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

But it IS a Ministers job to WORK on her brief and understand what her responsibilities are.

It is also a ministers responsibility to tell the truth! Otherwise I’d prefer an autocracy with people who know what they are doing.

Common sense (which seems in short supply these days) would also dictate that you only take a job if you can also DO IT! I think most people would love a job with a salary of 150K plus a year and no experience and not doing their job. Where do I apply?

The fact that ANYONE listens to a minister or respects them is alien to me. Name one minister in the current government who has achieved anything? Yet they act as if they are saving the planet and are Ireland’s answer to its problems, when in fact they ARE the problem.

Give me results, I give you respect. Give me lies and ego, I’ll give you abuse.

That's as bad as Virgin Media

Read this, this morning. talk about a set-up insider? RTE is really a sink hole of depravity! transparency the “minister” states, all the time plotting the removal of one chair to replace with an insider of humongous experience of corruption.

At this stage, it is better to just put RTE out of its misery and come clean. This saga will just roll on with lies, lies and more lies. Something or someone MUST become the whistle blower. Bakhurst is up to his eyes in this also.

So for all the cost cuts required rte still decided to send a team over to present the rugby from the ground instead of the rte studio. So who signed off on that

How can you be influenced by TV if you don't have a TV? You are talking as if not having a TV only restricts reception of the BBC. And so what if they were mostly in Dublin? . Once TV's became available it was clear that most people would have had access to the BBC. And btw what do you think people were doing before they had televisions? Dancing at the crossroads to the local fiddler perhaps? You are discounting the effects of newspapers, foreign literature which was abundant (even the stuff that was censored) and radio. Radio shows like the archers were as familiar to Irish audiences as to the British! You are literally claiming that the arrival of RTE was the only vector for the population to be influenced by TV. It clearly wasn't. My father who was based in Kilkenny with the Army in the 1950's used to drive to rural pubs on a Saturday with his mates to watch the Busby babes. No RTE required. RTE was set up to counter or attenuate the influence of the BBC. Therefore the only conclusion you can make from this is that the state sought to limit the cultural influence of the BBC. And that is the point. Liberalization happened despite RTE not because if it. By 1975 over a million people (at least) between Dublin and Waterford had access to cable TV or the pipe as it was called. Those that didn't have it used the BBC aerial which almost every house in that region had back then. So any monopoly that RTE may have had was virtually gone after about 13 years. If it existed at all. In 1985 people in Dublin and Waterford with 'the pipe' would have received broadcasts from Channel 4 such as 'My beautiful launderette' which explored LGBQT issues. In 1996 RTE were still agonizing over a 'Gay Kiss' on Fair City that never happened. I will say it again. Had RTE not existed then the forces of liberalization that were absent would easily have been taken up by the BBC other media.

There is a huge difference between an indie film and a soap opera. You'd have to look at C4's Brookside more so for that, also TG4 had already introduced a LGBQ+ central characters to its Ros Na Run long before Fair City.

This idea that broadcast was central to much of this is slightly misplaced or that it is the role of a PSB to do this. You'd imagine that in the US they needed PBS, when they were besotted by largely conservative TV from NCB, CBS and ABC, through out the 60s and 70s. I imagine you'd have to wait until the arrive of FOX (which is slightly ironic).

You also have to remember that Channel Sore wasn't mainstream when it first arrived, this changed with the arrival of EuroTrash!

The difference between a soap opera and an Indie movie is only a category one. And this wasn't the only such movie that Channel 4 broadcast. It was one of the hallmarks of the channel.As far as movies went it was avant garde but how can you not say it was mainstream? There was a lot of family content that was hugely popular such as countdown and brookside that were instant success stories. The comic strip presents, The tube. These latter examples were entertainment staples for the younger generations in particular the punk and post punk scenes of the 80s. It wasn't exactly the dark web.In fact it was far from it. It was virtually impossible for it not to be mainstream when you only had six channels to choose from (4 in the UK) Documentaries like equinox and secret history would become groundbreaking.While After Dark was revolutionary. Reducing all of this to 'Eurotrash' is a huge disservice. The Word was another show which was hugely influential. Channel 4 revolutionised British and I would say Irish TV too. With regard to Irish TV I would say that Nighthawks in the Shows like 'Don't feed the gondolas' owe their formats to Channel 4 influence.

If I am reading the rest of what you write correctly then I would tend to agree. I don't believe it is broadcasters job to socially engineer a population one way or the other.But I noticed that Irish broadcasters had to semi-hide their 'Gay Kiss' on TG4 which tells its own story. But my basic point is that RTE whatever influence people think it had is incidental. Ireland was infused with popular culture from Britain and the USA for generations. Saying there was "no sex" in Ireland before RTE is like saying there was no cowboy films in Ireland before RTE. It doesn't stack up when you think about it.

How do you mean semi-hide? AFAIR it was on a beach and was part of an affair. Regardless of the Kiss two of the main characters were in a relationship for a number of years and one was taking care of his nephew.

I am not saying that C4's early years weren't influential but in fairness towards the start of the 1990s they started down the road of mainstreaming the channel. The difference between an Indie-film and a soap is that a soap is popular and largely well known.

I'd argue that "network 2" owes much of its programming to both BBC 2 and Channel 4, and had it been treated correctly may have been that broadcaster. The End, Nighthawks, Don't Feed The Gondolas, Monday Night Drama/comedies. And on. If you look at the cuts to RTÉ2 since 2006 you can see it is largely less than what it was back in 1978 when it started airing.

