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

Happy Christmas and New Year to everyone

It looking more and more likely that there will be a 30% evasion rate based on Dee Forbes 14% evasion rate in 2019.

Of course that doesn't take into consideration the increased number of households and I believe the number is fudged by the numbers on the household package that provides a TV licence.

Total sold so far this year in comparison to the same time in previous years.

living in an area of high migration all have flat screen TVs, only renters without a big screen TV seem to be students or sharing accommodation. Most families have a TV. At least that seems to be the case.

I think even if that is at 10% it only slightly fudges the figures also if you remove them the evasion rate increases.

Also businesses have had to pay the TV licence since 2009.

Regardless ultimately the big increase is not about declining TVs.

Perhaps that’s what KB4 would like us to think.

I assume she is, no reason for her personally to answer any questions, same for Jim Jennings.

Hopefully both will get well soon.

RTE News channel showing a repeat of nationwide when there is a major fire in Switzerland

Shocking

I think her doctor put 7th January on her cert, but unfortunately left out the Year 🥸🙄

You can actually.

I mention this in another another thread

So in the end just 768,657 household paid the licence, this compares to 947,924 back in 2022.

That's an increase of 179,267 not paying up.

Households in Ireland 1.8m

Households on the Household benefit package circa 500,000

Households without a TV circa 10% (which I don't believe)

Total who should be paying the license fee 1,120,000

Evasion rate 351,343

31%

Well done Dee Forbes you managed to Double the evasion rate!

You have to remember that RTÉ believe that their content was good during the 7 years of Dee Forbes and Moya Doherty and the only thing wrong was governance. KB4 is only approaching it from this front, he is not great at taking criticism.

Look at his defense of the €100k news promo, which is little used.

They also believe that RTÉ was good prior to this and that really from a content point of view nothing really needs to change. It's purely about holding on.

KB4's new direction is little more that D4B's Strategy 2024.

Unless there was massive inefficiencies in RTE produced programmes, it does beg the question if there is any real saving by these (costly) redundancy packages combined with same content coming from an 'independent' production company.

Or it seems like a massive bait and switch.

RTÉ are really trying to hide the damage done by the scandal of 2023

https://businessplus.ie/media-plus/tv-licence-revenue-rte/

An RTÉ spokesman said: “Please note the decline in the number of households claiming to have a television set, as well as the issue of high TV licence evasion rates, precede events of 2023.

“RTÉ remains grateful to all those who have continued to pay and to Government for multiannual funding for 2025-2027.

“Funding provided RTÉ with greater certainty and allowed us to plan ahead and continue to transform RTÉ.

You just have to take a look at their annual reports to show that

1. Declining TV Licence Revenue was not happening
2. That they did have certainty on their annual funding

As you can see by 2022 Licence fee revenue was up since 2013, it dropped in 2014, but continued to regain ground from 2014. But RTÉ over those 10 years would have know that they were at least guaranteed 170m per year.

*a portion of the licence fee went to TG4 from 2011 TO 2017, this was to fill that gap after the government in 2011 decided to cut TG4 funding from the exchequer.

Also note that all of the above figures exclude the 7% that goes to the Sound and Vision Fund (BCI/BAI and now CnaM's scheme).

The Irish Times has just stated:

RTÉ’s chief financial officer has resigned from her post to take up a position outside of the national broadcaster.Mari Hurley took up the role in August 2024 after the previous chief financial officer, Richard Collins, left in the wake of a controversy over RTÉ payments, including to presenter Ryan Tubridy.