RTE Cutbacks The Plan

Ursus Horribilis

The impression I get from this article is that the stations will be gone completely. They'd still have the same overhead costs if the stations kept going as online ones. RTE Gold probably cost more money to run than you'd think, seeing as it had reasonably well known presenters on its books.

Calhoun

jk23 wrote: »

Ryan Tubridy – €495,000 No idea how they think he is worth this.
Ray D'Arcy – €450,000 Insufferable gob****e, who is having his show cut down in time.
Joe Duffy – €389,988 Probably justifies it due to the ad revenue his program brings in but why should we even have ads when we are paying a tax.
Sean O’Rourke – €308,964 Not a bad presenter but don't know if hes worth the cost.
Marian Finucane – €300,617 4 ****ing hours a week and she gets 300K a year
Miriam O'Callaghan – €299,000 Probably not but she has many kids to feed
Claire Byrne – €216,000 Much better than when she was on newstalk.
Brian Dobson – €198,146
George Hamilton – €186,195
Mary Wilson – €185,679

These are the top 10 earners in RTE, can anyone justify any of these broadcasters being on this money? :O

Some comments on some of the questionable ones.

Idbatterim

It’s still a gravy train , but she’s slowing down ! About time !

Ursus Horribilis

There's no doubt RTE has quite a few overpaid presenters on its books and they shouldn't be offering them such wildly inflated salaries. But firing/cutting their pay isn't going to stop the sinking ship. I'm still convinced there is a lot of money being mis-spent in the organisation and it's not necessarily on salaries.

The Satanist

Relocate to Athlone or somewhere, sell the Palace of Donnybrook to free up some cash. The superstars can get cheap gaffs in the Midlands on their heavily reduced salaries.

Zird

These cuts are actually very sensible, Dab is a waste of time now as it's 15 years too late. RTE gold is a waste of money as it's only available terrestrially in 3 cites which already have independent stations for the 35s+ market. Lyric moving to Dublin is also sensible as stand alone radio studios are actually very rare these days, communicorp in recent years have moved all their Dublin based stations into Marconi house.

Mezzotint

Eric Cartman wrote: »

on a serious note though the only thing RTE had me in any way attached to was listening to RTE pulse, some quality programming and no ad's there. They won't be getting any attention from me again.

Quality programming, no ads, few listeners, no revenue and probably significant overheads.

I would argue the kind of things that Pulse and 2XM are doing are the kinds of things that 2FM should always have been doing, rather than chasing what is the space that is already occupied by commercial radio.

It’s fairly obvious that there’s been absolutely no commercial interest worth talking about in DAB and it’s basically a dead duck in the Irish market. It’s also been massively surpassed by ubiquitous mobile broadband and ability to download podcasts. I know people will start chiming in with stories about how there’s no 4G on the back of some mountain in Leitrim, but there’s FAR more 4G+ than there is availability of DAB and it does a hell of a lot more with the bandwidth it’s using.

I’ve always felt that DAB was launched far, far too late here and that it’s been a solution in search of a problem ever since. It’s not comparable to DTT as it doesn’t really provide anything other than a few extra radio channels and seems to provide audio that’s as good as or worse than FM.

RTE could move to a lot more development of quality podcasts and online content that could actually drive real revenue, rather than wasting money on an expensive DAB project that is either going to be a dead end technology that’s just going to disappear, or will ultimately be a straight replacement for FM at some stage in the future, although I think that’s quite honestly unlikely to ever happen. I’d suspect broadcast radio would disappear first.

When I hear DAB being discussed I’m kinda transported back to a world when ISDN was fast broadband.

There’s a BIG potential audience for RTE produced online content and they are not really making proper use of that potential. So far it still feels like it’s a plug in and add on to RTE broadcast radio. Bring the content to life, put a bit of effort into marketing it and get it bringing in some serious local and international revenue, rather than being an overhead.

Also when it comes to TV, just throw away the RTE player. It’s clearly beyond the technical capabilities of the organisation to maintain and support. I’d rather see RTE content just moved over to being on some kind of open platform that could place it on YouTube, Netflix, AppleTV, etc etc.

