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

TG4 produced https://www.tg4.ie/en/player/home/?pid=6249108813001 ómós Micheal D @ 80

They also had a series of shows on each president.

Way to fastlane, continental drift would be close but maybe a wee bit to fast compared to the gnome uttering pretentious twaddle

95% of the rte schedule seems to be made up of"virgin media type content "at the moment, the whole thing seems to exist in order to keep the montrose set in the fashion to which they have been accustomed... During this pandemic the state broadcaster seems to have morphed into the propaganda wing of die kommissar fur gesundheit und lebensmittelsicherheit, churning out unquestioningly pr statements from the government and branding anyone who has even the mildest misgivings about the way we are going as "anti-vaxer conspiracy theorists" or that all encompassing "far right".. Their constant menu of doom and misery has filled those who are unfortunate enough to tune in regularly full of fear and dread for the future contributing in no small measure to an air of tension, bitterness, fear and curtain-twitching tell-tale tut tutting I witness all around me each day

I am for public broadcasting, and any serious independent country should have a national broadcasting entity, but a very slimmed down operation which concentrates on broadcasting shows and news of national interest such as culture, art, history and sport and respects the opinions of all its citizens who in the end are the ones who pay their wages, its just that at the moment there seems to be little difference between the national broadcaster and the commercial outfits, imv the last decent current affairs programme on this part of the island was "tonight with Vincent Browne" and that was on tv3

Okay but if you did that and maintained the current funding system, you'd massively increase resentment of the licence fee among people who mainly watch RTE for Fair City or Operation Transformation or whatever...

If you want to go down your proposed route of trimming RTE back to a BBC4-type highbrow channel, to me the logical corollary of that is to move to a system of direct taxpayer funding, and probably scrap advertising altogether.

How often do you hear people complaining about their tax euros funding TG4, even though I presume only a tiny minority watch it any way regularly? Same goes for ballet, opera and such taxpayer-funded 'elite' pursuits.

I think this is probably where we'll end up eventually, given that many other countries fund their 'public service broadcasting' that way.

The average politician's response to that:

RTE have been trying to get a 'broadcasting' charge on the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney plus, to name a few.

In the olden days of Analogue, Terrestrial television, she might have gotten such a tax. However, with the days of digital, streaming, and internet access meaning they no longer have a hold on such services, they'd be hard pressed to get it. (especially since many of those company's are creating employment, here in Ireland- compared to the nepotistic environment of RTE where it's who you know, not how good you are).

I'd say she thought a Fine Fail lead government might give them that tax. But Covid put the kibosh on that.

If it was the 80's the government of the time would have allowed RTE to turn off the interenet after 5pm so nobody could watch Netflix.

Like any job, if they can't get the small things right then how in the hell can you trust them with the big things

So that means some pleb who has to wash the cups is now entitled to Name brand milk in his/ her coffee, rather than the cheap stuff from Lidl.

Probably didn't save anything, tbh.

Why are they wasting money on a show called Glow Up, where Maura Higgins looks for Ireland's next makeup star?