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

Think I prefer the direct link that the license fee provides. Otherwise they get a free pass if it's direct funding. It would turn into an even bigger money pit.

Must be a cheaper more equitable and inclusive method of collecting it though.

Half the problem is the muddying between commercial and public service in RTE, with VM or newstalk if they pay a presenter 200K they are making a commercial decision that they bring in viewership to support that, with RTE its like here is a wedge of cash do with it what you like, to distort the advertising market, abuse monopoly position and overpay a golden circle of people...surely they can run the operation with a separate set of books for commercial to public services, thus no paying of Turbrity, Lottie Ryan out of license fees unless their output is justified as PSB...get broadcasters to bid for public service programmes, why can't TG4 or VM bid for license money if they can make programmes which qualify.

I think EastEnders might be one of their most viewed shows.

That's the value of Brand Loyalty everyone fights so hard to achieve.

Folk will sit through an ad break rather than switch over.

Good look collecting the License Fee if it's getting scrapped next year.

If all public service broadcasting is going to get a slice of the License Fee you'd wonder what the point of RTE is.

Agreed - Direct exchequer funding is one thing, a new catch-all Broadcast Tax is another thing entirely. Let's hope it's the former and not the latter.

Same goes for TG4 and hardly anybody seems bovvered, even though I'd imagine only a tiny handful watch it any way regularly...

Looks like a license fee from every household to support all public service broadcasting and a direct subsidy for RTE.

Newstalk is certainly a way better public service broadcaster than Radio1,and VM does a comparable job to RTE for news and current affairs.

Can only see RTE getting slimmed down in fairness.

On the other hand look at how many people on the Tubridy payments thread have said that they would not be paying their licence fee. This will have a far greater effect of focusing minds than if, for example, RTE are funded out of general taxation. In the latter scenario, RTE can use their influence to increase their funding bit by bit year after year. They can, of course, (and do) lobby to increase the licence fee but what they can't do up until now is force people to pay the fee. Consequently they have had to maintain a small amount of respect for the viewer.

Ultimately then it has to be regarded as unfortunate that the upshot of the RTE payments scandal and excesses is the acceleration of the removal of the right of the public to individually remove funding from them.

Currently, if you are not happy with RTE you can sack them. You can drop them as your supplier of media content.

I'm not sure taking away that right will make them more accountable to the public. Direct exchequer funding or by mandatory household charge will make them more sycophantic towards the government of the day but less directly accountable to the public I would have thought.

They are effectively with the planned distribution of the License Fee. I reackon we'll see a stripped down RTE with more home produced stuff on VM and independent radio.

RTE should be split now make RTE 1 both TV and Radio a PBS that airs news, Irish made documentaries, Irish sports, Irish current affairs, Irish kids TV etc funded by a fee.

TG4 can be part of this PBS.

Make RTE 2 a commercial entity that makes and sells Irish content to the international markets using international partners to fund the making of shows, Ireland has so many interantional TV shows and movies made here RTE really should be looking to get in on this more.

RTE 2 can also be the channel for buying in international content.

All the other RTE radio branded stations should be run as commercial stations and if the can't break even then they get folded into each other and not bailed out.

All profits from the commercial side gets put back into the PBS to make more Irish content.