Also, is there any scope for cooperation between EBU members or EU-based public service broadcasters like RTE to develop a single, quality technical platform to do some of this stuff? It seems like far too many of them are struggling and going it alone. Very few of them have the kinds of resources that BBC, France Televisions, ARD etc can throw at these projects.

AllGunsBlazing

Rte's time has come and gone.

It served an important purpose back when everything came from an analogue signal via the local transmitting tower. But the staggered arrival of cable tv services, satellite, and then finally broadband internet have rendered it obsolete.

I'd be for continued (and reasonable) funding for Rte news - but everything else simply has to go.

end of the road

Harry Palmr wrote: »

So there goes the attempt by RTE to broaden and diversify it's listening base
meanwhile RTE 2FM continues, surely it would have made sense to sell the pop music channel rather than save pennies by closing all the DAB/soarview stations.

the problem is that there would be nothing to actually sell in real terms.
the studios would remain with rte, the transmission network would likely also remain with 2rn, and nobody would want the branding. also selling off a national frequency which could allow one of the soon to be defunked digital stations to transfer to fm, wouldn't be a good move, especially as the already existing national commercial pop music station isn't setting the world alight these days i believe.

Harry Palmr wrote: »

(oh yes this means effectively the death of DAB in Ireland, not that it ever developed beyond the first stage)

it is certainly a blow, and perhapse it won't help matters, but i don't think it will ultimately cause the death of dab in ireland. it certainly doesn't need to anyway.

end of the road

The Satanist wrote: »

Relocate to Athlone or somewhere, sell the Palace of Donnybrook to free up some cash. The superstars can get cheap gaffs in the Midlands on their heavily reduced salaries.

that would likely be pointless, as by the time you build the new building and equip it, whatever they would get would probably be almost wiped out anyway.

Mezzotint wrote: »

Quality programming, no ads, few listeners, no revenue and probably significant overheads.

I would argue the kind of things that Pulse and 2XM are doing are the kinds of things that 2FM should always have been doing, rather than chasing what is the space that is already occupied by commercial radio.

It’s fairly obvious that there’s been absolutely no commercial interest worth talking about in DAB and it’s basically a dead duck in the Irish market. It’s also been massively surpassed by ubiquitous mobile broadband and ability to download podcasts. I know people will start chiming in with stories about how there’s no 4G on the back of some mountain in Leitrim, but there’s FAR more 4G+ than there is availability of DAB and it does a hell of a lot more with the bandwidth it’s using.

I’ve always felt that DAB was launched far, far too late here and that it’s been a solution in search of a problem ever since. It’s not comparable to DTT as it doesn’t really provide anything other than a few extra radio channels and seems to provide audio that’s as good as or worse than FM.

RTE could move to a lot more development of quality podcasts and online content that could actually drive real revenue, rather than wasting money on an expensive DAB project that is either going to be a dead end technology that’s just going to disappear, or will ultimately be a straight replacement for FM at some stage in the future, although I think that’s quite honestly unlikely to ever happen. I’d suspect broadcast radio would disappear first.

When I hear DAB being discussed I’m kinda transported back to a world when ISDN was fast broadband.

There’s a BIG potential audience for RTE produced online content and they are not really making proper use of that potential. So far it still feels like it’s a plug in and add on to RTE broadcast radio. Bring the content to life, put a bit of effort into marketing it and get it bringing in some serious local and international revenue, rather than being an overhead.

Also when it comes to TV, just throw away the RTE player. It’s clearly beyond the technical capabilities of the organisation to maintain and support. I’d rather see RTE content just moved over to being on some kind of open platform that could place it on YouTube, Netflix, AppleTV, etc etc.

Also, is there any scope for cooperation between EBU members or EU-based public service broadcasters like RTE to develop a single, quality technical platform to do some of this stuff? It seems like far too many of them are struggling and going it alone. Very few of them have the kinds of resources that BBC, France Televisions, ARD etc can throw at these projects.

the overheads for pulse bar dab would be tiny.
staffed mostly by volunteers i believe.
as for dab, there is no interest from the existing fm commercial broadcasters but they would never allow competition anyway.
for any other prospective operators who actually may have an interest there is no legal framework for them to operate so they can't use the platform legally even if they wanted to.

