RTE Gold discussion thread

Elmo

doc22 wrote: »

Well they if shut down DAB I'm sure they could of approached the Department to close the stations too as RTE GOLD etc would be well down priorities.

I don't think taxpayers should be funding Rick and Will Leahys etc hobby.....

It would be an effort to send in the documents and to wait. RTÉ used DAB and Lyric FM as political weapons it resulted in an extra €10million in 2020, and it was followed in 2021 by the move of the NSO to the NCH.

It now being March the NSO remains part of RTÉ, even though the NCH has been given 8million in funding to run the NSO!

Mickey Mike

From the word go, I never understand why the Government and RTE didn't push or promote DAB in Ireland, since its inception in 2006 a very poor effort was made, people in cities where it is available and never knew it existed even. They covered the eastern part of the country and forgot about the west. For digital radio its main survival is the Saorview platform, there's thousands of similar radio channels on the internet.

end of the road

doc22 wrote: »

Well they if shut down DAB I'm sure they could of approached the Department to close the stations too as RTE GOLD etc would be well down priorities.

I don't think taxpayers should be funding Rick and Will Leahys etc hobby.....

i don't think tax payers are funding them, license fee payers certainly are but some of them believe that such a station is exactly what should be funded as part of PSB.
others will of course disagree but realistically with a license fee and different tastes there is never going to be universal agreement on what should and shouldn't be funded in terms of broadcast services as part of PSB.

end of the road

Mickey Mike wrote: »

From the word go, I never understand why the Government and RTE didn't push or promote DAB in Ireland, since its inception in 2006 a very poor effort was made, people in cities where it is available and never knew it existed even. They covered the eastern part of the country and forgot about the west. For digital radio its main survival is the Saorview platform, there's thousands of similar radio channels on the internet.

i think really it was the recession that stopped rte
from rolling it out further, i suppose once that happened they just lost interest really but couldn't scrap what was fairly new equipment.
as for why they didn't promote what they had, i think they did but perhapse they could have done a much better job.

Mickey Mike

I've always listened to Gold through my Saorview box with audio leads (red and white) connected to my HiFi, it gives excellent sound quality, scart cable won't work.

Mickey Mike

I'm just wondering, will they be a backlash from the public with the closure of DAB? we remember to tore when RTE tried to close Long Wave in 2014 and a few attempts were made since then, and its still running, people power does make a difference.

Expunge

Is it clear if RTE will maintain live programming on Gold? Will it maintain presenter led programming on the other "stations" or will these be a bunch of jukeboxes and often repeated programmes over time?

I can't imagine the cost saving is that massive unless they can clear out some of the human beings behind it.

I guess they'll have another go at closing the Limerick studios and base Lyric FM in Dublin again now?

Mickey Mike

Expunge wrote: »

Is it clear if RTE will maintain live programming on Gold? Will it maintain presenter led programming on the other "stations" or will these be a bunch of jukeboxes and often repeated programmes over time?

I can't imagine the cost saving is that massive unless they can clear out some of the human beings behind it.

I guess they'll have another go at closing the Limerick studios and base Lyric FM in Dublin again now?

Yes, that will happen, nothing stays the same, given time it will happen.

Elmo

Mickey Mike wrote: »

Yes, that will happen, nothing stays the same, given time it will happen.

To me it is a great opportunity for RTÉ to move people over to production from Administration and train them up, if they can.

The cross promotion of the stations is minimum, and RTÉ should look to include them on the JNLR and ask to ad advertising to them.

See if they can repeat some archive programming on RTÉ Gold, an episode or 2 of the Golden Hour from the 1980s or 1990s. Did they keep any of the programmes?

radioguru02

Mickey Mike wrote: »

I'm just wondering, will they be a backlash from the public with the closure of DAB? we remember to tore when RTE tried to close Long Wave in 2014 and a few attempts were made since then, and its still running, people power does make a difference.

