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

I have nothing against donie o'sullivan....good luck to him........but calling him a "national treasure" nearly gave me a stroke....

By that same metric, what would that rag of a tabloid refer to Ryan Tubridy as........a national God?!!!!

This boring chestnut comes up time and time again.

The top 20 all pull in substantial profits for rte.

The biggest loss making cost is live gaa coverage.

Any stats to back up the second line of your post?

I would consider paying the licence fee.....once Ryan Tubridy, Ray D'arcy and Joe Duffy are relieved of their services......

Major restructuring required at RTE...salaries should be capped....around 150k is plenty...

If Noel Kelly can get his "talent" paid better elsewhere......then off with them. .

Silly idea

Correct.

It is like An Post, huge price increases and absolutely **** service.

John Creedon talking to some lad along the road in the back ar* of nowhere is more informative than what passes for RTE News these days.

RTE News and current affairs have become so one sided Goebbels would be proud.

Bullshyte. RTE have long given up on having balanced debates.

The last presidential election highlighted how anyone with conflicting views to the RTE narrative are going to be targeted.

Watch any debate on migrants/refugees, NGOs, etc and you won't find any dissenting views.

And bringing in either of the aforementioned eejits above, including the long connected Waters, is not meant to offer a contrasting view but the view of someone unhinged.

It is to make one side look like deranged halfwits, rather than offer anything constructive as an opposing viewpoint.

There are a few reasons I got rid of my TV set over decade ago. I was watching less and less of it, it became a noise in the corner that produced less and less content that interested me and better options existed especially since I'm not really into sports watching. After watching the battle of Dalkey hill play out I came to the conclusion that I was working for them for free, they no longer worked for me. I got rid of the TV and binned the notices from An Post. I noticed having gotten out of the habit of watching TV that when I visit my parents I can't sit passively in front of it for long. I object to it being included in property tax and having to give away my labour to support such a non-essential content provider that I walked away from years ago.

Based in the complaints I see about the general poor quality of RTE programming, its frequent repeats to fill out the schedule, misery porn etc. I form the impression that's its no longer public service broadcasting it now exists to be served by the public while producing the minimum dross to justify it's existence. Giving it more resources does not fix the underlying problems that have gotten it to this stage, it just extends the failing business model.

Anyone arguing for public service broadcasting should really be pushing for a subscribers club model similar to the UK national trust. This gives the public much more say in the content that is provided and lends the organisation a bedrock of public support. If they want to to do free to air stuff then they can follow the journal.ie model and hire cheap university students to produce advertisement supported news and weather and pull content from press association when they need international coverage. For RTE Plus they can buy a subscription or pay one off for events they might be interested.

We really all need to start fighting this crap - enough is enough !

Everyone here needs to send an email to all of their local TDs, and Eamon Ryan (Minister for Communications), demanding that RTE be cut down to size, and that we finally see an end to the croniesm that erodes our licence fees every year.

While the politicans don't like having to do any work, they'll tackle this if they think enough people want it done, and it's not gulping to cost them anything.

Nothing will ever happen because the RTE stars all join the circle jerk with politicians.

"RTE should have just bought out one MUX for themselves"

Yeah right.

Where did RTE get the money in the first place to run the MUX's?

RTE don't have to reach very far into their pockets for carriage. Only the viewers pockets.

RTE's job is to act as an agent for Irish license payer actually. That's where the money to run the MUX's comes from, i.e. the viewer.

The License fee money subsidizes the MUX's by payment of our €165 a year and as such we should demand/expect HD on every channel by default.

(Well HD for the Saorview channels that show movies and sport at the very least.)

The license fee should be reduced until every channel that requires HD is HD. Why the hell else are we paying the license fee?

To see Tubbs crucifying 'Singin' in the Rain' in HD in the name of a Toy Show?