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

Talk to Joe.

Rte coming out of the 1st PAC very badly.

And as expected, the one person who can really answer the questions ain't going to show.

…/

Only listened to Joe the other day for a bit. Humming and hawing,not a lot to contribute.

Dunno if this is his normal mode.

Bank account overdrawn.

Barter account 2 million.

Its not dishonest cos they didnt ask him about barter accounts! Thats the kind of sleeveen we have here.

Need to start moving away from the concept of "broadcaster" I think and toward the idea of commissioning body or content funder. A body that provides subsidies to Irish productions which can then be sold to the various Irish platforms as well as internationally but does not broadcast the content themselves. I would see this as a small tightly controlled body purely focused on dramas, documentaries etc.; stuff that would not be commercially viable in the Irish market.

Gameshows, copies of UK format shows, talkshows like the LLS would be purely for commercial outfits.

My problem with maintaining a public service "broadcaster" is that it doesn't reflect the move towards online platforms. I could see it becoming a dinosaur happily consuming public funds paying staff salaries and pensions but where the public themselves have largely moved on.

The great fear of maintaining relevance in the face of streaming services is the reason towards the push towards a blanket broadcasting charge by RTE insiders and at the same time why the public must resist it.

The root cause of lax financial management, secret payments and general contempt for the public in RTE is because of the guaranteed license fee money.

Fine if RTÉ actually prodcuded games shows or quiz shows but they have done few and far between.

I don't know if I like this concept or the idea of it been funded by the Exchqure, I like TG4 but some of its programming decisions are questionable just as much as RTÉ, exchequer funding doesn't help because the public don't notice it, at least with RTÉ get majority complain and expect something because the pay for it every year.

I would however like to see Screen Ireland move away from new projects involving RTÉ. No reason for Screen Ireland not to work with Virgin Media, Sky and TG4.

Normal People could have aired on any other national free to air channel IMO, including TG4, how much did RTÉ pay for it and how much does TG4 pay for imports.

What I can't comprehend is that, back in 1961, even with the Republic's small population, the government thought that one TV channel running for a few hours in the evening could not be funded with the licence fee without advertising.

TG4 and Screen Ireland both get exchequer funding, while neither produce content both get funding via the exchequer. So I don't think that should be the case.