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

That was always the plan. It's always the same with these so called "elite" just look at the likes of Bertie, Noreen O'Sullivan and a few others.

You can here the full interview below but see there views on RTÉ

https://www.rte.ie/radio/podcasts/22406581-bryan-dobson/

SOR: brings us to the the current controversy or atmosphere in around RTÉ what have you made of what the station has be through in the last year? Has it been overblown or how do you read it?

BD: Astonished that we are still talking about it a year later, that is the first thing I wouldn't have expected it was clearly and you could tell and it was evidential from early on that this was a significant crisis for RTÉ but the fact that it is still bubbling along now I think maybe we got to the point where its beginning to move into the rear view mirror. It's clearly been enormously damaging at a time when public confident and trust in traditional media is under attack, perhaps one of the most important companies in the country certain from the news front this is the case to be embroiled in this is not a small matter. Suppose from the news point of view for the most part it seems there has been credit given to the coverage of the story I think people have felt that RTÉ's own coverage of its own story hasn't pulled its punches and i think that is what you would expect and I don't think that anyone from the top down would expect anything different from RTÉ. It is a watershed moment there is no question about it for PBS and RTÉ and how it will all shake out is still unclear, financing and the funding issue is still up in the air and that has to be resolved.

SOR: Rory O'Connor who was the Assistant Director of News, who help put you on the TV, he was seeing walking around the news room with his back bent over and he was asked "Rory what are you doing?" and he said "I am looking for moral I was told is was on the floor". He saw it as something that was just like "ah, moral is always on the floor"

BD: I don't think RTÉ has been through anything quite like this recent crisis, there have been crises in the past, I don't think there has been one quite like it before, I think just from working inside the newsroom certainly morale has taken a hit but again I think because we're involved in daily journalism you don't have whole lot of time to cogitate, you just get on with covering the story, weather its the RTÉ story and any story, there is a great benefit about being busy in life.

SOR: One of the things I suspect that has changed, like in the days when you and I and Charlie bird were sent off, and you had john bowman in Q&A, is resources are, they were never very plentiful or flaithulach, but there have got tighter.

BD: Well I would have gone through a period when money in RTÉ was very tight, and then it flowed in there was the celtic tiger, lots of advertising revenue

SOR: Joe Mulholland*

BD: Joe and others new how to spend it, but then spent it on on what appear on the screen or behind the microphone and to my mind there is no discredit in spending money if it is delivering to the audience that is what we are paid to do, and that is what the funding should be for. And the money was spent to produce you know I would say top quality programmes and top quality journalism. Certain the best that could be produce with the resources that were available and that was certain a boom period in terms of funding, and then thing began to turn obliviously the crash changed everything and RTÉ has never really recovered from that and other factors have come along, social media beginning to eat into advertising revenue in a big way, all of that conspire to put huge financial pressures on RTÉ. So there was kind of financially a golden age there, I think the funds were well used, well spend, delivered for the audiences but it is certainly very different now.

SOR: Was it also a golden age for presenters? Better than you can see in the future.

BD: Well that is all document, I never earned more than the DG to the best of my knowledge, and that cap is now in place and certainly the presenters salaries we saw in the pass we won't see again, and I don't have an issue with that because there was always rules in place for News and Current Affairs, we'd we quite restrict in what we could do anyway outside and we'd have to get permission, and then declare what we had done. Not a huge change for people in News and CA but a big change for those in other areas of RTÉ.

SOR: Would you be concerned that those restrictions might deter people from working in RTÉ?

BD: That may well be the case the BBC which pays its stop stars big money and feels it has to do that in order to retain Graham Norton or who ever it might be, they feel they have to be rewarded if they are going to keep turning up and doing it for the BBC. So that may well be, but in the climate that we have Kevin Bakhurst has no alternative, there is huge pressure and political pressure on RTÉ and action needs to be taken. That is demonstrably going to restore public and political confidence.

At any point from 2009 and the crash, BD and SOR could have left RTÉ, or taken a pay cut.

*Joe Mulholland left RTÉ following the Missions To Prey scandal, his replacement was Kevin Bakhurst.

https://www.independent.ie/business/media/rte-is-a-serious-player-i-saw-the-challenges-and-said-to-myself-i-can-help-with-them-commercial-chief-gavin-deans-on-dealing-with-media-scrutiny-and-driving-up-digital-revenues/a1907553735.html

Rehab of RTÉ continuing. Deans wants 25% of revenue to come from digital / online sources. Not that he wants to see an increase of 25% just that 25% of the current €150m in commercial revenue goes from broadcast to online.

The report also points out how the Euros and Olympics really helped RTÉ this year, though as RTÉ point out these are special events that cost money in their Annual Reports, which is it a burden on RTÉ or a cash-cow, it can't be both.