I always thought RTÉ should have decided that RTÉ2 should have been their independent production channel, with in-house programming on RTÉ ONE. This would have allowed for some competition between 2 different public service broadcasters even if only internally.

The fact that they put it on TG4 and not inserted it into a story line on fair city is what I mean by semi-hiding it. Like what the BBC did with the Nolan Show i.e. choosing a relative back water to have a robust 'Trans' debate rather than doing it on BBC1. This is an old trick that politicians use. The Tory government did it in the early days of the peace process to communicate policy intentions to the IRA and Sinn Fein. In general I often thought that TG4 was more progressive, judging by their content. At least it seemed that way to me when I used to watch it. I was essentially forced to watch it because where I lived at the time in 2004 basically only had access to the terrestrial channels and no internet. Hard to believe now but the content was exceptionally good I thought. Plus I thought the content was heavily influenced (perhaps this was a debt of gratitude) by people like Mairtin O Cadhain and Tomas McGiolla probably through the organizations they help establish which eventually would help create and lobby for TG4. I thought the channel did more with less and RTE could learn lessons from it.

I know what an Indie film is and the difference between a soap. My point is that there was content on Channel 4 that pushed the envelope and it was widely watched. The soaps, no matter what or where you watched were more or less done by 8pm and what people watched after that was a lot more diverse.And this is where CH4 capitalized. For example I remember seeing part of a movie called "the fruit machine" back in the 80's and my father quickly changing the channel when he realized the way it was going. This was for my benefit as I was only 13 at time. But when I went into school the next day, the whole class had seen it all or part of it. Art house or not movies like these were widely seen in Ireland. I think RTE knew the writing was on the wall if they didn't compete. So they did.

Incidentally there is a similar debate ongoing in the UK around Channel 4. In essence the question being how channel 4 can do more with less.

So RTE is not TG4! Then why did you bring them up in defense of RTE? You responded to my posts where I was arguing that the role of RTE in liberalizing Ireland is a fallacious idea. The "Gay Kiss" that never happened in Fair City is evidence of an RTE that was basically sclerotic and lagging when it comes to that particular issue. The fact that TG4 did it is Kudos for TG4 while RTE agonized and bottled the so called "Gay Kiss" just shows how ineffective RTE are at this despite alll of the hype.I mean it was really old hat at this stage thanks to C4. And your point about C4 and Brookside is wrong.Apparently they were actually the first TV soap to broach this issue in as far back as 1982.Which would have been available to a huge amount of Irish viewers.They did it again with Anna Friel in the 90s So what is it again that were C4 hiding? They were the ones who commissioned My Beautiful Launderette and many other movies of similar content. The fact that they are Indie (Which is debatable) is irrelevant. The TV guides (Irish) were emblazoned with four and five stars for that particular movie and went on to win awards all over the English speaking world. It is frankly silly to suggest that C4 was doing anything other than trailblazing on this issue.

https://www.digitalspy.com/soaps/eastenders/a860766/times-soaps-broke-lgbtq-ground/

Someone messaged me about a post in the Tubs thread and I am sure I have posted this story before, the post in the Tubs tread was just to point out how you can use a death to deflect on other issues. I have taken the name of the personality that died out of this post but you can find out who it was yourself.

It is relevant here to show how RTÉ throw money around.

______________

I FoI'd RTÉ a few years back on their executives expenses, they published them back in 2009, so I FoI them twice asking for the same details. I passed this on to the Sunday Time who published them 

In 2020 the executives board expenses went down to 20K, but within that Jon Williams (MD News) took most of the expenses, but in the FoI RTÉ pointed out that he had been given return flights to NYC. This was agree as part of his pay package, because he is on the board of a NGO called Committee to Protect Journalists, who meet quarterly in NYC, Jon had worked for ABC in NYC before taking up the role in RTÉ.

He attended all of those meetings in person in NYC, during his time in RTÉ, but of course 2020 covid hit meaning these meeting don't go ahead in person but RTÉ had already paid in advance for his trips to NYC and couldn't get a refund for those cancelled trips, however he did go on the first trip of the year to the meeting but he cut the it short to return home for the funeral of a recently deceased colleague and well known personality. (they really wanted to make it clear why he returned.)

Expenses paid to the RTÉ Executive board 2011 to 2020:-

• 2011 - €24,233
• 2012 - €41,687
• 2013 - €58,221
• 2014 - €64,547
• 2015 - €77,666
• 2016 - €62,810
• 2017 - €56,895
• 2018 - €53,912
• 2019 - €59,726
• 2020 - €20,708

These figures don't include the car allowance given to executives at RTÉ, nor the barter account (In 2016 Dee Forbes also got a €50k moving fee, this is not included in this list). They gave me a full breakdown of the expenses (flights, entertainment, taxis etc and the position of the person who claimed the expenses) and the obvious question was why, how and where did the head of news fly to in 2020? The responded said: flights cancelled, no refund and he'd returned home early on the first trip to attend the Funeral, RTÉ paid for this return trip, with no refund for the return trip he should have made.

Jon left RTÉ in 2022, potential using the 2021 exit package!

I was sure Jim Jenning would have one that for "I got out just in time"

Isn't she British? Maybe she returned to uk.

Possible interview with tubs 😄😄 in her future😁

This woman is never going to answer for her actions.

Rte isn't willing to go to AGS and make a complaint. Big can of worms there.

The gov hasn't the cojones 🙄

+1 UK television gave a window to the world that previously didnt exist. RTE lagged way behind it in terms of social progression. Channel 4, even though it didnt appear until the early 80s had much much nore influence on social change than the LLS.