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

Scotty # wrote: »

The toy show alone more than covers Tubridy's salary for the year. A few episodes of the Den covers Darcy. Opel paid €300k to sponsor Claire Byrne's radio show. The top presenters bring in enough to cover their costs.

€145m brought in from Advertising in 2019. Top 10 presenters earned less than €3.5m between them. An Post got €27m for collecting the licence fee.

Take away the licence fee and the annual bailouts from the taxpayers and what happens to RTE? It doesn't matter if a bunch of overpaid and undertalented "personalities" are covering their salaries. It matters that the business is insolvent without bailouts.

Regards...jmcc

Scotty # wrote: »

Business? RTE was never a business. It's a public service and from day one was set up to be funded by a licence fee.

Until it then decided it needed to take in advertising income, then decided it needed to sponsor shows, then decided they needed premium rate text competions on all live shows to extract every possible avenue of income to keep itself inefficiantly afloat.

If the advertising is covering the costs of the hosts, why the hell is RTe operating (continually) at a deficit?

Scotty # wrote: »

The toy show alone more than covers Tubridy's salary for the year. A few episodes of the Den covers Darcy. Opel paid €300k to sponsor Claire Byrne's radio show. The top presenters bring in enough to cover their costs.

€145m brought in from Advertising in 2019. Top 10 presenters earned less than €3.5m between them. An Post got €27m for collecting the licence fee.

Just to add to this. Sorry Scotty.

The Toy Show would make that even if Tubs wasn't hosting the show.

Both of D'Arcy's TV shows lost audiences from Breadan O'Connor's Saturday Night Show, this loss of audience cost RTÉ money., much more money than his Radio Show brings in.

Opel paid to sponsor Today which has had 3 main hosts in the last 20 years and has not lost much of an audience it is on Radio 1.

RTÉ spend 1% of their total costs on Indpendent Drama
RTÉ spend 1% of their total costs on Children's TV

No one has ever said An Post deserve the money they get for the collection fee, which they seem unable to collect. That's just whataboutery .

fritzelly wrote: »

A monkey could be hosting the Toy Show and it would still get advertising - nothing to do with the incompetent host

McGaggs wrote: »

I imagine that any Muppet could present those shows and they'd still get sponsorship.

It's irrelevant who the presenter is. The point is it's not the licence fee that's paying their wages, it's the advertising.

But even IF presenters wages were paid solely by the licence fee, it's €3.2m out of €224m collected, that's 1.4% of the fee, or €2.24 from each licence. An Post get €19.20 from each fee ffs! Yet all the whinging seems to be about how much presenters are paid.

Scotty # wrote: »

It's irrelevant who the presenter is. The point is it's not the licence fee that's paying their wages, it's the advertising.

But even IF presenters wages were paid solely by the licence fee, it's €3.2m out of €224m collected, that's 1.4% of the fee, or €2.24 from each licence. An Post get €19.20 from each fee ffs! Yet all the whinging seems to be about how much presenters are paid.

If thats the case, why si there even a licence fee at all? and why do they bang on about it all the time in a woe is me, the peasants are causing the downfall of such a great public service.
The gall of Forbes on her pay to suggest shutting down the Orchestra,

How can they be losing money? its disgusting they are that bad at managing finances, cut their cloth to measure, and start at the top earners.
Fix their online player service, I keep hearing its unsuseable, and move to a subscription service for anything above public service broadasting

carq wrote: »

Do they publish figures of non front of house staff?
i would think the middle management figures would make interesting reading.

There has to be at least another 300-500 people in RTÉ taking in between €120-€150k, and doing next to nothing to get that salary.....

Bring back the Secret RTÉ Producer....

AndyBoBandy wrote: »

There has to be at least another 300-500 people in RTÉ taking in between €120-€150k, and doing next to nothing to get that salary.....

Bring back the Secret RTÉ Producer....

I wish, because if what they said was true, then you have staff who do the breakdown and moving of sets on something close to €80000-90000 a year. Their contracts demanded they be paid for "Office hours" or 9-5 timelines...so when they had to work the 6:01 or 9pm news they are on "after hours" and got paid more, same for weekend work.....in a f***ing television/radio station that does live broadcasts regularly.

The whole station is a headcase :mad:

Scotty # wrote: »

The orchestra cost €17m/year, €46,500 per day! that's 291 TV licences EVERY DAY just to fund the orchestra. Do you really think it's value for money? LyricFM and RnaG cost another €18m between them. Good value too?

NSO has this year moved to the NCH RTÉ. RTÉ insisted on this and now they have got it.

Both are part of RTÉ as a Public Service Broadcaster and have been in their current form since 1946 moving to RTÉ in 1966 when it was established.

Again LyricFM and RnaG provide public services.

Forbes is running a company with revenue of €342m (2019) and is head of 1,830 staff. €338,000 salary (less than 0.1% of TO) is not excessive in the least.

How much do similar roles in other countries get? I don't not particularly have an issue with her wage, but when she moved she got a 50,000 moving fee!

