Not a good look. I wonder did he go because this was going to come to light?
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They won't. They like people who get ratings. He's just not very marketable outside of RTE as his failure at the BBC has shown.
FFS she was only 49, honestly these people know nothing. Noel Curran must be hoping they don't start looking into this from 10 years ago, how would that work out at the EBU!
My understanding of it is they’re basically setup as a number of business units: radio, tv, online/publishing, networks etc
Then corporate is their shared services.
depending on what those services are €5m could be very reasonable or a lot..
Firstly, yes he is that stupid and more importantly he's that arrogant he believes he's Teflon. Which in fairness he has been up to this point.
Just in defence of BOC he came back again and has clarified that he didn't.
She had no idea of RTÉ she spent to much time outside the country to have a full view of the content it provided. She says she took hard decision but Cutting Children's Content and saying that you are not cutting it? and there are other examples.
How does Kevin Bakhurst come back to RTÉ? He was Deputy DG of RTE and acting DG before her arrival, when did all of this start, did he know about these agreements.
What does RTÉ spend €5m on through its Corp HQ? what is Corp HQ? central services?
Dee Forbes is only 56. She should never have got the job. Anyone who worked with her in RTE will tell you she was a disaster from the outset. Why are no questions being asked around the process of her appointment and why she got the job?
Makin fools of us with our own money………heads must roll.
gov fully responsible here.
The auditors will be all over that account like a rash now. They'll have to save face.
If the barter account balanced to nil every year previously it easily would have been overlooked in an audit.
He's doesn't have the x-factor, charm, charisma, star power or whatever you call it. His ratings are mediocre to dire. He's not funny, in fact I find him completely witless as many others do. That leads us to question why he's in that job in the first place and again as his performance could be easily be replicated and improved on by the likes of John Murray ... it comes back to nepotism within the RTE closed shop.
I'd love to know how much of this Simon Coveney was aware of previously. I find it impossible to believe that his brother sat on the executive board and never would have mentioned something to him.
Unless this was a solo run by Forbes and nobody else knew about it, hence her suspension.
Shockingly, neither Tubs nor Noel Kelly were available for comment. Lol.
I am aware of that. But her reputation is destroyed. And she’ll now miss out on a lucrative sub-retirement career on the company Board circuit.
I think they will split it up, I think RTÉ television will keep the name, Radio will drop the RTÉ (as they had in the past so they just be Radio 1, 2FM, RnaG, Lyric FM, 2XM, PULSE, GOLD, RADIO JR, CHILL), pity they didn't keep the name Network 2, RTÉ ONE and 2 could become Network 1 and 2.
BOC availed of the barter account as well..I missed him announcing that a few days ago.
~300,000 or so its in the annual reports, includes a pension.
+ expensise
+ a car (€25k per year
+ moving fee of €50k when she arrived in 2016.
She 63, 2 years to retirement, she never had a career in Ireland prior to taking up the role as DG in RTÉ.
Dee Forbes career in tatters, but I doubt Tubs and Noel Kelly give a flying fook.
Hard to have any sympathy for her. RTÉ is at its core a national/state broadcaster, not a commercial station. She seems to think RTÉ was about the stars and not about News etc.
There should be an organisation wide policy of absolutely no gifts accepted. End of story. Anything that comes in gets returned / refused.
If something is sponsored it should be abundantly clear and transparent.
I would too, all the pontificating and "Won't somebody think of the poor people" while carrying on like that behind everyone's back.
The man has zero personal or professional integrity left.
No-one from the board or RTÉ available for Brendan O’Connor’s show again today.
RTE - Truth Matters, except when it’s about us!
Reports in the papers that staff are refusing to work with him.
At this stage Ryan couldn't even work in the RTE canteen. RTE can't afford the optics and his colleagues are rightly disgusted.
I don't believe for one minute he didn't know, the money had to come from somewhere. He hardly thought Santa brought it as a thanks for the Toy Show!
