RTÉ admits paying Tubridy €345,000 more than declared

Yea McSavage was born into the golden circle but he turned around and bit them all and burnt all his bridges.

He was defending Tubridy on his podcast though and said he deserved his salary. He said that all the RTE reporters and staff protesting outside RTE were just jealous because they could never get that sort of money.

You can't even search for the Savage eye on the player as its been taken off that aswell. Some of the sketches have a cult following now due to tik tok etc among the young that never say the series when it was aired on RTE

Interesting about the Danish model. I know that culturally Denmark is very much of that Scandinavian view that there is a solid social contract. ie "you do the work, pay a lot of tax, and we promise that those taxes will be put to good use in the public good and we won't take the piss with our salaries" - That would very much NOT be the Irish view!

As well as the obvious historical issues around colonization leading to a culture of cute hoorism, I wonder how much of this attitude also comes down to Ireland being an english speaking country. Had we been irish speaking, I can see an alternate reality where RTE is a trimmed down organisation, on a much smaller budget and all the "talent" are on fractions of the current figures. Our fluency with the saxon tongue certainly allows us to believe, as a great stateswoman once said "that we are much closer to Boston than Berlin" with all the extravagance that that entails.

This all sounds like a David McWilliams podcast episode if ever I heard one! RE Brolly's take on Gay Byrne and his love of taking a lump hammer to traditional Ireland's pieties, I though that was very true and something that has always perplexed me about Tubridy. He is a man who would have been far more comfortable fronting the LLS in the mid 1960's. I'm sure had any missives come in from the Archbishop, he would happily change or drop items to placate His Eminence. By some weird quirk, the Ireland of the 2010's having undergone all the societal change imaginable, somehow had the most conservative invertebrate working on the flagship programme of the national broadcaster.

I'm looking for the disadvantage in this and not seeing it

It wouldn't be done one RTE's own bat, the decision would be taken at government level as part of a complete overhaul of broadcasting in this country, likely in conjunction with the replacement of the licence fee with some form of taxpayer funding ana a refocusing of RTE's output on 'public service' content.

Suppose jobs! but yes VMTV and RTÉ are unlikely to improve and TG4 doesn't need advertising as its only a small portion of their income.

And rightly so, it was a top class sketch show imo...........I couldn't understand how it was aired at the time, given the subject matter and thought it was a positive sign that if something was good enough it would get a shot despite the ahem (possible conflict of interests 😁) ...I hope it wasnt cancelled for that reason, I'd assumed you just couldn't keep up the pace

Even my very religious Conservative elderly parents found it hilarious which I couldn't wrP my head around they are very decent people but humour like that in any other context rarely appeals to them.....

It would in fairness be more advantageous to have an independent national broadcaster with high standards than something along the lines above happening.....so RTE would have to change in some areas quite a bit....I'd like to see them provide unbiased factual reporting/no agenda and be independant of any interference from political circles/lobbyists etc etc ....**** tall tall order given how small this country is I suppose.

What I've described above is what I think RTE should be ......

Did GO'L have strong government contacts?

Because a lot of ads on radio have come from Government departments.

Virgin Media have in writing to the Minister suggesting RTE leaves the commercial stage, let it be known that RTE spends €20M buying in programmes like Eastenders, to show the same time as BBC.