RTÉ admits paying Tubridy €345,000 more than declared

MrMusician18

As expected, the Government actually has no interest in reforming RTE as the status quo works for them. So we can expect more of the same.

A major opportunity to reform broadcasting has been missed, as expected.

No doubt Tubridy will be back in a few months to square off this episode.

padd b1975

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121366782#Comment_121366782

A few minutes earlier she'd have a heard a professional newsreader read out the headlines then handover to another professional newsreader to give the full stories.

She could start with that farce.

tom23

Tubridy won’t be back there.

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121367281#Comment_121367281

Any offers coming over the phone for the Ryanstone cowboy? That big Virgin Radio job hasn't materialised. Even if it is just holiday cover for Christmas, it isn't a fulltime job. The discovery of his overpayments led to the gravy train being derailed for a lot of RTE management.

Regards...jmcc

NIMAN

Tubs will always be remembered as the man who sunk the rte ship.

tom23

I couldn’t tell ya what offers he has. But can’t see him ever been wanted back or been offered a gig in RTE again. I know some here thinks the fella is a national treasure, but he ain’t. He was simply a very lucky lad that got a heap of money of a very dopey bunch of people.

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121367614#Comment_121367614

And there was a time when the PR fluff was claiming that he was "the most trusted man in Ireland". What a difference a few months makes.

Regards...jmcc

Boggles

Get rid of the licence fee.

Basic News and Irish Media paid for out of the taxation pot. Salary cap. Overseen by a completely independent entity.

Subscription based model for premium content, sports, etc. Also access to Player.

Utilise the Saorview network properly and for the love of God switch off SD.

MrMusician18

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121367596#Comment_121367596

At least he has a legacy now.

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121367662#Comment_121367662

Subscription TV is a whole other world of hurt and if these people were out of their depth running a small national TV station, they'd be embedded near the Earth's core in terms of running a Pay TV operation. The problem is that RTE would get advice from spoofers from consultancies from their same social circle that have no combat experience and, if there's anything worth hacking, their service would be hacked. Then again, it is RTE. What self-respecting hacker would want the embarrassment of having to say that he hacked RTE's pay TV service? :)

Thinking about Pay TV and subscriptions, could Tubridy launch his own subscription supported podcast (the "big podcast" mentioned months ago by a relative of his) and would it work? Would his multitudes of Instagram followers sign up for it and pay?

Regards...jmcc

NIMAN

That state of the art mixing desk is going to waste in his house.

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121367730#Comment_121367730

RTE's own Lee Harvey Oswald. Perhaps he can borrow Spike Milligan's book title for his next book: "RTE: My part in its downfall". :)

Regards...jmcc

Boggles

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121367743#Comment_121367743

Subscription TV is a whole other world of hurt

It isn't really it's the accepted norm now. What RTE are doing is throwing up all sorts of scutter because there is no incentive.

Also it will have the added benefit of at least curtailing the perpetual moaners.

You don't pay, you don't get to moan.

All though it hasn't necessarily stopped the license fee dodgers and ones who get it for free.

techman1

Delete

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121367770#Comment_121367770

I don't think that you understand the difference between subscription (Pay TV) and broadcast. The most difficult thing in Pay TV is to get the subcriber to pay. The second most difficult thing is to get the subscriber to renew. The Irish market is a small market. The viable market for an RTE Pay TV service would be a small fraction of that. It already has a Stone Age version with the licence fee but that has developed a bit of a problem recently. And when it comes to the security side of Pay TV, let's just say that I have a particular set of skills.

Regards...jmcc

Boggles

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121367853#Comment_121367853

Nah. They already proved they can be successful in the subscription based model with GAAGo.

Expand it up, it's the way of the now not even the future.

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121367860#Comment_121367860

That's niche programming with content that's not available elsewhere. Its market is clearly defined. It is an easy mistake to make when you don't understand Pay TV.

RTE is not niche and would have to appeal to a much larger audience to recover its costs. There's also the massive problem of RTE being taxpayer funded via bailout and what remains of the licence fee.

Regards...jmcc

RoTelly

https://www.rte.ie/eile/2023/1113/1416288-a-new-direction-for-rte/

Brief over view, its a long document, will have to sit down and read. Main points have largely been announced.

Boggles

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121367900#Comment_121367900

Niche programming as in exclusive content is what makes subscription TV successful. But it doesn't overly rely on the constant quality of the product. Not everything has to be top quality.

95% of what is on Amazon or Netflix is absolute scutter.

Its market is clearly defined

The market for GAA Go is global.

But that is only one example.

Ireland seems to be still part of the UK when it comes rights for sporting events.

The Irish viewer seems to subsidise the UK viewer for things like Premier League football

The likes of Portugal pay an absolute fraction for premier league rights.

Sky Ireland needs to broken from Sky Uk and treated as a separate entity. It's the definition of anti competitiveness.

If you think about it for the past 3-4 decades RTE have being competing with 3 billion plus worth of FTA programming beamed in from the UK every year.

It's not possible to compete with that, never was. It's why you have embrace what's "niche" to Ireland, expand it and exploit it.