Zird wrote: »

These cuts are actually very sensible, Dab is a waste of time now as it's 15 years too late. RTE gold is a waste of money as it's only available terrestrially in 3 cites which already have independent stations for the 35s+ market. Lyric moving to Dublin is also sensible as stand alone radio studios are actually very rare these days, communicorp in recent years have moved all their Dublin based stations into Marconi house.

gold is a very different proposition to the independant stations available to be fair. it's much better for a start, so certainly not a waste of money. the issue is expanding it, which is where 2fm's transmission network might come in handy.

end of the road

AllGunsBlazing wrote: »

Rte's time has come and gone.

It served an important purpose back when everything came from an analogue signal via the local transmitting tower. But the staggered arrival of cable tv services, satellite, and then finally broadband internet have rendered it obsolete.

I'd be for continued (and reasonable) funding for Rte news - but everything else simply has to go.

this is not the case.
neither broadband, or cable television with it's multiple stations of junk, have made rte obsolete yet.
broadband may do so eventually, just like the rest of terrestrial radio, but for now, rte's time certainly hasn't come and gone.

highgiant1985

Pauliedragon wrote: »

Maybe I'm missing something but how does moving sports to RTE 1 save money? They still have to pay the rights.

I was confused by this as well when I read it!

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo

Online content can be produced in a very cost effective manner and get ratings that RTE can only sniff at. In about 5 years time, on YouTube's 20th birthday, after more cuts, they might have someone with the vision to see what online content actually is.

Children watch online content now. They are going to grow up not knowing what RTE is and freak out when their friendly local tv license inspector knocks on their college flat door looking for money.

They have the resources. They are just not effectively utilised well enough.

MrMusician18

With the moving of Sport from RTE2 to One it looks like they are laying the groundwork for the eventual closure or sale of RTE2.

Some high profile contracts are not going to be renewed, I wonder what names they have lined up for the chop?

10000maniacs

Ursus Horribilis wrote: »

The impression I get from this article is that the stations will be gone completely. They'd still have the same overhead costs if the stations kept going as online ones. RTE Gold probably cost more money to run than you'd think, seeing as it had reasonably well known presenters on its books.

I stopped listening to RTE Gold when the DJs and jingles between every track came in. It spoiled the whole station. I loved the randomization of it all.Then they started seperating the programmes into categories which also was a bad idea.

dvdman1

Add RTE to a referendum Yes/No

"Should RTE be shut down?"

I predict a landslide for Yes campaign

malinheader

jk23 wrote: »

Ryan Tubridy – €495,000
Ray D'Arcy – €450,000
Joe Duffy – €389,988
Sean O’Rourke – €308,964
Marian Finucane – €300,617
Miriam O'Callaghan – €299,000
Claire Byrne – €216,000
Brian Dobson – €198,146
George Hamilton – €186,195
Mary Wilson – €185,679

These are the top 10 earners in RTE, can anyone justify any of these broadcasters being on this money? :O

This says it all. Should be totally scrapped and a proper broadcasting station put in place. RTE over the years has become a rich man or woman's club with plenty of jobs for the boys or girls who are in the special circle. Cronyism is rife in RTE.

u140acro3xs7dm

I am guessing that outside of RTE, Pat Kenny is the highest-paid broadcaster in Ireland - does anybody know what he is paid?

On the independent market, he would probably still command more than any of the current RTE crop. RTE should base their wages on what competitors can pay - if Virgin Media want Tuberty and are offering 150k a year, then give him 160k a year.

Does anybody outside of RTE want Ray Darcy? Highly unlikely - so offer him 40k a year.

The only time I watch RTE these days, is in a pub watching a big match, yet I've to pay €160 a year - joke of an organisation, but it reflects the country in general, from our welfare class to our political class - all in it for an easy ride.

malinheader

dvdman1 wrote: »

Add RTE to a referendum Yes/No

"Should RTE be shut down?"

