Flutther's predictions coming home to roost.

FlutterinBantam

Saw on today's Sindo that RTE due to run out of money around October.

Quelle surprise!!

Not to this poster, who years ago recognised that the cost base in Montrose was way out of line with comparable industry world wide.

This poster was ridiculed for these views and so called experts threw in all the old hoary excuses and bulldust, but the chickens are coming home to roost.


Interesting times ahead, I would opine.

Rock and a hard place comes to mind.

RayM

If it's in the Sunday Independent, you can be pretty sure that it's either massively exaggerated ("well placed source", my arse) or just a pack of lies. More chance of INM going bust, to be honest.

Berti Vogts

http://www.tribune.ie/news/article/2009/may/31/rte-may-close-if-cash-runs-out-in-september/

The headline is clearly sensationalist but there is no doubt about the substance of the story.

DMC

As its not just a radio issue, there is a thread already over in Broadcasting

bushy...

Lot less OB's etc these days

Fuzzy Clam

"Staff have been told that management is drawing up a list of people who they are going to make redundant, if necessary, to save money."

You can be damn sure that their list would be nothing like the list I'd draw up to save money!!!

Strike could be on the cards.

FlutterinBantam

Paying a coterie of people way above the odds to run a small national broadcasting service will always end in tears when the cold winds of recession blow through the land.

From the top down, these people thought the gravy would never cease to flow from the spigot of the tax tureen.The kept their fat snouts firmly immersed in the trough of plenty, and wallowed in the largess which overflowed the gunwales and eventually swamped the ship.

The stout thick wasted denizens of the "upper deck" should be either drastically slimmed down or jettisoned to protect the lower paid, and the liggers and wannabees weeded out and put on their bicycles .

We are a small nation of circa 4.5 to 5 million... we cannot afford to pay ordinary people salaries in excess of the President of the United States.

bushy...

bushy... wrote: »

Lot less OB's etc these days

TV rather than radio but on the 6.1 news they had a bit about the glorious weather and how people up and down the country were enjoying it - the examples being three things in Dublin you could cover in one trip.

Our man in Havana

Roadcaster to be scrapped, Nikki Hayes to be confined to Montrose.

DublinWriter

The number of middle and upper management they have in Montrose throughout the various corporate groups is unsustainable.

During the good years RTE responded to every crises by hiring more management in a typical civil-service CYA mode.

Every politically satirical programme RTE has ever run was sacrificed for political expediency in order to cow-tow to the minister of the time in order to facilitate a licence fee increase...Hall's Pictorial, Scrap Saturday and Bull Island were all axed at the height of their popularity.

RTE need to be privatised and the licence fee scraped. End of.

Our man in Havana

DublinWriter wrote: »

RTE need to be privatised and the licence fee scraped. End of.

That won't happen until after a devastating strike that almost destroys the station.

FlutterinBantam

DublinWriter wrote: »

The number of middle and upper management they have in Montrose throughout the various corporate groups is unsustainable.

During the good years RTE responded to every crises by hiring more management in a typical civil-service CYA mode.

Every politically satirical programme RTE has ever run was sacrificed for political expediency in order to cow-tow to the minister of the time in order to facilitate a licence fee increase...Hall's Pictorial, Scrap Saturday and Bull Island were all axed at the height of their popularity.

RTE need to be privatised and the licence fee scraped. End of.

A Public Service Broadcaster is needed in my opinion,so privatising RTE would not be an option.

What would be an option ,in my opinion, is paying salaries to all in keeping with industry guidelines and NOT paying King's Ransoms to people who have a target audience of less than roughly 1.5 mil.

RTE has lost the run of itself and in times past all it had to do was sit back and charge advertisers exorbitant rates or put it's hand out for a licence fee increase.

Those days are gone lads.

DublinWriter

FlutterinBantam wrote: »

A Public Service Broadcaster is needed in my opinion,so privatising RTE would not be an option.

Really? So the USA are totally incorrect?

bmaxi

Bond-007 wrote: »

Roadcaster to be scrapped, Nikki Hayes to be confined to Montrose.

