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

Two muppets named and shamed about their parts in the Dublin riots

no redactions for them unlike RTE

still no mention of the next chapter of their own never ending scandal six stories in

The government has took no action on RTE except for statements and giving them a large cheque to keep them afloat.

Catherine Martin is clearly soft and RTE knows it.

Can they not cull the insipid radio presenters?

Give younger people a job, and a chance.

I could name a few... Marty Whelan, Lorcan Murray.

Jaysus, it makes me want to queue up at the trees.

I think you are going to run into these questions no matter what you do. If you were setting up RTE for the first time, you would have questions as to exactly what is going to do, what kinds of programmes are they going to make etc.

I would not see it doing stuff for newspapers and other publications. It would be primarily radio and television.

Yes, Ireland already does this stuff but it does it in a non transparent way. So for example, 40 million is spent on commissioning in RTE but overall 200m is given to RTE from the licence fee (correct me if I am wrong). That seems a lot of money propping up RTE.

Take all of RTE's subsidy away from them and with the money set up an independent State-owned commissioning body and let all the broadcasters (including a now-private RTE) benefit from it.

Of course there will be questions and initially a lot will be got wrong but the better focus should lead to efficiencies.

If a lot of them concentrated on serving the public instead of lining their own pockets with various bungs and schemes the

taxpayer would get better value.

Don’t you think?

I don't suppose that anyone thinks its strange that in an outfit which is no stranger to investigative pieces in other companies and public services that they are "shocked" and "sickened" by stuff which was going on under their own eyes?

On their own premises?

By their own workmates and management?

Seems to me that everybody else was 'fair game' but the portcullis dropped and the drawbridge raised at any sniffing around Montrose.

Uhmmm........

Can I ask you about your reasoning for proposing a move of Lyric to the NCH?

From what I hear, they are struggling to run an orchestra over there with morale on the floor and various players/admin out "on the sick" due to stress over the last while. I'm not saying it was much better when the NSO was part of RTE.

Surely it makes more sense to keep Lyric, RnaG and a more PSB focused Radio 1 together. Technology, studios and HR/personnel could be interchangeable or some way centralised that way as opposed to doing everything in triplicate and encouraging more stupid little empire building by vain, useless middle managers hired during the Forbes era.

It's all supposed to be PSB audio, at the end of the day.

Lyric FM is "the home of the NSO" or at least that was what they used to say, as it is the classic music station and since the NSO is part of the NCH, I don't see why Lyric FM can't move under the control of the NCH ... it remains in Limerick just under the management of the NCH.

This comes back to my point about when things move there should be a report: -

1. Report on how well the move was managed (that would be nice reading since it took them an extra year)
2. An annual report on how the NSO is doing and how it has benefited from the move or not.

I think it makes sense to keep Irish language together, while providing lyric FM from a different management team. In other word diminish RTÉ as all of these brands are already at arms length to RTÉ.

I think the point about being made was why do they need to look outside of RTÉ for a presenter of the 9 to 10 Radio 1 slot when there are plenty of people in RTÉ already capable of taking on that position. Moving Marty to Radio 1 from Lyric FM and replacing him with someone else wouldn't be a big task. There are many other presenters who could take on the role.

Callan is not outside of RTÉ, he is a long time contractor. Always on programs

“He killed 16 Czechoslovakians. Guy was an interior decorator”

"his house looked like ****"

Don’t forget, Doireann has a boat