Sigma101

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121367933#Comment_121367933

• We will operate two production centres, expanding in Cork and reducing Dublin, diversifying employment and the content produced and commissioned.

A great result for the three Government ministers in Cork South Central.

monkeybutter

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121367770#Comment_121367770

RTE is free to air, it doesn't have the Tech or Settop boxes to implement a paid model, they can't turn everything online

they would go bankrupt implementing this

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121367961#Comment_121367961

You don't understand Pay TV or subscription TV models. There has to be a minimum viable audience for a service. You also seem to have no understanding of programme rights. Ireland has always been considered a small market for rights and it is often bundled with the UK due to the cable television networks carrying UK channels. RTE also tries to market some of its programming outside Ireland. As for splitting Sky Ireland from Sky UK, that's an idea worthy of RTE management.

Regards...jmcc

mariaalice

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121366883#Comment_121366883

There is a cohort here obsessed with Ryan Tubrity coming back just so they can say they were correct, he's not coming back to RTE.

I want public service broadcasting because it is somewhat of a balanced view against all the online nonsense and that does actually matter even if it's an uphill struggle.

RTE radio I, is the star of the show as far as I'm concerned.

The likes of Miriam O'Callaghan, Joe Duffy etc. should be moving along, I like Katie Hannon and Philip Boucher Hayes he is very sharp, a bit smarmy maybe, and freshen up prime time it's lost its way.

A bit of a return to serious journalism and a lot less of the mental health stuff would be no harm.

RoTelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121368031#Comment_121368031

What about everything else? Your just looking at current affairs, but what about comedy, drama, young people's ... there is often this over focus regarding news and current affairs and sport as if these define RTÉ and public service braodcasting.

Regardless of your view of News and Current Affairs have you ever considered how bad the rest of RTÉ looks and sounds?

mariaalice

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121368050#Comment_121368050

Yes of course, but very few young people consume RTE on an ongoing basis and haven't for years, streaming services were the last nail in the coffin, drama and the like mostly independent producers RTE is no the BBC, its don't have the population base.

RoTelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121368085#Comment_121368085

Doesn't help when you decide core areas of your content are going to be dropped. It wasn't just the streaming services that cause RTÉ to lose that audience, their decision not to invest in that audience, their decision not to invest in drama, their decision not to invest in Comedy have all helped the streamers.

Drama is a core public service broadcast because the market is not big enough. It would be kind of like saying well we really shouldn't invest in TG4 because it is such a tiny minority language.

Drama and Comedy doesn't have to be massively expensive to produce.

I am not expecting RTÉ to be the BBC, I am expecting them to commission programming rather than buying it and spending money on their presenters.

Boggles

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121368026#Comment_121368026

You don't understand Pay TV or subscription TV models. There has to be a minimum viable audience for a service.

What's viable depends on the price you pay for a product.

We aren't Iceland, our population is 5 million and growing.

Norway, Slovakia, Denmark, Bulgaria, Croatia all have product Pay TV offerings. Some have multiple. They pay fractions for premium content.

The Irish TV market by and large is absolutely scutter. It's not just RTE, Virgin is diabolical.

To be successful in pay tv or sub tv, it's very simple, exclusive content at the right price, not just for the price you sell but what you buy it at.

We allowed the UK unfettered access into our market, which has just driven up costs and killed competition.

There is 700k sky subscribers in Ireland, what's cheapest sky sub? 600 a year, for premium 1200?

I'd gladly pay 300-400 year for a premium content Irish channel, which has a good mix of sports both domestic and foreign, movies and drama.

MrMusician18

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121368031#Comment_121368031

I was being somewhat glib for dramatics but do you genuinely think that Tubridy will be off the air for the rest of his career? At the very least he will be the face of some soft independent production in a few years latest. Something like "A ice cream cone tour of Ireland" or some JFK nonsense. If that goes well, then maybe some holiday cover (of which there are ample opportunities in RTE) and maybe, maybe a radio show again. Backhurst specifically did not close the door on Tubs.

Tubs won't be back this week, month or year but he will be back. The big club looks out for their own. We saw 56 million reasons today as how that's the case.

mariaalice

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121368114#Comment_121368114

We will have to agree to differ, at the moment I am kind of binge-watching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodies_(2023_TV_series) the last RTE drama that I can remember watching was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love/Hate_(TV_series) and that was a commissioned drama and it a few years ago.

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121368144#Comment_121368144

As I said, you don't understand subscription TV and Pay TV. In very simple terms, it comes down to the cost of programming, the cost of distribution and the money made from subscriptions. The Irish market is a small one. That's a disadvantage when it comes to the size of the potential market for a service (the number of subscribers and the amount they are willing to pay). Then there's the cost of producing programming.

Pay TV has an extra layer which is also expensive. That's the Conditional Access or, in simple terms, the means by which people cannot get it for free. The CA side also involves the processing of payments and subscriptions. It is a far more complex business than you realise. RTE doesn't have the technology, infrastructure or expertise for such an operation.

Regards...jmcc