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

I heard that and what came to mind was a 'boring old fart' who thinks he understands 'young people' and 'insta' etc and spoofs on about them. But really hasn't the foggiest beyond what he's read about them elsewhere. Anyway these insta stars he was talking of are hardly in the first flush of youth? 30s and early 40s..

But where is Dee Forbes these days?????

Willie was also the main driving force in bringing Ray D'Arcy back to RTE.

Enough said about this 'guru'.

RTE radio coverage of 'Whats in the Papers' this morning:

Commenced with a long list of woes at RTE, funding, loss of licence money, departure of the 'stars'.

Followed by a story of Gardaí and criminal elements directing local public protests at asylum sites.

Might as well give up any pretence of balance at this stage, just abolish the licence fee and let RTE be slimmed down and managed as a government information news channel with a bit of culture along the way. Stop the pretence.

They are also going to have to find something for An Post to do or they will have provide them with a subvention them that 10m loss of income.

Why? Lots of businesses change their payment systems but don't give compensation to collection agencies.

I was at the Local Enterprise Awards last Thursday in the Mansion House and they were in their 10th year. Bryan Dobson was the MC for the night and he does this every year gratis. If only other current and ex RTE employees were like this. You can in your hole imagine the likes of Claire Byrne doing this.

This is top comedy from someone who suckled at the RTE teat for years, yet somehow ended up in court trying to get millions written off.

I'd say that the 4 presenters are the perfect embodiment of "anti-talent".

https://www.irishmirror.ie/showbiz/rte-ex-musical-director-deplorable-32896887?int_source=nba

was that yer man that played the piano?and then married the hot blondie that was on a game show?

havnt a notion who the other 4 are so they mustnt have a whole lot of "talent"

aye…and what is dee up to?has she re-surfaced?or is she still "sick"?

That article also shows how out of touch the normal reporter and RTÉ staff are with their audience.

Tubridy returned to the station to replace Ryan, and stayed for five years, managing to claw back some gains for the slot, before returning to RTÉ Radio 1 - where he stayed until last summer.

This did not happen. There was no clawing back.

Streaming completely changed the broadcasting model. It had been damaged by the introduction of VCRs in the 1980s and then DVDs. That changed the movie broadcasting from syncrhonous (where people had to watch at the time of broadcast) to almost asynchronous (where the viewer could decide when to watch the movie). That viewing shift has been going on for decades but what really changed things was when ordinary TV programmes and series became streamable.

For an organisation like RTE with a dodgy "Player" that frequently does not work, it is hard to compete with the likes of BBC (not available on Irish IPs), Channel4 On Demand (available on Irish IPs) and Sky. Even Amazon and Disney now stream series that previously might have been on RTE (in the middle of the night so as not to interfere with the airtime of the RTE "talent").

Ironically, Forbes was in charge of Discovery Channel in Europe. It introduced its own streaming service (Discovery Plus) a few years ago. On the audio side of things, services like Spotify have hit the broadcast radio model for music. In some respects, it was like the invention of portable transistor radios in the 1960s in that Spotify is available on smartphones. No Tubridy required.

Regards…jmcc

Do we think that she did anything really to help role out Discovery +, I'd say she's not even their market. She's a sales woman. She's looking at what is the product that I am selling to Sky, Virgin Media and to Advertisers, she see the shift over to OnDemand and a product Discovery + is launch again she's looking at how do we sell this to the consumer, advertisers and our partners. She might be looking at the tiering aspect of such services: -

1. How much FTA channels on broadcast should Discovery have?
2. How do we close broadcast channels?
3. What do we charge our partners for carrying our channels?
4. Should we get into sport as live broadcast repeat become less and less relevant?
5. Should we have a free advertising tier and then a number of premium tiers?
6. Can we do a deal to add discovery plus for all Sky customers, and what fee do we charge Sky?

None of this really talks about content or programme buy, rather its about sales.

I mean you can call the show Africa's Wildlife or Africa: Nature Unleashed! It is still the same documentary, just people might consider watching the second show title.

Perhaps I am naive as to her role in Discovery but I suspect it wasn't even half of the above.

I'd argue DVD's helped Broadcast and Distributors due to the lack or Recording feature.

The launch of digital Satellite TV in the late 1990s accelerated the decline of the DVDs. The typical release cycle for a movie was cinema - Pay TV (DVD/Video first then the subscription broadcasters like Sky) - FTA broadcast.

From a production point of view, DVDs were also physically smaller and lighter than video tapes. The price drops of the equipment also helped in that DVD players became disposable technology rather than repairable. Some of the DVD retail chains went bust in the early 2000s because the market was changing so rapidly. FTA broadcast was also struggling because of soccer matches being bought up by Sky (that was mainly in the 1990s) and they were not available live on FTA broadcast. The market has changed so much that some of the streamers have become studios themselves. (Netflix/Prime) Streaming also changed the lifetime of a movie or programme in that it was available for much longer than it would have been on the old cycle.

The irony is that RTE has a back catalogue that would be the basis for a good streaming service if it had a competent management and a reliable delivery system. It increasingly looks like Forbes was the wrong person at the wrong time for RTE.

Regards…jmcc

I get this feeling that there are people in RTÉ annoyed that people on boards are giving out about them. Like they are basically saying we shouldn't complain about the service from RTÉ. And then they post attack replies to suggest in someway we should comment on a comments board because we might not be the right type of person to comment!