Hahaha, doubt it
Be great if there was, but I reckon 252 has a lot more listeners than this whole multiplex does

alzer100

Does anyone have any idea what the cost savings are for closing RTE's DAB network?
For instance, what is the combined input power rating of all the transmitters and links from an electrical power usage perspective and maintenance costs?
In terms of cost cutting I know RTE have to start somewhere and I can appreciate that the network wasn't in great demand from a listenership perspective but will the cost savings be significant?

Happy RTE Gold was saved.

BTW, Marty Miller replied to Rick 'OShea's Twitter announcement yesterday with something in the lines of "Great News"
Was he really being genuine or is Radio Nova still interested in taking over the DAB multiplex?

odyssey06

Whoever programmed tonight's playlist really excelling themselves...
Had to shazam them but these were welcome surprises.
* Friends by Amii Stewart
* Voices Carry by 'Til Tuesday (thought this was an early Kim Wilde tbh)

kenn0

Weekdays
7am – 10am | Gold Breakfast with Will Leahy
10am – 1pm | Daytime Gold Rick O’Shea
1pm – late | The Greatest Hits – RTÉ Gold

—————————————————————————————

Saturday
9am – 10am | Living in The 70’s with Michael McNamara
10am – 1pm | Aidan Leonard on Saturday
1pm – 2pm | The Classic Countdown with Will Leahy
2pm – 5pm | All 80’s Saturday ( Non-stop 80’s – Music and Memories)
5pm – 6pm | ABC to XTC with John Connolly

——————————————————————————————–

Sunday
9am – 10am | The Gold Lounge with Rick O’Shea
10am – 1pm | Ireland’s Biggest Jukebox with Aidan Leonard
1pm – 3pm | Sunday Gold with Al Dunne
3pm – 5pm | Afternoon Gold with Stephen Daly
5pm – 6pm | The Golden Years with Eric Moore

Expunge

kenn0 wrote: »

Weekdays
7am – 10am | Gold Breakfast with Will Leahy
10am – 1pm | Daytime Gold Rick O’Shea
1pm – late | The Greatest Hits – RTÉ Gold

—————————————————————————————

Saturday
9am – 10am | Living in The 70’s with Michael McNamara
10am – 1pm | Aidan Leonard on Saturday
1pm – 2pm | The Classic Countdown with Will Leahy
2pm – 5pm | All 80’s Saturday ( Non-stop 80’s – Music and Memories)
5pm – 6pm | ABC to XTC with John Connolly

——————————————————————————————–

Sunday
9am – 10am | The Gold Lounge with Rick O’Shea
10am – 1pm | Ireland’s Biggest Jukebox with Aidan Leonard
1pm – 3pm | Sunday Gold with Al Dunne
3pm – 5pm | Afternoon Gold with Stephen Daly
5pm – 6pm | The Golden Years with Eric Moore

That's three staff members and a number of contractors plus one or two other production assistants. For what is essentially a web stream.
What is the ultimate aim here? To get it onto FM on a separate frequency or to share with/replace Lyric?
Is this worth the money and bother? They could just have a branded jukebox and it wouldn't make much difference, I'd say.
What's going on here?
I thought RTE is broke or close to it.

Mickey Mike

RTE are broke, less is sometimes better, a proper lay out for digital radio in my opinion: RTE Radio1 extra, RTE Gold and RTE XM, which would merge R Pulse and R 2xm.

Mickey Mike

RTE Gold is good but its not that great, it belts out the same soft style pop music 24/7, I wish it could rough it up a bit and play some hard rock and heavy metal, the best heavy rock music came from the 70s, 80s and 90s. So com'on RTE Gold and give us (well me anyway) some ear blasting.

odyssey06

Mickey Mike wrote: »

RTE Gold is good but its not that great, it belts out the same soft style pop music 24/7, I wish it could rough it up a bit and play some hard rock and heavy metal, the best heavy rock music came from the 70s, 80s and 90s. So com'on RTE Gold and give us (well me anyway) some ear blasting.

Some of us are very happy with our 'yacht' rock, if that's the term for that soft style!

* Sadly I don't have a yacht to listen to rte gold from

Cube98

Expunge wrote: »

That's three staff members and a number of contractors plus one or two other production assistants. For what is essentially a web stream.
What is the ultimate aim here? To get it onto FM on a separate frequency or to share with/replace Lyric?
Is this worth the money and bother? They could just have a branded jukebox and it wouldn't make much difference, I'd say.
What's going on here?
I thought RTE is broke or close to it.

