buy them with the bells and whistles as part of an existing package.

Indeed, it's going off topic.

I don't believe that 15 times the population, should have a large impact on the number of channels, as I've said the price of foreign rights are much smaller here. The only area that it would have an impact is home produced programmes, where RTÉ are not expected to produce programmes with the same budget as the BBC, the new 'Dr Who' being a good example. Their news and current affairs is equal if not better than the BBC, so some points for that.

About where to get the money from? I don't know, short of taking it back out of Gay Byrne's back pocket Joking, they've had a deficit last year, so short of raising the fee, they are not going to get any more money. I believe there is a severe mismanagment of the fee, with too much of it going to well established people. Sort that out, look at the shedding the Beeb are doing at the minute.

JohnC.

Like I said already, BBC have other revenue streams. There's this thing called BBC Commercial Enterprises which makes lots of money for them. There's also other grants and things they get apart from the licence fee.

Round Cable

Round Cable wrote:

the new 'Dr Who' .

you've just reminded me of something-thanks sky plus...

Back on topic now

vsat

why can't we Irish just buy a FTV card for RTE, from sky,or when the desired package expires we continue to view RTE channels.
1) RTE don't have supply or finance the cards,
2) Digital service available in most areas,
3) RTE is not left in the dark ages,
:mad:

kramlq

Earthman wrote:

Enough households just have to petition RTÉ to have it installed,I've seen it done for less than 20 households in an area.

Yes, but rather than go around trying to organise a petition, it would be much better to be able to just ring a number and order a FTV card to get the encrypted RTE signals that are already being sent to my receiver (with digital sound and picture as a nice bonus!). If people 50 or 100 km away have bad reception all they would have to do is ring that number as well. The best petition would be one to get a FTV or similar scheme from RTE instead.

Earthman wrote:

By the way,I know of many households that cant get sky either for various reasons, some are in appartments and I know of one house that can't get it because of its aspect.

Yes, terrestrial/cable/satellite all have bad spots, but of the three, satellite would seem a good one to invest in because from day one with bandwith on a transponder and the uplink equipment that they already have it gives every home in Ireland with a view of the southern sky (and potentially ex-pats throughout europe) with decent radio and tv reception. With terrestrial you have to go out and build a new transmitter every time a new petition comes in . With cable, you would need very very long cables and a lot of digging for 100% coverage of Ireland (and Europe if required).

I doubt if those households got together that they would be able to petition BskyB to move to a different satelite or use an additional satellite for them to get the service.

Yes, but its not the same situation:
- Sky dont obligate you to pay for their service. In fact, if I was in the UK I could cancel their service right now and they would let me keep the box so I can still get BBC, and they would downgrade the card to FTV rights only.
- They wont put you in jail if you dont pay (irrespective of whether you can actually receive it or not)
- Sky are not a public service broadcaster, so they are under less obligation to do things simply because its in the public interest. They only do things if they see underexploited opportunities to make money.

kramlq

kramlq wrote:

they would let me keep the box so I can still get BBC, and they would downgrade the card to FTV rights only.
- They wont put you in jail if you dont pay (irrespective of whether you can actually receive it or not)

Ah but in the UK part of your licence fee is going to pay for that "free to air service" you are also paying a once off fee in the case of FTV cards which is more possible there due to the economies of scale.

Now the question remains as to which do you want, a rise in the licence fee or a cut in other services to pay for a "free" satelite service, bearing in mind that the licence will still be mandatory.

Tom Dunne

vsat wrote:

why can't we Irish just buy a FTV card for RTE, from sky,or when the desired package expires we continue to view RTE channels.
1) RTE don't have supply or finance the cards,

This it core of the matter - who will pay for them? Sky? Do you really think Sky will set up a system to allow you to watch channels without them getting any sort of payment? I think not.

kramlq

Earthman wrote:

Ah but in the UK part of your licence fee is going to pay for that "free to air service" you

Yes, and I think RTE should try and use the licence money they are given to provide a similar service (not necessarily FTA obviously) for Irish viewers.
BTW, the BBC were paying for encryption and FTA distribution, now they only pay for distribution, which is a better deal for their license payers.

Earthman wrote:

are also paying a once off fee in the case of FTV cards which is more possible there due to the economies of scale.

Yes, and IMHO a once off fee of about 30 euro (FTV card is £20) is much more acceptable than paying 28 euro a month whether you are interested in the other sky channels or not. And a once off fee system would much better for those wanting RTE in digital on a second (or third or fourth) TV+box.

