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

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.

I believe there's a plan to share the License Fee amongst all broadcasters for public service broadcasting and give RTE a subsidy.

Seems very fair,but I doubt RTE will exist in it's current bloated form.

You'll be sorely disappointed TBH. Why should VMTV or Sky or any commercial provider get any of the license fee for any of the services that they currently provide?

Is public service broadcasting just programming for and about Ireland?

Are those programmes good quality programming (not saying that RTÉ's have been over the years) and what to they really provide?

Take local radio programming, does a local radio service deserve license fee funding for a mid-morning chat show and a few GAA games? or should they be given license fee funding for having a full time Current Affairs programme on from 5 to 7?

Should we fund VMTV news and if so should advertising be reduced on VMTV channels?

And you still have the question as to how small RTÉ becomes? Because to do that you will require redundancies, and if you don't almost all of that fund will go to RTÉ in anycase.

I read the first 50 pages and gave up. 321 pages is a bit much. Either way it’s a 2017 report with recommendations of €175 which is indexed (increased) every 2 years. Revenue commissioners is the preferred method of collecting as it also opens the possibility of copying Finland with a salary based charge. RTE had a deficit of €20m in 2016 for that year with close to 2000 staff and TG4 broke even with 84 people. For all the talk of other broadcasters, that’s not really what I read as it is wishy washy on the definition of public service broadcasting. It mentions share of viewers in Ireland with RTe1 taking about 17%. Then it breaks down quickly. Tv3/VM is defined as a commercial station with a tiny audience share. So reading between the lines, they aren’t getting anything. No mention of how these audience shares are devised ! Devil in the detail.

of all the news about RTE, tubs payments are not the story at all. That’s a distraction from the real story of execs living the life off the taxpayers money. Wilfully wasting huge sums on themselves.

They (government and RTE) need to be careful in this regard when it comes to revenue commissioners collecting this charge. It will be seen as 100% a tax and taxpayers money that is wasted. They can try sell this current storm as part licence fee and not straight from tax revenues but that won’t wash with the new charge.

Yes like every other scandal only the pigs at the trough changes, the tax payers will be tapped to bail them out and revenue will be tasked with enforcing the 160 payment, all on the PAYE sector, the top and bottom will avoid this of course.

What's up with the shimmering picture?

It depends on which parties are in govt after the next general election. Besides, I don't think the broadcasting charge, if it is brought in, would increase that much.

If the government is serious about reform of RTÉ, there will be reform of RTÉ. Viewers won't necessarily forget this scandal.