Dee Forbes banging the RTE TV licence drum again 60m uncollected fee *poll not working - pl ignore*

I assume there are no figures on the number of Toy Show the Musical adverts played on the wireless and TV and how much they were worth vs actually cost?

It also shows up the power of advertising on RTE. At the moment the government seem to be keeping them afloat with nonsense adverts for local councillors etc.

Albert Reynolds kicked off the digital exchange programme in ~1979-80 but it took years.

In my area in Dublin it was 1984-85 (so into the TE era) when our neighbours finally got phone lines, some of them had been waiting ten years - for many years our house was the only one nearby with a phone, people would ring the doorbell asking to make a call and leave 20p in a little money box we kept beside the phone!

There was no capacity in the exchange so no lines could be provided.

The policy then seemed to be to only replace the oldest / most decrepit auto (mechanical) exchanges with digital, keep the rest of the mechanical auto exchanges going as long as possible, and concentrate on replacing manual exchanges with digital to save on staffing costs. So some places literally went from having phones with no dials to having the latest digital exchange, meanwhile in much of Dublin you couldn't get a line at all!

It wasn't until well into the 90s that the last of the old mechanical exchanges went.

He was very good at parroting NPHET/government propaganda during Covid

On a side note, Eir have yet to upgrade my parents area in Dublin. I got them Vodafone for a year on the eir network just to reduce the price. Called sky because I though they had a deal with Virgin Media for its network, but that only covers Virgin's Fibre network and not their older cable networks, so my parents are back with Virgin Media, but at least they are only paying €43 per month.

My point is that it'll still exist, not whether or not should still exist. I remember hearing about Greece's national broadcaster being taken off the air during that country's economic crisis but it'll never get that bad for RTÉ, which is engrained in Ireland's cultural identity.

I cannot see this being dealt with before the local and European elections. It's so radioactive it may not be touched before the next GE - simply left for SF to deal with.

That said, I have a feeling it will be announced post locals and before an autumn GE, for first collections in the new year. I also think they will open up access to the fund to print media too.

Reform may well turn into a disaster for independent news media, as outlets become dependent on State funding. We've seen how one local authority attempted to turn the screw on a local radio station already.

Really print media is dead, constant decline in purchases/readership - it's a fools game trying to keep on supporting it, along with a paperless society their days are numbered and then add in if you are being supported by a licence fee can you justify charging an online subscription for access (even tho online subscriptions for papers (in Ireland at least) is tiny.

And before anyone says we need freedom of press to survive - every journalistic company in Ireland and every country has their own agenda and leaning. This is what people say RTE is - free from any particular leaning, but they are far from that. Even their investigative journalism has been on the back of other researchers in the past few years - Prime Time investigates used to be a hard hitting story no one had heard of, now it's like this was in the news a year ago! I've seen better high quality investigative journalism by youtubers over the past few years uncovering stories and details that no one even knew about. I like anything to do with space exploration and there is a few channels on YT that produce excellent productions, from their research, production and finished product...then you look at RTE giving us the atrocious Climate 2050, Fair City, Room to Improve - absolute dross bottom of the barrel productions

My youtube subscriptions are fairly cultured, they would be certainly wide ranging and entertaining to most people like a PSB company should be

They seemed quite keen on getting it rolled out because Cablelink at the same time had demonstrated cable broadband. The BBS scene predated much of the Internet in Ireland and Barry Flanagan was starting Galway Online (which became Ireland Online) back then. There was only a few BBSes at the time and we SysOps often knew each other or at least cooperated with the FidoNet e-mail and newsgroups distribution. The mail hour (when BBSes were handling mail) was during off peak hours after midnight. The timing took advantage of the cheaper per unit rates and non-local rates. It used to be a flat rate for an "unlimited" local call but it was changed to a variable cost unit which was cheaper between 18:00 to 08:00 and also at weekends. In between this and broadband, the ISPs emerged and one of them started offering flat rate access with no subscription fee. It was a success for a while. TE's ISP launched after IOL and some of the others.. One of the "might have beens " was what would have happened if RTE managed to launch its Digital Terrestrial TV with its own built-in Internet access. Unfortunately, the roll-out of Digital Terrestrial TV never happened. Any Conditional Access system used for the subscription management would probably have been hacked. But Ireland was a very small market and most of it was concentrated in the cities and they were Cablelink networks. Sky had much of the market outside the cities.

There definitely needs to be a Public Service Broadcaster and RTE is trying to do it and commercial broadcasting at the same time. It isn't working out well. The problem for any technological solution is that most politicians are not technologists and this often goes doubly so for those dealing with communications. They sometimes rely upon the wibbling of "technology journalists" and they often have no expertise in Technology or the business of Technology. And Broadcast is one field that involves one Hell of a lot of technology of which the average "technology journalist" would be unaware. This, and the size of the market, is why broadcasting in Ireland is often very far behind the curve in some areas of development. (Ireland never had a chance to develop a TV market because of pig-ignorant gombeen politicians. The local radio industry was nearly destroyed by the licencing legislation. ) RTE's problems aren't only commercial. They are political too. It is not possible to fix one without fixing the other.Some kind of break-up with 2RN being protected is probably the only viable solution at this stage. The problem is that it might be beyond the abilities of the politicians to get it done.

Regards...jmcc

@Emblematic

If RTÉ were producing programming that people wanted they wouldn't have to try to sell the product to advertisers. Are we going down the road of pure PSBing? no comedy (not that RTÉ do much of that anyway), no drama, no music, no entertainment, no sport, just pure news current affairs with some children's TV thrown in?

I am not sure if €25,000 of car allowances has anything to do with the excesses in the commercial arm of RTÉ. RTÉ executives have been on the pigs back, do you think they will let go of that 25k should RTÉ be fully funded via the tax payer?

Yeah in theory no government wants to be 'narrowing the tax base' but you have to set that €150m against the over €100 billion the government takes in in taxes every year. Even double it to cover RTE's commercial revenues and it's still peanuts. Then think of the 'political peace' You would buy IMO by moving to a direct exchequer funding system. Consider TG4: does anybody give a toss about their corporate governance, or what their 'top talent' is paid. To me exhequer funding of broadcasting is close to a no-brainer for the political classes but Micheal Martin seems to have set his heart against it for some reason. If he is determined enough he probably has enough clout to block it but not to force through his own favoured system. So we could be lloking at the can being kicked down the road again...

While we may not care about TG4, Screen Ireland, ETC governance perhaps we should.

Broadband would be messy as multiple people \ packages in same house. I don't think that is in scope of the household benefits package also.

Electricity seems easier, also the household benefits package would provide a way to offset it, given that I assume the government won't want to risk uproar on that front.

1. Can someone do a welfare check on Dee Forbes.
2. Direct Gov funding will only piss off the public in future because we will have no control. At least the license fee as it exists bings attention when it’s withheld.. The over pay scandals and shenanigans that go on in the background will be hidden ala the children’s hospital over runs.
3. Who signed the Cheques for payment for the musical? Let’s start there.