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

It's not "totally your decision" when you can be prosecuted for not paying 🙄

Nobody on this thread was saying the licence fee was the only issue. I've no interest in what RTE insiders who were part of the problem are saying

Until people stand up to the obvious waste and corruption that is going on in this country via our politicians, semi states and civil and public servants, nothing will change. With RTE and the TV license we have a real chance to stick together and stop paying. Yeah we will be fined and yeah there will be jail threatened but at the end of the day all we need is one person to stay the course till the case goes to court and when asked are you paying your license, NO, and asked why, As there has been waste and corruption ongoing within the organization that the money is being paid to and until there is an investigation from both/either the garda or some other organization don't pay stay in jail and keep the spot light on it and let the world see how this countries agenda to keep getting people to pay and how they are punished and how others who are in the know and with connections continue to get away without any accountability. Imagine a case going to the European court the government would be laughed out of the building.

This year alone

RTE, bike shed, security hut, children's hospital and now the modular homes all of which have astronomical costs assigned to them and no one telling the full story different parties blaming someone else and not one person arrested, thouroghly investigated, charged or even sacked. Most of those in RTE were let go without a nice little golden handshake. Someone needs to keep the spot light on this imagine them trying to arrest a 100k TV license holders for not paying when they turn and explain their decision why they are not paying. Its like water charges people protested and we don't pay directly for water and if we had it would have turned into another area where the amount would of gone up and up and up compare that to our waste collection since it got privatized which is what our water supply would of ended up going.

probably like a bulldog after licking pish off a nettle after shes seen all the money flowing into rte and she doesnt get any…yet!

Ah poor Jimbo Jennings, I wonder if Moya got an invite

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/i-thought-rte-people-were-treated-appallingly-john-mccolgan-on-his-relationship-with-wife-moya-doherty-and-the-strain-of-the-crisis-at-the-national-broadcaster/a1707058314.html

Unbelievable.

This man's judgement is as bad as some of his predecessors in the Director General's job.

It looks fooking terrible.

Simply put, they don't GAF what you, me or anyone else thinks (as above). The Govt have their backs and that's that. Bakhurst had his chance but he never had any intention of doing anything substantial - Damage control and damage limitation were his priorities with a view to maintaining the status quo so everyone in there can keep on gorging from the trough. They are a law unto themselves at this stage

Bakhurst was and remains the wrong guy for the position - He's way too friendly with too many people in there. Think of Kev and Marty's road trip

Listening to the radio today it would seem Kev and Noel are besties now - NK bots everywhere on every station and show - 2/3 on one show is the norm these days

Tubs will be back soon after a year in exile

oh aye,for sure…and they dont even have the common curtesy to give us a reach-around!

have to ask and excuse my ignorance…why hasnt there been one investigative type reporter gone after dee to ask questions? i seem to remember one lad went after "the general" one time…so why not dee?

they should keep it up…im actually surprised she hasnt popped up somewhere and given an interview so she comes out smelling like roses and pushes up to the trough again…said it before,fraud squad shouldve been brought in from the word go…

saw that. Lets start the redemption now if we can. Quicker we say we are cleaned up, the quicker we will be back to normal operations as they might say in the mafia.

Sure didnt Ryan TubrideRTE have the Taoiseach on reviewing Eddie Hobbs book - "how to mange your hidden sponsorships with renault"

nathing to see here as Seamus might say - say nathin

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2024/10/10/rte-staff-told-theres-no-room-to-improve-at-montrose/

People argue with me that there would be no point splitting up RTÉ, but by the looks off it all RTÉ is really starting up again.

No politician is asking how a building that they moved into nearly 30 years ago was not maintain in Cork, while Donnybrook is sounding like a disaster area.

What have they being doing for the last 60 years.

And just to show you how out of touch media people are

https://www.thesun.ie/tv/13968670/rte-dancing-with-the-stars-politicians-banned-grainne-seoige/

Larbar nobody remembers who was on Dancing with the Canteen even fans of the show don't remember that Grainne Seoige was a contestant, and I have to say I don't remember it coming up at the elections either.

But I’m not surprised she got elected because she threw her heart and soul into dancing.

She got elected as she is one of the few successful female jockeys, and well known in the area.

And trust me people know Grainne as a News anchor and lately a member of the canteen.

Anyone without searching tell me the name of the person who won in 2024?

The one thing I'd ask is did anyone in RTÉ ever feel proud of the organisation they work for? I always am bemused by this idea. Not only because why should you be proud of an organisation you work for, but also because RTÉ are people who would have ultimately socialised in circles that very rarely took much notice of them.

Was the praise given to an RTÉ staffer by a "local yocal" enough for them to feel pride in the organisation that they worked for, because I doubt it was coming from the peers. Or did they just hang around a clique of RTÉ people all saying how wonderfully they were for working at the national broadcasters?

The take up of satellite and cable TV, along with the availability of broadband, largely makes terrestrial TV obsolete. RTÉ might save money by going subscription.

You could bring in a law that says that all basic packages must have RTÉ and TG4 as part of their price while any audio / video provider must provide Irish channels with promotions on their user interfaces for programming on their on demand services.

Also anytime I hear that Kevin Bee is a friend of Marty Morrissey, I imagine them driving on a horse and cart ….

Ah if only they'd had a DG that had experience in Pay TV 😂

Odd that. :) She was only in programming and content rather than Pay-TV itself. That was largely Sky in Ireland and the UK.

Regards…jmcc

So… remind me how she was supposed to be a good fit for the role of RTE DG again? 🤔

Ah but you pay these people high wages to get the best…

RTÉ's Rehab contines in the Irish Times

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2024/10/17/rte-was-in-the-gpo-before-and-it-didnt-work-heres-a-better-idea-for-the-donnybrook-campus/

And the environmental impact of the new construction would be no greater than piecemeal residential development (ideally, the State would repair the RTÉ campus by buying back the land it was forced to sell in 2017).

Forced to sell, no RTÉ mismanaged RTÉ and was then forced to sell because of its own mismanagement.

A more empowering alternative to current proposals would be to redevelop RTÉ’s studios as a diversified Donnybrook Media District (DMD). This would double down on the potential of the site with RTÉ anchoring the space and sharing it with indigenous media companies

DMD sounds very like splitting up RTÉ without spliting up RTÉ, but indeed I've been saying it for a while.

2RN should take control of Montrose, Radio stations and the donnybrook studio and allow them to be come The National Broadcast Network and Studios.

Or DMD could be paid for with 7 per cent of the €14 billion Apple tax windfall, where RTÉ arguably has a special claim: housing, hospitals, education and transport deserve investment too, but media industries have been disrupted by big tech more than other sectors, and RTÉ competes directly with Apple for advertising revenue and in audiovisual production and distribution.

So he wants to spend 980m on his plan! Because over the years RTÉ failed to develop the site they were on, not only fail to develop it but fail to maintain it!

https://www.businesspost.ie/news/apres-tax-earnings-liam-brady-media-company-appoints-liquidators-after-rte-pundits-retirement/

https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/irish-legend-liam-brady-set-33907853

In 2022, he took home €56,643 for his work on RTÉ Sport.

2022 would have been in a year of a World Cup. Not sure what other punditry he was doing that year.

Both Spillane and Brolly have said they didn't get much, but both are so up their own arses that they probably don't know the price of a pint of milk.

I see the rehabilitation of the Ryan Turbidy has started. Firstly having Simon Harris on his podcast and now some award for contribution to Broadcasting, won't belong till he is back on RTE. I thought him being in such demand that he would be commanding a huge salary on one of the big media stations in the UK or even the US.

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!