The future of RTE after Tubsgate.

Why? Did they mismanage the national public service broadcaster?

'Funding by the Gov revenue and taxation would invite political interference, or at least the fear or suspicion of it.'

Well you could argue that's how it is now, since they have to come to Government every year for more and more money to 'run' the place..

I think they did get bail outs..

this is gold, writer called in April to have the show written by the summer 😆😆

Then the bullying begins

Backs up what I am saying, dependent on direct Government funding as it stands whatever the cause(s).

The failure of any RTÉ former Executives to attend today’s Committee meeting is a challenge to the power of the Oireachtas to hold State agencies to account.

If they are not compelled to attend pronto, these Committees look like toothless talking shops when faced with egregious behaviour.

If they are compelled to attend, they will face hostile questioning from all sides but the politicians must tread carefully- the Courts sided with Angela Kerins of Rehab when she complained about her treatment by a Committee.

https://www.irishtimes.com/politics/2024/02/14/rte-controversy-failure-of-key-figures-to-face-questions-is-a-farce-committee-head-says/

That is what the people voted for in rejecting the proposed 30th Amendment to the Constitution. To keep them as talking shops instead of giving them powers to do what they like. They can still do their grandstanding and electioneering, and get coverage for it on live RTE TV, but they can't become judge, jury and excutioner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirtieth_Amendment_of_the_Constitution_Bill_2011

It's not the government's fault that RTÉ chose to put all its eggs in one basket - or one Tub(s)!

@Sam Russell this is too simple an excuse IMO. Where the power at be under so much pressure? or where they just believing their own lies that "Talent" was the most important part of the equation for success? It looks to me they believed their own hype, that they also deserved the kind of wages and exit packages that they received, I don't believe they had any real want to improve the service that they had for the audience, their simple refrain towards the audience has always been "The audience just don't understand". You just have to look at 2FM to see how their arguments crumble.

I don't think the last 2 decades would have been much different with so called proper funding.

Well then RTÉ has never been up to the task.

I think this "commercial revenue, caused by lack of enough funding to run the business" is simple an excuse that doesn't cover how bad RTÉ have been as a public service broadcaster over the years. It's an excuse for Dee Forbes' time at RTÉ and many of her predecessors.

They had largely got a continuous income over the years, they knew how much they would get out of the license fee with the exception of a few years, yes the advertising fell flat but so to did RTÉ. Its been a decade more of inertial.

The money that they spend on cars for executives for example cannot be describe as running after anything, and there are plenty of other examples, of this kind of spend.

No one points how RTÉ2 is massively reliant on Sports but one of their strategies suggest moving sport to RTÉ ONE! No one is pointing out that even at a public service level RTÉ2 and 2FMs audience aren't at a significant level, and the removal of Irish programming from the 2nd channel along with 2FM dwindling audience should show they are not at the races from both a public service point of view or a commercial one and no public funding can defend that mismanagement.

RTÉ recently spent 70k on someone to administer a pension scheme, a person who'd retired, how does that chase any commercial revenue?

It didn't begin the rot because the rot was already there. RTÉ from 1993 up until 2011 had seen an increase in the Licence Fee, indeed after that successive government help remove certain aspects away from RTÉ or they gave extra funding to RTÉ (NSO to NCH, and €10m a year for 5 years since 2020).

None of their spend seems to chase anything from what I can see, other then putting themselves in the money.

I agree government should have increase the licence fee from 2011, even if it was just 25c in one year or 50c in another, at least the licence fee payer would have seen some increase, until they actually had to increase it significantly.

You won't convince me, what all of this has convince me of is that even during the good times RTÉ was badly run. If you take from 1998 up to 2006, I look a that period as a one of some success but then I realize that it could have been much more. The same goes for the early years of the 1960s.

I'd actually say that RTÉ were only really on top of things between 1988 at 1994, coming out of one of the worst recessions of the 70s and 80s and going into the craziness of the celtic tiger. RTÉ might not have been the best at that time but it was doing its best (with a low licence fee and massive political pressure) , I don't believe it ever did its best before or after.

And just because you reach 100 years or 70 years means little when you did so little.

As I've posted before, those cuts are visible but largely symbolic, the radio services on Saorview have no ads but cost buttons to run, the +1 TV channels should be profitable as they increase ad income a little while costing basically nothing. Carving out bits of Montrose is pointless as the money is being frittered away and they can't keep on doing that without moving to a new site entirely at vast expense.

The real waste has always been behind the scenes, the Secret RTE Producer twitter account from a few years back told of lots of production staff on high wages doing next to nothing, has that changed?

This could be due to the ablity to source those programmes in the 1960s, I took a look back at some of the RTÉ guide from 1969 - 1978 and other than Match of the Day, Lifestyle programming and Soaps RTÉ aired many British Film and TV serials, but they are not as plentiful as US series, RTÉ tended to stay away from UK soaps and studio programming, similarly to that from the US (though they did air Payton Place).

I often wonder why RTÉ2 didn't take Brookside and EastEnders in the 80s as it had been broadcasting Coro Street and as RTÉ ONE was beginning to show Emmerdale, along with the Australian soaps.

Though with so few hours of TV why in the early 70s they didn't just push UK programming to late nights and daytime TV.

News channel is even worse. RTÉ ONE has live news at 13:05 so can play out over the radio programme that starts at the same time. RTÉ Radio 1 headlines at 13:00 don't broadcast at that time on news channel, leaving the news channel with rolling headlines, until the Radio show begins.

You'd have to ask why RTÉ News cannot carry live TV news bulletin at 13:00 and have it repeat over on RTÉ ONE at 13:05.

But I suppose that RTÉ have much more pressing things to deal with and that will be their excuse.

Do we know that is the value of that contract?

True it would have been considered homegrown programming and independently produce programming.

Good to see Funding model has largely been sorted, all the hard work and all that RTÉ did to get it to this point is credit to them?