If it wasn't for the fact that Leahy, O'Shea & Leonard are unsackable staff, Gold would still be the 24/7 jukebox that it was in 2008.

alzer100

Whatever it's shortcomings, I for one would prefer to have a situation in which RTE Gold exists as opposed to one in which it doesn't.

What the station lacks is a live presenter element on weekdays for which I wouldn't be surprised if Michael Cahill and Aidan Leonard added to an extended 7:00am to 7:00,pm weekday schedule in the future.

I would prefer to see the station remain commercial free and for that to continue from a financial perspective I don't expect RTE to put anything more into it than what needs to keep it running. Remember just over a week ago a lot of us were hoping the station would remain on the air!

In my opinion, I think it was a good decision to keep the station as an online service irrespective of what their original intentions were when they announced the closure of the DAB network in 2019.

Level 42

why dont they make it available on the wireless -thing would do well

Elmo

alzer100 wrote: »

In my opinion, I think it was a good decision to keep the station as an online service irrespective of what their original intentions were when they announced the closure of the DAB network in 2019.

Unless they ask the minister and the department to change the variety of sound and vision broadcasts they cannot unilaterally axe any of their digital stations or channel. They may not add any new ones either.

All of the digital stations are available on 2 broadcast systems Saorview and Virgin Media. They made a decision after a year and half not to approach the minister or the department to close the digital stations.

The channels stay put until the Minister makes a decision and that has often taken forever, even at time a decision is not made.

You have to love Section 103 of the Broadcasting Act 2009.

Former Former Former

Level 42 wrote: »

why dont they make it available on the wireless -thing would do well

Couldn't see that going down well with 4FM Sunshine, Q102, etc

end of the road

i'm sure it wouldn't go down well with those stations, but a proper country would just tell them suck it up and compete.
they are commercial stations, they don't have a god given right to any audience.

Brian CivilEng

The thing is, the commercial stations already have lots of unregulated competition with Spotify and podcasts. I know when I commuted that's what I listened to rather than anything on the FM band. RTÉ Gold actually brought me back to broadcast radio from Spotify thanks to lack of news and ads but it still has a human choosing the music and an Irish accent between songs.

Cube98

It's interesting that nobody seems to mention or care about the other RTE digital radio stations, they tried doing live shows on 2xm a couple of years ago but nobody noticed and there's actually more of a gap in the market for that kind of station since TXFM closed

Former Former Former

end of the road wrote: »

i'm sure it wouldn't go down well with those stations, but a proper country would just tell them suck it up and compete.
they are commercial stations, they don't have a god given right to any audience.

I think it's far more likely that people would be giving out that RTE was using public money to trample all over private competitors, no diversity in the media, etc etc.

end of the road

Cube98 wrote: »

It's interesting that nobody seems to mention or care about the other RTE digital radio stations, they tried doing live shows on 2xm a couple of years ago but nobody noticed and there's actually more of a gap in the market for that kind of station since TXFM closed

not really, the audiences for such stations are unlikely to be discussing them on here.
in fact i would say those discussing gold on here are the minority of the audience.
either way the digital stations are staying for now so no amount of complaining about it will change that.

end of the road

Former Former Former wrote: »

I think it's far more likely that people would be giving out that RTE was using public money to trample all over private competitors, no diversity in the media, etc etc.

probably, but in fairness they would come out with that one whatever service rte would propose.

ford fiesta

Give Barry Lang the vacant Afternoon / Drivetime slot on Gold !!

Cube98

end of the road wrote: »

not really, the audiences for such stations are unlikely to be discussing them on here.


in fact i would say those discussing gold on here are the minority of the audience.
either way the digital stations are staying for now so no amount of complaining about it will change that.

RTE can't close or open any stations without getting the ministers permission and such things can drag on for years. Incidentally, i wonder why they didn't do a country music station when they were setting up their dab stations, The 3 cities that had dab don't have country music on FM.