They were so unfairly treated at that oireachtas, we really should give them nice pensions and payouts, or quite exits to avoid publicity. Blame TDs for questioning rather than the €250k executives for never questioning, and sure don't blame the 2 that didn't show up.

They might have started earlier, or perhaps they were due to take the break at Halloween but decided for a Halloween special?

Replaced by Notting Hill, you think in this new era that RTÉ would organize some music specials on the weeks that TLLS is not available. Or that they would test a new chat show with a new presenter.

Huge number of vacancies for RTÉ lately. For a company that has a employment freeze it is strange, and they are giving out about how the government won't sign off on their redundancy packages, so they won't meet their 40 exits by this year, you'd hope they'd be ready to close the digital radio stations down!

I love to know what people working on the show do, surely as they have reduced the number of TLLS episodes those staff members are free for other duties at RTÉ, or are most of them contractors, which you'd then have to question as to why the TUG would worry about TLLS going over to the independent sector, its basically there already, but perhaps I am wrong and those hard working staff members have been deployed to other areas… you'd have though they would wait for the GE to deploy them there.

And this goes back to the idea of innovation at RTÉ, it took them 5 years before realizing that Tubs needed Radio 1 for an audience and he wasn't as big a pull as they thought, indeed leaving him in place for 5 years shows how slow RTÉ are at making changes (unless they absolutely need to, upon the death of a presenter), surely after 3 years someone should have highlighted how badly he was failing in the mid-morning slot on 2fm.

RTÉ US Presidential Coverage

I know many will say they are damn if they do and they are damn if they don't. And yes it is a huge election regardless of who is running, I wonder about the idea of sending Miriam O'Callaghan over to the states to cover the election.

Surely their US Correspondent could cover this election with guests while Miriam stays home.

23:20 US Presidential Election Special Live results coverage of the 2024 US presidential election, presented by Miriam O'Callaghan in Washington and David McCullagh in Dublin

They will finish at 3:30 with coverage continuing from CBS.

Neither TG4 or TV3 are covering the election. You'd think TV3 would try to feign being a public service broadcaster, axe that mornings Ireland AM and news in favour of coverage, while you'd think TG4 would what to show their News teeth without RTÉ something they are driving for, its a pity TG4 didn't go with France 24 coverage.

I suppose for Miriam it is a handy visit to her Daughters (I wonder if Tom McGuirk will join her in the visit)

https://www.thesun.ie/tv/14122763/rte-miriam-ocallaghan-reunion-daughters-us-election/

no ;/ they wouldn't have, would they!

Did Tubridy ever give back the 150k to RTE ?

Indeed - The Govt are stalling on signing off on a shed load of 6 figure redundancy packages until after the election because they think the peasants won't be happy about it - I don't know what makes the Govt think that the people would not like a load of really hard working and quality RTE staff dipping into the trough again…it's a real teaser alright

Saturday's IDM front page

On a separate note - It's back to business as usual for the reporters off on jollies - We had Brian O'Connell from CB radio in Atlanta a few weeks back and he asked a few locals what way they were voting. That was it - about 3 mins worth of radio at god knows what cost -

At the moment we have -

Reporter Una Kelly in the US

RTE news reporter Jackie Fox in the US

Reporter for D/time Louise Byrne in the US

Miriam O'Cal in the US tomorrow

Morning Ireland crew either there or in the air as I type, heading over for a few days too -

There's probably more than that including lashings of sound/video/camera ops, engineers, producers etc etc

Absolutely zero reform attempted and zero accountability

RTE…supporting themselves as the plebs pay for it, all enabled by the Govt of Ire

https://about.rte.ie/2024/11/04/follow-the-us-presidential-election-results-on-rte-2/

Louise Byrne - Pennsylvania

Sharon Tobin, Miriam O ‘Callaghan, Audrey Carville, Jackie Fox - Washington

David McCullagh, Cian McCormack, Colm Ó Mongáin - Dublin

Máirín Ní Ghadhra - NYC

Donncha Ó Murchú - Somewhere in America

Una Kelly - Michigan

Lads, calm down here .

These are the crowd who pillory other businesses but their own is as tight as a frogs arse.

These are the ‘jollies ‘ that almost written into the contracts. Can you imagine what the ‘per diems’ would be like.

If they are not in Business Class over and back rest assured that every poor bozo in whatever carrier they use

Will be tapped for upgrades. No stone will be left unturned there I can assure you.

You have Duffy whinging every day that firms ‘won’t come on the show’ to explain but conveniently forgets

when birthday gate hit the headlines in Covid , nobody from RTE could be found.

This lot are chancers in the extreme,butt reaming John Q big time and getting away with it.

so seeing as they got their bail out rte is proceeding to pish it away as fast as they can…and i suppose each one has their own wee entourage…?