Huge compliments for the BBC

TVDX

Its time i ranted a bit(for a change!!) and voice my opinion on what an excellent service the BBC provides for the UK.
Anyone who has an FTV card will agree with me on this one.

Just look at what they provide for their licence fee,
BBC 1, 2 , Choice, Four, Parliament, News 24, CBBC, Cbeebies,
an incredible interactive service(really used well during Wimbledon and Commonwealth games), tons of Radio stations, more and more launching each day.
They arrange events for the community, donate to charity, make tons of quality programmes, and their website is also remarkable, every little show, radio or tv, has a decent little web presence on the site, they give out ftv cards and most importantly there are NO commercials anywhere in sight.

Those gits in RTE do nothing huge for us, they act like they are saints when really they are sinners wasting our time with unoriginal drivel and doing crazy maintenance work at 9 in the morning, loaded with ads, no chance of them ever going digital terrstrial or having an interactive service, no overnight services on radio stations(just re feed rubbish), god i could go on for ever.

But most importantly their incompetence was recently highlighted twice, one with the Setanta Sports argument, and two with the fact that Irish subscribers to Sky Digital have to pay not only their licence but also a portion of their subscription which goes back to the UK, Why the hell didnt they sort out ftv cards for people who wished to avail of the service but not the subscription.

Ah listen forget them, people talk about losing national identiy if we lose RTE, so were not Ireland if we cant watch Fair City or Blackboard jungle anymore, no, i dont think so.

satellitebadger

I think RTE suffers from its geographical proximity to the BBC. Here in the UK we have 52 million people, whereas you guys in Ireland have considerably less (how many is it? 6 million, something like that?). For that reason, RTE's revenue stream is always going to be much lower than the BBC's. RTE exists in a TV marketplace where most of its viewers have constant access to BBC services. Those viewers are bound to make unfavourable comparisons.

I think you get a decent deal from RTE, all things considered. OK, so you don't get equivalents of BBC Choice, BBC4, News 24 or BBCi, but you do get a number of fairly decent homegrown programmes, quality news coverage, free-to-air sport including GAA, free-to-air movies long before they are screened in the UK, a good selection of imported programming from the US (some of which does not make it to the UK), some radio stations which are as good as any UK offerings, a nice website at rte.ie... oh, and Aertel, of course!

RTE ought to be looking at ways to boost its revenue without increasing the licence fee. For example, the BBC has BBC Worldwide, which flogs videos, DVDs, books, magazines (including Radio Times), toys and other merchandise relating to BBC programmes. It also licenses BBC programmes abroad, and looks after BBC World, BBC Prime and BBC America. All profits are reinvested in the BBC. Where is the RTE equivalent of BBC Worldwide? If it exists, I haven't heard of it. Where can I buy DVDs of Irish programmes? Where can ex-pats get access to RTE programming?

The way to make RTE better is, of course, to give it more money. But I don't think RTE is trying hard enough to make that money itself!

Richard

Originally posted by satellitebadger
I think RTE suffers from its geographical proximity to the BBC. Here in the UK we have 52 million people, whereas you guys in Ireland have considerably less (how many is it? 6 million, something like that?).

The UK has nearly 60 million people whilst Ireland (Rep. of) has about 4 million. But of course UK commercial channels get revenue from Irish people and Irish commercial channels get a limited amount of revenue from the UK (this is a lot less since the demise of Tara. Though you may not consider this revenue when it was making a loss! It is now pretty much restricted to NI.)

For that reason, RTE's revenue stream is always going to be much lower than the BBC's. RTE exists in a TV marketplace where most of its viewers have constant access to BBC services. Those viewers are bound to make unfavourable comparisons.

True. You are right, of course, that RTE could do more to sell itself overseas. Maybe it just doesn't see the big picture. It is strange, when you consider the number of people in America who consider themselves to be Irish that RTE can't make money out of them.

swoofer

Be grateful, very grateful, that u live in Ireland and get the BEST of Irish and British, it must be pure bliss watching TV. And no UK licence fee to pay?

Aah, thats grand.

gbcullen

dmeehan

doesn't the uk licence fee cost more than the irish one??

Hairy Homer

According to a mate who lives in deepest darkest central Europe, it was only when he went to live there and had to put up with the drivel on French and German TV (and he's enough of a polyglot to, er , enjoy both) that he realised how good RTE was by comparison.

It really is not fair to compare RTE with the beeb. They are orders of magnitude apart in size and budgets and economies of scale.

Richard

Originally posted by Hairy Homer

It really is not fair to compare RTE with the beeb. They are orders of magnitude apart in size and budgets and economies of scale.

True - here in Sweden around 50% of the programming on the 5 national channels is in English! There are no other Swedish-speaking countries in the world (although Norwegian is similar) so they cannot import any native-language programming. Having said that, I think they have more imported shows than RTE.

And I turned on at one point yesterday morning about 9am and 3 of the national channels were showing a test card, another was showing static - only one had an actual programme.

They don't dub any imported programmes - apart from Children's cartoons. Which goes part of the way to explain why they're so good at English!

I'm not sure whether they have a licence fee to fund SVT1 and SVT2, though.

icdg

Originally posted by satellitebadger
RTE ought to be looking at ways to boost its revenue without increasing the licence fee. For example, the BBC has BBC Worldwide, which flogs videos, DVDs, books, magazines (including Radio Times), toys and other merchandise relating to BBC programmes. It also licenses BBC programmes abroad, and looks after BBC World, BBC Prime and BBC America. All profits are reinvested in the BBC. Where is the RTE equivalent of BBC Worldwide? If it exists, I haven't heard of it.

Indeed it does exist, its called RTE Commercial Enterprises Limited (CEL), and it makes a nice little earner from the RTE Guide, the most popular magazine in Ireland. Arguably CEL should be doing more to develop programme related commercial material, such as DVDs and videos, however.

Where can ex-pats get access to RTE programming?

RTE Radio stations are available on the Internet and via SkyDigital, as well as relays of some programmes on WRN.

Leesider

Quote from Ronan:

'and it makes a nice little earner from the RTE Guide, the most popular magazine in Ireland. '

I would be interested to know if it is still the most popular magazine in Ireland.

With the Sunday Times, Ireland on Sunday, Irish Independent (and others) providing comprehensive weekly TV listings, and in many cases, more detailed than RTEs, surely the circulation of the RTE guide has suffered? I know several people who have given up buying it.

Why pay €1.50 for it, when you can get a full newspaper with a free TV guide (and other supplements) for less? In the case of Ireland on Sunday, it's 50c less!

byte

Yeah I agree. We've stopped buying RTE Guide here at home too coz we end up with a few from the paper on Saturday and Sunday for free.