I predict a landslide for Yes campaign

I would still like to keep my national broadcaster, but certainly am not willing to fund the ludicrous wages these self righteous bunch of gobs_ites demand.

Bob Harris

Tubridy's salary was 723k in 2011. 8 years later and it'll be not much more than half that.
Still a generous salary but from his point of view it has to sting a bit losing just over 300k per year in that time.

10000maniacs

A lot of people have DAB only radios. This will leave a lot of people without radio.

Shefwedfan

Why isn’t the government asking them to shut down 2fm? They have been flogging that dead horse for years now

Lottie Ryan and that shower of gobsh*t they have now stuck onto breakfast is sending ratings down the pan

Putting that Jen one on a chat show was a master stroke of stupidity....again another ratings nose dive

The 200 people let go will probably people they actually need but they will keep a shower of clowns on huge wages.....

suicide_circus

Bob Harris wrote: »

Tubridy's salary was 723k in 2011

sweet jesus

u140acro3xs7dm

Bob Harris wrote: »

Tubridy's salary was 723k in 2011. 8 years later and it'll be not much more than half that.
Still a generous salary but from his point of view it has to sting a bit losing just over 300k per year in that time.

It is now 495k, that is a reduction of 228k, not "just over 300k".

Do you work in the RTE accounts department?

Shefwedfan

suicide_circus wrote: »

sweet jesus

Oh yes, any money they do get instead of investing in long term future etc they plough into terrible presenters who no other tv or radio station would hire for half the wages they are on

Bob Harris

Billy Echoing Dachshund wrote: »

It is now 495k, that is a reduction of 228k, not "just over 300k".

Do you work in the RTE accounts department?

It's now 495k but will be reduced by 15% bringing it to 420k after this proposed cut. So it's just over 300k.

lisasimpson

Gerry G wrote: »

Lottie Ryan. That is all

I use to feel the same but my opinion has changed. Its not her fault RTE were stupid enough to pay her the amount she is on to be a showbiz reporter...ie read the dailymail.If you were in your 20s and offerred that amount of money for a handy number you would bite their hand off. Another clear example of bad management of RTE in relation to Lottie is not having her fill on for Eoghan McDermot the last few weeks. How much money was wasted on Greg O Shea hes so boring he would put you back to sleep. I have not heard one positive word about him on it. When Lottie filled in for Jennifer Mc on thr previous breakfast show she wasnt all that bad

The only popular 2Fm show amoung young people is Jenny Green and RTE were shamed into bringing her back

Bob Harris

Bob Harris wrote: »

Tubridy's salary was 723k in 2011.

suicide_circus wrote: »

sweet jesus

I know, people are outraged now about 495k!

elfy4eva

Here's RTÉ's article on the subject, much of the same but the two paragraphs I glean from it besides the cuts are Dee Forbes and Moya Doherty whinging for the government to show leadership on a "reform" of the "broken" TV licence system. It's the same tune from them but funny to see them speak in riddles to avoid the backlash.

https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2019/1106/1089209-rte-cuts/

Shefwedfan

lisasimpson wrote: »

I use to feel the same but my opinion has changed. Its not her fault RTE were stupid enough to pay her the amount she is on to be a showbiz reporter...ie read the dailymail.If you were in your 20s and offerred that amount of money for a handy number you would bite their hand off. Another clear example of bad management of RTE in relation to Lottie is not having her fill on for Eoghan McDermot the last few weeks. How much money was wasted on Greg O Shea hes so boring he would put you back to sleep. I have not heard one positive word about him on it. When Lottie filled in for Jennifer Mc on thr previous breakfast show she wasnt all that bad

The only popular 2Fm show amoung young people is Jenny Green and RTE were shamed into bringing her back

She is in her 30’s

Replacing Jen is hardly hard, just say the odd statement which she thinks is sarky and pick up a pay check....

Jen got boring about two days after starting on the radio, push on how many years and it’s the same stuff as always