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

WTF does Marty Morrissey know about plants?

I thought he was a GAA presenter… now he is RTE anchor for Bloom, a commercial operation that is not part of RTE.

And Aine Lawlor… I thought she was retired and gone from RTE. I F****** cant stand her.

Both Kenny and Tubridy’s exits had no negative effect on audience numbers. In fact both Sean O’Rourke and Oliver Callan grew the audiences steadily for each time slot post their more known predecessors. It is therefore a fact that in those cases the names had no impact on audience - despite RTÉ’s (and your) claims.

The only logical conclusion any reasonable person can draw from that is they were overpaid.

Are you an employee of or associated in any way with RTÉ or NKM (past or present)?

Could there be trouble ahead for The Toyman’s Sunday pre-recorded show that barely gets mentioned anywhere these days? The London gig could be in jeopardy too with this news.

Dee Forbes is an executive. Kevin Bakhurst is an executive. Geraldine O’Leary was an executive. As were Collins, Coveney, Jennings et al.

In relation to The Ryan Tubridy Pay Scandal all of those names are to varying degrees as much click bait as The Toyman himself. Some were at the very centre of it and party to the dodgy dealings for which The Toyman’s agent provided invoices from another company (CMS, not NKM).

As for Ferriter, The Toyman has referred to him as a friend, therefore this article is not exactly wholly unbiased is it?

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/ray-darcy-contract-fine-print-meant-rte-didnt-have-to-pay-him-50000/a/153556669.html

The contract ran for two years, for 2024 and 2025, but “may be terminated by either party by serving four weeks’ written notice on the other”.

Ray, Ryan, all overvalued by Forbes, O'Leary, Coveney, Doherty, Lynch. And so on.

But I was just thinking about RTÉ over the last decade: -

1. In 2016 funding Children's content was significantly cut, so far no increase, we wait until 2025 AR to see if anything has changed.

Based on 2024 annual report RTÉ spent a total of €5.5m on children's content, incurring a decrease of about 100k from 2023.

2. Drama: There are 3 areas were RTÉ fund drama, in-house productions (Fair City), independent productions and Co-productions.

Total spend on Drama for TV in 2024 was €19m this compares to €23m in 2023 a drop of €4m, of which a total of 11.5 hours were commission in 2023 at a total cost of €3.3million for TV or €286,000 per hour. In 2024 just 7.5 hours were commissioned costing a total of 1.85m or €246,000 per hour.

The third aspect of TV drama production comes from RTÉ's Acquisitions department, these are not reported in the commissioning annual report as RTÉ does not provide them with funding of over 25%.

In 2024 the acquisition department spent €7.2m on Irish acquisitions, an increase from €5.4m in 2023. This also includes programming outside drama.

I wonder, How committed are RTÉ to drama, Fair City being their only hope!

3. Comedy can come under the heading of Drama or Entertainment in the Independent Commissioning's annual report, the only comedy from RTÉ is it own farce.

4. In terms of news and current affairs on TV, cutting 2FM and RTÉ 2 news programming, do we see any improvement in online news and current affairs, with no audience figures for either.

5. Little to no original content on RTÉ2, while 2FM gets public funding as it continues to see audiences fall.

6. Over the past 3 years there is no improvement on RTÉ's output.

7. And back to our summer breaks, Today off the air until Sept, this compares to the year round productions of Ireland AM and The Six O'clock show. This leads to the summer break for news and current affairs output, with News on TV and Radio both cut significantly in August. 

No RTÉ are a failed public service broadcaster.

What a headline! Haven’t heard “sickened” used like this since I was a teenager.

Seems like The Toyman decided to lean fully into the “what I did for my summer holidays” primary school prose style by writing a London Diary on that topic. Intriguing.

Elsewhere in the actual papers The Toyman’s replacement on TLLS wants a commitment from RTÉ that he can move the show away from the fluff and county music / GAA / Valentine’s Day specials type show that were hallmarks of The Toyman’s reign into a hard hitting interview type show. He wants the show to “go hard” apparently. Also intriguing,

No RTÉ canteen for Mr. Bakhurst. Old habits die hard in RTÉ it seems.

Perhaps they should change “Truth Matters” to “Because we’re worth it”?

With NKM and RTÉ starlet Mark Moriarty about to open a new restaurant not too far from Donnybrook I wonder if KB will dine there?