Again, RTE is not there to make a profit.

The act actually stipulates that it should breakeven. I'd agree RTÉ aren't there to make a profit, but they are their to produce TV and Radio. Is the 4 to 6 million in licence fee funding to 2FM really worthwhile, why not cut to 2FM over the last 10 years?

It's a public service funded by the TV licence and subsided with advertising. According to the 2019 report (the latest report) it would have made money that year if it weren't for the General Election coverage which cost about €8m.

This idea that coverage of events that are due to take place is bogus. RTÉ largely know that an election takes place every 4 to 5 years except in exceptional circumstances. The last 3 government lasted 4 years, 5 years and 4 years and the FF/Green government should possibly have lasted less, FG and Labour very stable gov in terms of get a full term and final the FG FF supply and confidence was also largely stable for a very minority government. And I don't see an election anytime soon.

The last elections

24 May 2007
25 Feb 2011
26 Feb 2016
8 Feb 2020

Between them you also have Refs, Presidential Elections and Local and European Elections again almost all known about long in advance, for example only if M D Higgins dies during his term we know the next presidential election will take place in 2025 and I imagine that if he does die it is likely there will not be an election.

COVID effects us all and should not be used as an excuse.

Scotty # wrote: »

The orchestra cost €17m/year, €46,500 per day! that's 291 TV licences EVERY DAY just to fund the orchestra. Do you really think it's value for money? LyricFM and RnaG cost another €18m between them. Good value too?


Forbes is running a company with revenue of €342m (2019) and is head of 1,830 staff. €338,000 salary (less than 0.1% of TO) is not excessive in the least.

Again, RTE is not there to make a profit. It's a public service funded by the TV licence and subsided with advertising. According to the 2019 report (the latest report) it would have made money that year if it weren't for the General Election coverage which cost about €8m.


A quarter of the workforce are on up to €150k?? LOL!

There is nothing to say that costs might be reduced or greater efficiencies be implemented, whether its value for money or not would have to be ascertained, but I think whatever is being paid for it, the Orchestra should (and hopefully does) go around and perform public services (ie music support stuff in schools, so not related just to playing in the Orchestra, but it should be available to the whole nation.
I wouldnt listen to RnaG but Im sure they have their audience, Lyric FM is the only station I listen to on a semi regular basis.
It acts like a business (a badly run one), that is the problem, incomings cant be greater than outgoings, I would like to see a breakdown of how many staff at each level and what they get paid to make a comparison, has that been revealed. Dee Forbes on the money she is on, is pushed up by the misinformation revenue, efficiency is input related to output, the programming output of RTE isnt consistent to the financial input, end of.
Their costs need to be cut dramatically because they appear to mismanaging their finances badly. Whatever of her pay, which I consider to be disgustingly high (for something you state is not a business, I agree, no one in public service should be paid that highly, go to the private sector and satnd on your own two feet, see if you will get that level of pay), but as one poster said, 50k to move, 25k for a car and 63k towards her pension, we are being fleeced.

ligerdub wrote: »

I love that the €8 million cost for election coverage is used as a valid excuse rather than an indictment of how RTE burn money.

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
News 60,247 61,161 63,602 70,157 76,198 77,423 68,499 64,400 68,343 61,064 58,018 57,108 60,491 65,553 63,531 67,593 65,298

What now?

padraig47 wrote: »

Rte is full of arrogant presenters. Tonight on Prime Time we had Miriam O’Callaghan aggressively questioning the Minister for Health. However while I agree that the Minister should be aggressively questioned, it should not be by MOC, who flouted regulations re COVID.

I remember about ten years ago that volcano erupted in Iceland and caused a huge ash cloud. MOC interviewed the icelandic prime minister and more or less berrated him over the travel chaos and just stopped short of asking for componsation...for a volcanic eruption.

RabbleRouser2k wrote: »

There ya go Dee, I've saved you money.

The problem is, you haven't. any spare money left over will just be shovelled into the salaries of the big presenters regardless.

ligerdub wrote: »

Help me out here Elmo. What am I to deduce from this?

Well I am looking for an extra 8m for news coverage for 2019. I suppose if I go back to 2015 I might get about 5m. I'd go to 2014 only we had the Local and European Elections that year, so won't go back that year to find the 8m.

Scotty # wrote: »

Election coverage is a 'special event' and is not listed under News finances. Other 'special events' include World Cups, Olympics, Papal Visits, etc.

I misread it though, it was actually €4.1m. The €8m was their increase in revenue from 2018 > 2019.

What page of the annual report, the above figures are those for News and Current Affairs.

Nothing on page 106 (pdf page 108) of the annual report for special events

AKA 2. Principal Activities and Segmental Information

here's sports from 2003

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
Sport 35,352 41,171 37,863 47,995 47,609 62,041 45,841 52,666 46,716 53,557 39,220 42,487 34,303 48,097 42,080 41,714 43124

Am I missing something.

Special Events
2019 4.1
2018 7.2
2017 0
2016 16.1

Special events are not accounted for in 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011