Earthman wrote:

Now the question remains as to which do you want, a rise in the licence fee or a cut in other services to pay for a "free" satelite service, bearing in mind that the licence will still be mandatory.

Cuts? - Half of Marian Finucane and Pat Kennys combined salary would probably cover a years lease of astra2 capacity

Seriously though, as I have said, I would be willing to pay for a FTV card like they do in UK.

BrianD

Round Cable wrote:

No it's not a lame argument, if you wish to receive your terrestrial channels digitally (The days of analouge should be behind us now) why should you have to pay twice? If you don't want another channel apart from the Irish ones, why should you have to pay double?

Where are you paying double??????
You pay a TV licence fee per household.
You then have a choice of tv delivery platforms depending on your location. You pay the delivery platform - NTL, Chorus, Sky Digital, whoever - for the delivery of your TV signal.


You are not paying double. Sky customers always seem to have a chip on their shoulders about this issue - not surprising given the vast amout of money they pay to Sky each year in subscriptions. €60 per month (correct me if I'm wrong) almost double that of NTL and Chorus customers.

AFAIK, RTE do have to pay Sky for EPG and encryption services. RTE got a bad deal here and should have have got these for free. Sky would never have achieved the penetration they have today without RTE onboard. Mr. M must laughing all the way to the bank.

In regard to a digital freeview system, its quite clear that Irish broadcasting (all players, regulators and the Government) have dropped the ball on this one. RTE can't be solely blamed for this one - as I see it RTE aren't permitted to got it alone on this one and develop a digital replacement for their analogue network. If you recall that some time ago that RTE was supposed to get out of transmission facilities so its unlikely that they'll build a digital network.

Round Cable

BrianD wrote:

Where are you paying double??????
You are not paying double. Sky customers always seem to have a chip on their shoulders about this issue - not surprising given the vast amout of money they pay to Sky each year in subscriptions. €60 per month (correct me if I'm wrong) almost double that of NTL and Chorus customers.

It's not paying double, it's paying treble. Once for the licence, then a subscription for digital viewing. Why would Sky customers have a chip on their shoulder? Cable has to be maintained and will never have free channels. The minimum to watch Irish channels is €28.50, the €60 (€62 to be exact) is for Sky Sports/Movies.

Charles Slane

Round Cable wrote:

It's not paying double, it's paying treble. Once for the licence, then a subscription for digital viewing.

How is that treble ?

Round Cable

Charles Slane wrote:

How is that treble ?

€155 licence fee
€360 1 year digital viewing (well maybe double would be closer)

Charles Slane

Round Cable wrote:

€155 licence fee
€360 1 year digital viewing (well maybe double would be closer)

Right - got it !

Round Cable

Round Cable wrote:

€155 licence fee
€360 1 year digital viewing (well maybe double would be closer)

I see so what are you saying?
Is it that savings must be made elsewhere by RTÉ to get free digital or the licence fee must go up.

The €360 is for the sky EPG and all the sub channels on that package,it would of course be less even when counting the economies of scale to provide a stand alone RTÉ satelite service.
Whatever the transponder costs plus sky's fee for epg placement, plus the card cost and someone to man the phones divided by take up.

Lets have those figures or your best estimate please.

Round Cable

Indeed savings could be made elsewere, how much do those DOG's cost?, about an increase in the licence fee, it's doubled over the last 10 years, but has there been an improvment to the service? NO.

Even with this being said, I wouldn't mind seeing the fee increase by €10 a year, and a cost of a FTV card of €30 for the purposes of free to view digital TV. At the minute; 1 million households pay the fee, with the increase, they'd make €10 million, and the €30 would offset cost of the cards. How much does it cost for transponder space? And with this situation, surely Sky would be paying RTÉ for carriage. Also the €360 a year is not just for RTÉ, many other channels are provided, but still it's the minimum required to view the channels, neither Sky or NTL have the decency to offer the Irish channels, for say, €5 a month.

Well thats ok then-lobby for the increase to pay for stand alone digital.
This diserved a seperate thread,I may split out the off topic stuff tomorrow when i have time and am less merry

Charles Slane

Earthman wrote:

I may split out the off topic stuff tomorrow when i have time and am less merry

Ah, but it's great to be merry at Easter !!

Lennoxschips

It probably loooked like a good deal for RTE at the time but they are probably rueing their decision now. They are basically giving their programmes to Sky for free so Sky can use them to market their package.