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

I cant see the same level of protests as with water charges.

They will spin it as, its only fair that everyone must pay the new media levy.

It will be a done deal with Revenue collecting... no way to avoid it.

The difference is that media access is much less necessary than access to the water system.

160 euro a year might be significant in some households.

Greece with twice our population has 4 national TV stations - all which seem to be private somehow now at a quick glance

https://amp.theguardian.com/media/2016/sep/02/greece-tv-channels-licence-auction

portugal has 4 - again twice our population

https://www.portugalvisitor.com/portugal-resources/tv-stations#:~:text=Portugal%20has%20four%20terrestrial%20TV,private%20channels%20from%20the%201990s.

RTÉ must be losing loads of advertising revenue lately…..

Ive seen 2 ads today for companies that you’d hardly ever see with ads on RTÉ

1 was for Cairn homes, and another for some solar company!!!

Advertisers must be getting great rates at the moment from RTÉ!!

Who needs a guide. There's a seven day EPG on Saorview.

@political analyst

RTÉ has largely failed us as a state in the last 60 years. This is not a statement on politics or a statement of on political pressure that RTÉ may have faced over the last 60 years. It is a statement on the type of programming that RTÉ have provided over those 60 years.

There are times when RTÉ hits above its weight in terms of sports, news, current affairs... even the 5 eurovisions that they produced between 1988 and 1998 I consider to show them to have made eurovision the behemoth that it has become. (I am not sure if that is a complement!).

But largely RTÉ have really provided little, particularly in the last 15 years. Rather they have argued that RTÉ is under-funded and the media landscape is fractured (They have said this since the 1990s). And too some extent this is true. But then there is RTÉ itself.

RTÉ management and staff all live in a bubble of assuming RTÉ is wonderful and something highly important to the state. But I doubt any of them watch the service that they provide.

The news and current affairs looks and sounds professional, bar the RTÉ NEWS channel, I would put their News and Current Affairs output as good as any other European PSB, however the holidays that the service takes in August is a huge question. I mean you can feel that the halls of RTÉ are empty for the month of August. And that doesn't look good when you main competitor is continuing to provide a full news service through out the month.

Again I agree RTÉ do sports well and is on par with other sports organisations, bar the number of ads on Virgin Media TV do you see any real discernible difference between RTÉ's sports coverage and VMTV? I can only see their broadcast of the National Athletics Championships to suggest something PSB in nature for RTÉ. Perhaps Horse racing coverage and the many Outside Broadcasts that they provide.

Then we get to other genres.

Someone mentioned their daytime show "Today". Whatever about having an issue about RTÉ having a daytime TV programme, my question is how much do they spend on the programme? Daytime is certainly not important enough for the amount of money I think RTÉ are spending on it, and certainly not for a part time daytime show. It looks to me like they spending €10m alone for that 8 month programme, this is possibly VMTVs total budget for their daytime schedule and it may even cover their Tonight show as well! If I am correct to suggest the extravagant spend on the programme.

Again I go back to the cutting of funding to children's TV that they insisted they would not cut back in 2016, IMO Dee's first lie in the job as DG.

Drama, more than 5 years ago RTÉ asked and begged for a new TV funding scheme from the Irish Film Board (now Screen Ireland). RTÉ were not saying they would meet this annual €10m with €10m of their own rather they were saying , "we don't want anything to do with drama, fund it by direct exchequer funding please because we can't be arsed", we will happily show that drama and market it as "RTÉ...Great Local Drama". RTÉ Drama outside of Fair City is large co-produced with very little involvement from RTÉ. RTÉ have abdicate their responsibility toward drama and comedy production over the last 15 years. Stating at Oireachtas committee meetings they they could not possibly funding High quality drama like "Normal People" because it cost €1.2m per episode, the TDs should have asked what about smaller dramas like like Pure Mule or Can't Cope, Won't Cope.

Then there is their absolute reduction in service on RTÉ2 while funding 2FM from the licence fee. Their decision on RTÉ2 is that young people have moved online, only they've not produced any really long form content for the player (large short form stuff you could find on youtube), and their excuse on 2FM, well we must provide for all audiences such as young people! An oxymoron if ever you heard one.

Any I won't go into the late move of the NSO to the NCH, which should have happened in 2021 but only happened in 2022, a year when they lost money but saved circa €7m on funding the NSO!

Sorry rant over!

I don't think it is the root cause.

The main cause is neither IMO.

It is due to complete and an absolute corruption of power within RTÉ with no oversight. I believe that these wages and the spending at RTÉ would have been the same had RTÉ been fully funded via either the License Fee or the Exchequer. It just wouldn't be from be coming from the commercial arm of RTÉ.

RTÉ have completely failed as an organisation, it has largely nothing to do with commerical or political pressures, it is fundamentally due to RTÉ's mismanagement over the years.

To be honest, I assumed that State control was the cause of failure in national public service broadcasters, e.g. East Germany and other communist-ruled European countries during the Cold War and present-day Russia.

How can they say August is a slow news month? Noone knows what stories are going to break over August.

The point is that TV3 didn't have news at weekends at all during those years - that's far more serious than halving Six-One on weekdays in August. We still got to hear about Trump and the Hawaii Fire on RTÉ News, which is not the only news organisation to have reports on foreign affairs done by journalists who are in the newsroom at HQ.

As for the dropping of News on 2, the big difference is that, unlike TV3, RTÉ2 is not a stand-alone broadcaster and thus the news on RTÉ1 meets RTÉ's news requirement.

Having said that, I acknowledge the dropping of the main late evening news on the night of the Eurovision Song Contest grand final - it's a bit like ITV dropping its early-evening regional and national bulletins when rugby and soccer matches are taking place in the evening.

That's like when the BBC was accountable only to the BBC Trust and the UK commercial broadcasters were accountably to the IBA, then the ITC and now Ofcom, to which the BBC is now accountable.

Obviously, there's the issue of restrictive working practices that are upheld by the unions.

Some good points there, but in fairness to RTE, tv drama production is very expensive to make in general and that's why they have to collaborate with international partners in order to make drama series. €1.2million for 1 hour of drama might not seem like that much but with RTE taking in €300/350 million a year compared to BBC/ITVs €5bn/€2bn revenue, it is a lot of money to commit to drama production. Even thought the BBC/ITV have made some great drama series over the years, they a finding it hard to compete with the likes of amazon, netflix, disney plus with their big budgets.

Hopefully Bakhurst will not flip-flop on this issue.