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

Zaph wrote: »

What they need to do is farm out the collection of the unpaid licence fees to a proper business that deals with that sort of thing and not rely on An Post to send out vaguely threatening letters every now and then. If they managed to get the rate of non-compliance under 5% then they'd have all the money they could ever dream of and you never know, it might mean an overall reduction in the one tax that I despise paying more than any other.

What agency would you like to see doing the job and how would they operate? The only system available to An Post is the courts, and they initiate thousands of prosecutions every year.

Any new system would need new legislation. But the politicians are too afraid to bring in a scheme which would take money from every household automatically e.g through the Property Tax. And fear is also the reason that they would not allow any increase in the licence fee for the last ten years.

Whopping pay packages good afternoon to you.

I don't agree with privatizing rte. We'd end up with some crook like redacted buying it and feeding us his propaganda. That being said RTE is far to right on and liberal for my liking. Dropping Network 2 is a good idea and reduce the number of radio stations. Lower their salaries.

No way in hell should the license fee increase though. They should count themselves lucky to be getting it as is.

I find RTE radio 1 to be morbid as hell. From their ultra serious grilling of politicians on the morning show to the constant misery on sean o rourke, ray darcy and joe duffy. Every day they end up talking about death and disease. Or else money issues.

I'm not sure if the licence fee has any contribution towards the general upkeep of general signals required to provide TV services of any kind to the people of Ireland. If it does then it has a material impact on the the value of the licence fee. For the purposes of what I'll post in the next few paragraphs I'm going to assume that non-RTE channels receive no benefit from the licence fee, including any costs required to maintain their service to customers here.

There are a few different problems I have with the licence fee in general. First off there is the threatening advertisement that the requirement of a tv licence "is the law, and one of the terms and conditions of living in the Republic of Ireland". Well that's not true for starters.

The quality of programming has taken a marked decline since Forbes took over. I've also seen her own blog style posts appear on the main page of the RTE website. This isn't a personal website, it's the website of the national broadcaster. Their website is quite fond of certain narratives being shared in their "Lifestyle" or "Opinion" piece. These are generally on the same slants, and notably never allow for any comments at the bottom. They also conveniently state that the views don't represent the views of RTE..........why put it on your site then??! By way of a quick scan through of recent examples:

- Karl Marx, a gushing tribute to the man.

- "Can't Cope, Won't Cope hails all female-driven team" - self-explanatory

- "Comic on the genius and absurdity of being a woman" - some female stand-up comedian, that's noteworthy apparently.

- "Why Beyonce Matters" - a dreadful piece

- A few articles on the disparity in pay between the 2 main actors in "The Crown", as well as a few around the Navratilova/BBC non-issue.

- "Lottie will be running amok on Can't Stop Dancing" - Gerry Ryan will never depart RTE, and for some reason they want us to believe that we want all of their kids to be successful in the entertainment industry. We've seen 2 of his daughters and 1 of his sons promoted on their site for some reason. It's not like Ryan was particularly talented or ubiquitously popular. He was at best a reasonably popular guy, in the mould of an Ian Dempsey or Dave Fanning. Nice guys and all, but not remarkable. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the level of nepotism is unbelievable in Montrose.

Forbes has also strongly pursued a feminist agenda, with gender quotas for programming, salary and positions front and centre. We've seen all sorts of crap promoted as elite level stuff and presented people as national treasures, Huberman, "Can't Cope, Won't Cope", Alison Spittle. We've seen plenty of rubbish from guys too, but they rarely get the same level of faux fanfare.

If RTE was truly this impartial organisation then we wouldn't have seen the endless unnecessary anti-Trump, anti-Brexit stuff from them. When it comes to stuff from home then it has largely done well to remain apolitical, but even that is under threat I feel.

I consider it anti-competitive to demand a payment for a service, and only then can people use the services of their competitor. What if I want to sign-up to Sky Sports or the like but I have absolutely zero interest in anything RTE produce, to the point where I'd be happy to limit any signal into the house? Why should I have to pay for something I want, and then something I don't want because of that?

If there was no such thing as RTE up until now and we had the option of watching the likes of Sky, then there would be absolutely no way that people would put up with a situation where we'd suddenly have to fork out dosh for this brand new state broadcaster with Tubs et al on show....and the best part being you have to pay for it if you want to keep watching the other stuff. The licence fee is from an era when the only option was RTE, and then at a later point the option of BBC and a small number of UK channels. In 2018 there is an absolutely huge amount of choice for the viewer.

There's very little that RTE shows which of sufficient quality, and that can't be found through other means. It is kept going simply on the basis that people haven't dissented enough to move to a better model.

Harry Palmr wrote: »

Have you heard of Freesat? Google it if not.

To be honest I don't live in Ireland so I haven't. I was only aware of Saorview which is owned by RTE.

backspin. wrote: »

I find RTE radio 1 to be morbid as hell. From their ultra serious grilling of politicians on the morning show to the constant misery on sean o rourke, ray darcy and joe duffy. Every day they end up talking about death and disease. Or else money issues.

Money issues - which most of the staff in RTE don't have to worry about.

I've never attended a protest but if there was a protest against RTE I would join it

NinetyTwoTeam wrote: »

what concerns me now is them trying to widen the tv license net to include PCs laptops and smartphones and I think any moves to do this should face stern resistance like with the water charge (thankfully the success of the water protests made the government second guess this plan)

there needs to be a way for people to opt out of the rte fee, especially if they can't afford it. i got rid of my TV because i cant afford it and anything i want to watch I get online from non-rte sources.

smartphones and laptops have been sold for years, to sudd impose a tax on things people already bought seems incredibly unfair. they justify it by saying that rte has stuff online, so what? you can't just start charging people a separate fee because you decided to make a website.

The reason they want to add PC's, tablet's and phones onto the licence is partly due to the latest generation of computer monitors which are coming in bigger and bigger sizes and have streaming apps like Netflix and Amazon built in so you could legally watch all your favorite shows without needing the likes of a cable box and most importantly RTE.

It really must terrify the likes of RTE, just how quickly and widespread the "watch what you want, when you want" model of consuming content from the likes of Netflix and Amazon, has worked its way through society without the need for a TV and more importantly a licence fee and and and at such a low price point.