RTÉ admits paying Tubridy €345,000 more than declared

Oh really? Don't listen to it, listened a bit to Callan one morning and was like whats with all the crap accent impersonations

It strongly points to what they’re going to do.

Let’s not make any hasty decisions. The public are normally dumb and apathetic so if we don’t do anything for a couple of months then it’ll be all forgotten.

Then the money party can resume and RT can come back and take his share.

It’s incredible the disdain those publicly funded organisations have for the public that fund it.

Likely the new funding model will involve an end to advertising on RTE so it can, in theory, focus on 'public service' programming...

The concept of financial viability won't apply in this brave new world. The government will give RTE whatever money it needs, or says it needs, to 'do the job'...

We can only dream, but if it got anywhere near that I would consider welcoming Tubs back in a different slot on a ¼ of his wages with open arms. If those 1800 staff were all on minimum wage it would cost almost 42million a year. I have not even attempted to work out what the salaries per year are setting us back, and we already know the top 110 after the Seanad meetings. I have some beliefs with nothing to back them, that the numbers employed there are inflated due to connections and nepotism. Somebody's daughter or nephew wants a job and there is no room? Position created and filled.

As for Bakhurst.

He is barely [back] in there a month and arrived in the middle of a shⅰtstorm. With the money he is on taken into account, abstaining from going anywhere may have been a better idea. It truly shows how little regard or awareness he has for the current public perception of RTE, and makes it very hard for me to understand why he was hired. Public perception for that position in such a company should be very high up on any scale of common sense, particularly at the moment. The first thing he did walking into that position was to give all of the main offenders of the overspending a get out of jail free card by asking or forcing them to resign. He then went on to say [while fumbling around] that he was to announce a decision on Tubs future by the end of July. He has still not said anything and we are now almost a week into August. I did not know he was also away on holidays. This guy is either weak as f*k or he is as bad as the rest of them.

I think the only way SF would get into power realistically is with FF. I can only see SF moving the pieces around the board. Maybe removing whatever positions FG have appointed over the last 12 years and some of the FF. At the end of the day they are all politicians, if SF get into power it would be in their interest to use that power the first time to win over more, which could mean RTE could be reigned in and much of the rot removed. But I will wait until I see anything from any of them.

Surely Renault ireland, or their parent company, are livid that their brand has been associated with such tawdry carryon...

Kevin Bakhurst on holiday. Grant Thornton report(s) in a bureaucratic Bermuda Triangle. TV Licence revenue tanking. What a mess of biblical proportion

The notion that a replacement funding system could be put in place quickly is, in itself, totally vacuous. There would be months of (more!) reports, political umming and ahhing, wibbling and wobbling. A general election is on the horizon. The current plan seems to be to play wait and see, kick the can down the road, people will forget and move on, and then we can go back to where we were.

RTÉ has been run along banana republic lines. The Board and Management (loftily calling themselves the Executive Board) have been Missing In Action, and the commercial/marketing department is out of control in terms of entertainment of clients, goodies, trips, chauffeurs, busses, restaurants, brand ambassadors etc. An opportunity to completely transform RTE exists, and should be taken.

But I doubt it will be.

"Leave my friends alone, yous are all just jealous ungrateful dopes, we work hard for 6 figures on our 2h show on a station losing millions" sums it up

And I don't think this is implausible. I amnt talking about minimum wages but fair salaries for staff and presenters but cut down to one channel and one radio station. No commercial income, just ran off a broadcasting fee that would cover predominantly Irish content paid for by the licencing fee made by RTE and Irish production houses.

The fee, I believe, should come from general taxation - the benefit to other broadcasters is not competing with RTE for commercial revenue, the ability to sell content to them and potentially so additional ones that I haven't thought of yet.

So what if the talent isn't known? Let RTE be the launchpad for younger talent or people without 'connections' and if they get a better offer in time at a commercial station, so what? If the entity is not reliant on that talent bringing in and keeping advertisers it isn't a big deal.

Now it might require a split of the 'infrastructure' to a seperate entity, similar to our electrical and what should have happened with our telecoms infra and this funded separately but I amnt familiar with the situation there.

And I completely agree with you

Your problem is with the other broadcasters when you implement this : -

1. We only have one Commercial TV broadcaster who has insisted on doing the bare minimum
2. The regulator (CnaM/BAI) has always been weak so the likelihood of them insisting that VMTV improve their offering so that they might re-sell programming to RTÉ is unlikely.
3. VMTV's advertising revenue would not increase because all the UK opt-outs would begin advertising here and take up all of the revenue that RTÉ was selling
4. The CnaM would also have to start insisting on better programming from our Radio Broadcasters, is a 2 hours of phone in / chat show really current affairs and should local radio not have a stronger newsroom, along with other programming that they currently don't provide. If RTÉ were to stop selling ads on Radio they and the nationals would be the big winners.

In conclusion Irish Broadcasting has always been do as little as possible because we are a "small" country!