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

malinheader

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121678118#Comment_121678118

Yes, but from who. I totally don't get why the retracting. Sure its more than likely all rte top brass.

skimpydoo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121678130#Comment_121678130

Well from the government and the general public whilst they try and figure away out of this mess.

Rubberchikken

If only those who pay for sky get sky why can't the same be done for rte?

I disagree completely with a broadband tax. I pay for my broadband to Eir. Why now.pay a tax on top of thos for a channel I don't receive and even if I did, wouldn't watch anyhow

malinheader

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121678148#Comment_121678148

Like something you see in the movies in a courtroom from corrupt companies.

Makes sense.

glenfieldman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121678106#Comment_121678106

Id say to protect the golden circle, Dee is Leo’s mate, (a photo from DWTS in 2019). Rory Coveny who 2as the brains behind this shambles is Simon Covenys brother,

https://extra.ie/2019/03/24/entertainment/movies-tv/will-leo-varadkars-partner-matt-barrett-be-chasing-the-glitter-trophy-on-dancing-with-the-stars-next-season

malinheader

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121678293#Comment_121678293

No surprises. My own opinion would be that you only redact something if you have something to hide.

SEPT 23 1989

RTE and the government have each other by the balls and its a very undignified spectacle

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121677000#Comment_121677000

You've obviously thought about this a great deal more than me. My main worry is that 2RN would be caught up in any move by the government. The village idiots in FF/PDs sold off the Telecom Eireann infrastructure so that they could play at being masters of the universe on the stock market. The damage it caused was immense. It put broadband roll-out back by almost a decade and eventually Eircom was plundered and could barely keep its copper network operational. Idiot "technology journalists" were fed the press releases from a very clever Eircom PR department about there being no demand for broadband. When Cablelink was sold off (it had been owned by RTE and TE) and the network updated, it almost completely took away any prospects for Eircom broadband in the cities and more people have Virgin cable broadband now. 2RN shared a lot of that critical infrastructure aspect.

There is still a need for a Public Service Broadcaster but RTE in its present format is not a PSB. It has lost a lot of the original PSB ethos and it has been replaced by a grubby self-serving commercialism. Breaking off RTE Commercial makes sense in this respect. Your outline above is probably a much better solution.

Regards...jmcc

Hotblack Desiato

When Cablelink was sold off (it had been owned by RTE and TE) and the network updated, it almost completely took away any prospects for Eircom broadband in the cities and more people have Virgin cable broadband now.

Yet we got fibre in our area in 2022 (from openEir) and it's not grant aided (Dublin suburb) even though many people already had Virgin Media broadband. They obviously reckoned it was worth their while - being able to retire the old copper network completely should save quite a lot on maintenance costs. I stll have VDSL but will get FTTH when I get around to it (the son's new Playstation 5 puts more of a demand on it than before!). Had horrendous dealings with VM in the past and don't want to go back to them, plus the internal wiring for their BB would be messy.

We certainly do need one or more PSBs, currently RTE is one of them (TG4 being the other, and could teach RTE a lot about how to run a broadcaster efficiently) but it has no divine right to continue to be, or to exist at all.

There is a lot to be said IMHO for a purely PSB, commercial-free Radio 1 and TV 1 and funding that directly from the exchequer rather than via a licence.

Loafing Oaf

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121038748#Comment_121038748

The key deciders on this will be Varadkar and the two Martins.

Mr Martin has said he wants to see the licence fee abolished and replaced with a household charge to cover all media content.

Catherine and Leo playing their cards close to their chest so far but if either or both also comes down in favour of such a charge I'd say that's what we'll be getting.

Well Leo has apparently declared his hand

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/rte-crisis-plans-to-publish-top-ten-earners-last-week-were-abandoned-and-taoiseach-favours-scrapping-tv-licence-fee/a675389418.html

and

Media Minister Catherine Martin, the Green Party deputy leader, has strongly argued in recent weeks for exchequer funding

However

It is understood Mr Varadkar would ultimately be prepared to support a household media charge that could be collected by Revenue, if Fianna Fáil insists upon it. 