Huge disappointment here, at first glance I thought it read Mountjoy.

FlutterinBantam

DublinWriter wrote: »

Really? So the USA are totally incorrect?

Did I say that?

I think you are extrapolating from an argument I did not make.

deadhead13

Cathal Goan has been the Director-General of RTE since 2003. The organisation is currently losing over 1 million euros per week. He has also been in charge while all, the so-called, "stars" outrageous contracts were negotiated. I wonder how he would fair in a privatised broadcasting organisation which didn't get 40% of its budget from licence fee payers.

Firetrap

I wonder is it a tactic to make staff take the pay cut? According to the papers, they're unwilling to take a pay cut at present so perhaps the threat of having their employers go bankrupt might just result in a spot of reconsideration.

buzzbomb

bushy... wrote: »

Lot less OB's etc these days

Why would you say that? In the case of 2FMs Roadcaster clients pay a great deal of money to have it broadcast from their premises. If anything you'll see more 2FM OBs like that and not less.

L1011

deadhead13 wrote: »

Cathal Goan has been the Director-General of RTE since 2003. The organisation is currently losing over 1 million euros per week. He has also been in charge while all, the so-called, "stars" outrageous contracts were negotiated. I wonder how he would fair in a privatised broadcasting organisation which didn't get 40% of its budget from licence fee payers.

Goan ran TG4 on a very tight budget, he's been able to cope with that situation in the past.

deadhead13

RTE is going to make a loss of between 68 - 100 million euros this year. The buck must stop with Goan.

FlutterinBantam

deadhead13 wrote: »

RTE is going to make a loss of between 68 - 100 million euros this year. The buck must stop with Goan.

Absolutely-start managing now,and stop putting the hand out.

Hopefully for the sake of the many ordinary "Joes" out there,he will finally see that the contracts of the so called "stars" are way above the broadcasting footprint which RTE covers.

DMC

While the finger is being wagged at RTÉ this weekend, its not just themselves. Its every broadcaster that is reliant on some or all of their revenue from advertising.

Newstalk's woes are well know.
UK commercial radio is in dire straits.

And if you look towards TV; ITV and Setanta are fubared.

RTÉ could be seen as the first test of public sector job losses, and so there will be a strong effort not to lose jobs. Is the voluntary leaving thats open in the public service available to RTÉ employees?

In that climate, a strike is on the cards. But there hasn't been a strike in RTÉ since c. 1992 (?) and the media landscape has totally changed in this country since then. RTÉ now have competition from indigenous broadcasters, so the advertising shekels could go, that's if RTÉ management are unable to run a skeleton service.

For radio, that would mean Lyric FM and 2FM on auto-pilot, RnaG going ceili 24/7 and Radio 1 with the bearest of services, more music and repeats of documentaries.

RTÉ's mixed model of revenue serves it well in years of plenty, but in years of famine...

DublinWriter

First, they ask us to bale out the banks, then they ask us to bale out the Catholic Church....now guess what's next lads?

mike65

They can sell Montrose (even now it would fetch a decent price) and relocate to a empty warehouse/offices in Tallaght. Admittedly all their stars would get lost as they tried to find their new workplace but no harm!

humberklog

FlutterinBantam wrote: »

Absolutely-start managing now,and stop putting the hand out.

Hopefully for the sake of the many ordinary "Joes" out there,he will finally see that the contracts of the so called "stars" are way above the broadcasting footprint which RTE covers.

Why sort of salary would you consider acceptable FB?
I'm only asking as I haven't a clue at what kind of figures I'd even start thinking about as being just.

I fully agree in general at what's being said.

FlutterinBantam

I would say 150k max.

Why do I say that??

Because nobody in a comparable position is in a position to pay more.

Pay rates are commensurate with demand and profile and payback.

RTE over the years made the mistake of pandering to the "names" out there in the fooking totally "mistaken belief"that these cnunts had something better to go to??:eek:

An idiot like myself would have figured that one out.

Goan padded the cattery out there and in my opinion he should get out of there.


Failure.

Aidric

I might talk to Joe about this tomorrow.

FlutterinBantam

Expect the RTE line if you do.