We all know there will be certain Angela's out there talking drivel to defend the indefensible but it's the ones in this country who will say "oh isn't this latest scandal in this country appalling" while secretly in the 'system' benefiting financially themselves be it through back handers/theft/fraud/nepotism that are the real problem, enough of these nod and wink type beneficiaries out there everywhere
RTÉ is just another toxic Irish institution rigged for the boys/girls at the top with some of it trickling down to pals/family below that tree, RTÉ is now cemented in Ireland inc. in the same breath as Anglo, FÁS, HSE, FAI etc - the toxic Celtic Tiger never died despite the charade of the austerity/IMF era
I do think it’s looking more and more likely that he will have to go.
So would I be wrong to assume that RTÉ potentially has being paying agent fees on top of the earning of the top stars ? So for example RTÉ pay someone €200,000 and is reported as €200,000 but potentially RTÉ paid their agent €20,000... meaning that potentially that "star" actually got €220,000?
When did all this start?
No it's not he knows what his brand is and he wouldn't trash his brand he is not that stupid, that's why I believe he didnt fully read his contract that doesn't get him off the hook, however he still signed it so has to go.
In a way it’s hard to blame him for being so out of touch. He’s lived in a bubble since he was a teenager where he’s basically been told he’s the second coming of Christ, had his every whim catered too, been protected when his show’s audiences dropped or were overtaken by others (the Brendan O’Connor example listed previously), been remunerated far in excess of any discernible talent (at one stage he was getting over €700,000 in fees annually that were declared, who knows if there were any top ups in addition to those figures), never it seems pays for anything* (as everything is gifted** to him) and basically has never had to work or put in any graft in his entire life. He has been enabled by certain actors his whole life. As a result he has zero self-awareness - that leads to the two fingered defiant and unapologetic type statements we’ve had from him on this - he genuinely thinks he’s done nothing wrong.
Now if he was a boorish Gerry Ryan “feck the begrudgers” type maybe he could ride it out. But it’s the years of the kindness charade and the #InThisTogether bull💩 that will cost him. The lies, the hypocrisy, the “do as I say, not as I do”, that will destroy his career. And he has no-one to blame but himself.
*on his radio show he would frequently take a fancy to some destination, mutter it aloud for a few weeks, the hey ho….they’re off to do a visit there. Iceland was one example. All paid for by you and me, a nice little 5 day jolly for a 30minute interview with an Icelandic journalist/author.
Then there was a 10-15 minute interview with George Clooney and Julia Roberts about some rom com they were in. These interviews are a series of back to back interviews with the stars that the film company do. It’s like a conveyor belt, you get your 10-15 mins then you’re gone and now it’s ITV’s turn, BBC and so on. You don’t get to have dinner with them or hang out or anything. He could have done a day trip on this and used a contracted producer to record and produce it but no, Tubs and crew off to London for a couple of nights in a 5 star hotel. He then proceeded to tell us about all the things he did in his free time in London! Zero self awareness.
They are two examples, I could list many more.
**also on the Tubs radio thread, there is a list of the freebies he accumulated over a few months. It’s astonishingly long. These are mostly things people/small companies send in to him in the hope of getting a mention or a plug on his Instagram if you Ike a sort of barter (word of the week) quid pro quo. But he was never satisfied with just getting random stuff for free - he started to ask for specific things. A multimillionaire too tight to pay for anything, but lacking any self awareness to realise how bad and “cheap” and now we know greedy it all sounded. The list is there in the radio thread free for all to see.
Sure when he retired from LLS/got found out there were plenty of idiots calling for him to run as president on various media.
As an aside his brother Garrett, who as it happens is also a grade a prime arsehole, ran in the 2009 elections coming a humiliating 4th last. It’s the Irish way, sure if mum, dad, granny or grandad were TDs, I deserve the same, if mum, dad, granny or grandad were in RTÉ I deserve the same.
https://irelandelection.com/election.php?elecid=175&constitid=331
His agent should have explained it to him then.
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