So I guess matters hinge on how hard FF are prepared to press their preferred option...

The Government made a mess out of privatisation of Telecom Eireann, but I think we also look back at TE though rose tinted glasses sometimes.

The should have kept the access networks as a semi state body, much like they did with Gas Networks Ireland.

I think though when you look back at the 1990s, Telecom Eireann wasn’t cutting edge. It was living on the bounce of having rolled out digital exchanges a few years earlier than most, using off-the-shelf products from large vendors like Ericsson and Alcatel. There was nothing remarkable about them in the 1990s.

They’d fallen way behind on digital tech, including not having ISDN universally available and even still had electromechanical exchanges in service in a few major urban areas until 1999 / 2000.

They were also ludicrously expensive and the government had somehow sought and won derogations on introducing competition here, claiming that we had poor infrastructure, along with Greece, while simultaneously sending out the message we were some kind of leading edge digital island in IDA brochures.

That bloated entity got crudely privatised and collapsed in a heap trying to sweat assets in a market that had tons of issues with barriers to entry.

Our broadband revolution was driven by the cable companies being rebuilt by Liberty Global and more recently by agressive FTTH rollouts by Siro, and NBI taking up the rural slack.

Eir isn’t the same company anymore and has finally begun to be fairly decent, but it’s very recent and it was driven by everyone else innovating around them, a crisis that saw them basically go into administration & be rebuilt from the ground up as a broadband and mobile company, and ultimately forcing them to catch up.

So please don’t compare RTE to some imaginary version of Telecom Éireann.

political analyst

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121674800#Comment_121674800

There also still has to be English-language publicly-funded (as opposed to completely commercially-funded) public service broadcasting in this country. A new broadcasting charge or levy would not be just for RTÉ. By the way, RTÉ will not cease to exist.

kneemos

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121685819#Comment_121685819

That would be a lot more appealing if it was shared amongst private broadcasters for public service stuff.

Let RTE scale down their operation and encourage other sources of PSB

political analyst

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121686050#Comment_121686050

As I said, the new charge/levy wouldn't just be for RTÉ.

Trampas

George Lee is 10th highest earner in rte. How the hell did he manage that. Fks off to be a td and failed at that when he couldn’t get his way and walked back into his job and seems to have got a pay rise for his td experience. He’s hopeless

Widdensushi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121688123#Comment_121688123

And does nothing, gets wheeled out once a month for a few minutes, doesn't make any sense,at least tubridy between radio and TV was clocking up some hours.

kneemos

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121688123#Comment_121688123

Does he do anything else apart from the odd environment report which usually consists of simply telling us what was in an already published article.

The J Stands for Jay

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121678150#Comment_121678150

Like putting a charge on airline tickets to pay for swimming pools. What has paying for a service that allows me to WFH for to do with paying for some guy to do 6 hours of 'work' a week for a radio station that only doctors' waiting rooms listen to?

Banzai600

We dont watch the trash on RTE or that cheap @ss looking format of TV3 etc, news, nothing, ever. Subscribed to web tv services though. And yes, we paid our tv license with a debate....

with RTE we're a small island, and a small pool to select from, but they are still shoring up the same names for yrs etc, thats how i see it. Cringy tv shows, The skeptic in me, says we dont know the half of it, or the waste there may be - ppl being paid a full week, but maybe not putting n the hours. Who knows. and i understand that there may be a proportion of ppl who do actually work, maybe one or two of them will come forward with more revelations, but its hard to see, im sure theyre all under the thumb and being wared to say nout.

why isnt it shut it down, sell it off, and let someone outside qualified come in and shake the place up. that would be ideal. Like the government, they smile while slapping you in the face taking your hard earned money, burning it in front of you and laughing as they take another wad to set afire.

zero transparency for the taxpayer , we're expendable cash batteries to them.

And laughing in the face of the public service Oireachtas too.

RoTelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121685819#Comment_121685819

Why should RTÉ continue to exist?

This idea that radio stations and newspapers in local areas really needs to be investigated. What public service are they currently providing and what extra public services will the provide in the future with such funding?

RoTelly

Larry Bass on Newstalk again

Larbar has been the producer of RTÉ Sunday Night Entertainment show since Popstars back in 1999 and for 3 only Moya Doherty's Tyrone took over for the All Ireland Talent Show. Larbar now produces Dancing with the Stars. 

https://www.goloudplayer.com/episodes/im-opposed-to-paying-it-public-a-N2IzZmJiNjBjN2ZlODcwMWJmMmExZTIyYWU1M2FiMGU=

The media are really surprised that ordinary people on the minimum wage and those on the average wage and even those on the average RTÉ wage are still annoy at this with the report henry mckenna taking to the streets. 

Mary: Scamming that went on, and there is more to come, she is risking it, know people who have never paid, she has had reminder letter she's paid it for 30 years, always paid, the spend that on flip flops and over payments. 

Right thing to do for the national broadcaster, covid and thinking it is important, concerning about the top ten earners, they should be making changes. 

Next she did pay, hesitantly, because of the sheingans, but did it for the greater good, RT was scapegoated, no problem with people earning money. 

Reluctant

He might need the break in jail, a bit of a holiday 

Student 

Doesn't pay never has, but his wife does, rubbish nothing of any quality, lots of commercial money.

Not quality programmes

very very poor, in the last 4 years programmes are terrible

Larry Bass

Favour of RTÉ: 

Same old same old defunct licence fee. People are questioning why they are paying. 

Then moves goes on about the licence fee nothing about what is being provide or the mismanagement of RTÉ. Kick the can down the road. Decides how we have new current affairs.

Sorry was typing while listening hope ye can make some sense of it

US: Mismanagement of RTÉ, need for PSB

THEM: It's just about Ryan, think about RTÉ does for culture and democracy

US: We know we largely agree there is a need for PSB, but not RTÉ

THEM: We should change the licence fee so

US: No that is not what we said, we want real reform and that means real change within RTÉ

THEM: So the licence fee.

Iguarantee

I found your post quite hard to understand.

ednwireland

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121688153#Comment_121688153

let's be honest it's a 40k a year job max

Emblematic

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121685197#Comment_121685197

Yes, in the old TE days, people used to write to their TDs in the hope of getting a telephone line.

The problem is that the State is very reluctant to allow competition for the (quite rational) fear that it will undermine its investment in the nationalised entity. Yet without that competition there is very little incentive to innovate. Hence the year-long waits for a basic telephone line.

When TE was eventually privatised, huge numbers of people bought shares in it, and so even though it was a private company the thinking remained nationalised. There was very little incentive for the government promote proper competition as this would undermine the value of voters' shares.

RoTelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121693597#Comment_121693597

Look if I have to explain the basics :) Yeah I was in a rush last night.

And the page kept freezing on me.

Basically you will hear most people unhappy with RTÉ and how it is run. One or two people saying its required. The guy doing the vox-pop surprised that people are still angry and that the story hasn't gone away, followed by a brief interview with Larry Bass who talks about all the good RTÉ does.

RoTelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121695417#Comment_121695417

I think you will find that that was Dept P&T, I thought a good bit of the issue surrounding phonelines had been solved with the intro of Telecom Éireann in the mid-1980s.

saabsaab

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121693635#Comment_121693635

40K to live in Dublin 4! No way , either pay more or move RTE outside Dublin..

HBC08

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121695777#Comment_121695777

I think it's time people starting calling out this Larry Bass chancer.

RoTelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121695922#Comment_121695922

Its not just him here's another RTÉ luvvie

https://www.echolive.ie/corkviews/arid-41319964.html

Emblematic

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121695787#Comment_121695787

Thanks for the correction. I think the general point remains though.