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

Sorry a rant on Irish Times … link at the end …

Again there is this perception that RTÉ and TG4 do not have stability, and that they could not have forecast their strategies.

I have been following broadcasting for years I have never once heard RTÉ or TG4 look for a multi-year guaranteed budget. I am open to correction on this.

Again she persists with the idea its really not a great deal because TV costs money to produce, and RTÉ have remits to make. From what i can see there are 3 remits under the act 1. A TV and a Radio channel that is of Public Service in Nature (RTÉ 1 and Radio 1), 2. A set percentage of the licence fee to go to independent productions (~€40m) and 3. The Irish Language. RTÉ seem to feel forced to do these things.

They talk about the collapse of the licence fee sales, but again never venturing into why people don't pay the license or why evasion increased over the last year, lets not dwell on the mismanagement of RTÉ… however later in the podcast they start talking about how both RTÉ and TG4 have failed to invest in their studios. A suggested €300m price tag to bring RTÉ studios up to standard, on top of any energy efficiency that they have to make for 2030. So what was RTÉ management doing with their building over the last 40 to 50 years, how much were maintenance costs over the last 14 years, why was this left so late in the day. To avoid having to up keep listed buildings? And it seems almost everything is moving to the TV centre a newer building on the site. (I am also surprised that few people are not bring up this issue, this is just as much of a scandal as the governance issues).

Again she suggest the headline figure is huge, but RTÉ had looked for more and had looked for a 5 year multi-year budget. Again this is new to me from any reports I had heard, and for journalists to start to suggest this was a normally requested even in Dee Forbes time seems a little like re-writing history.

As you have seen from my last rant … RTÉ over the last 10 years has had stability in funding, it is up to them as professionals with years of wonderful experience to forecast for a strategy, again anyone want to take out a strategy and point to any tangible commitments, even take a look at the current New Direction and point to any that you feel are tangible.

So the voluntary redundancy was over prescribe last time, only 25 people were given an exit payment from that, at least one may have been an executive, to me the Vol Redundancy are set up to facilitate retiring executives.

She underestimates the value of Fair City, she says 12m, but in fairness to her a number of articles put it at that. So lets take a look at RTÉ drama production for 2022.

Drama for RTÉ1 was €16m (plus 767k for 2, 1.2m for online*, 572k for Radio and 360k for TG4 support). This €16m on RTÉ1 is mainly for Fair City… lets take a look at their Commissioning annual report… Kin and 3 storyland shorts in total… at a cost of 2.5m (this is entirely for Kin and not the 3 shorts which aired on RTÉ2 cost 767k in total, though perhaps that also includes any live action children's dramas???). Taking this into account Fair City is cost €13.5m to make in 2022.

What is strange about the Commissioning report they don't mention the TG4 from the main annual report, only Kin and the 3 Storyland shorts).

On top of this spend on Drama RTÉ also have a number of co-production that will go through their Acquisitions / Co-Productions Dept, total spend on Irish imports was 4.5m … not all of this is Drama… RTÉ therefore spend between €5m to €7m on Drama outside of Fair City… a pittance and at most 2% of their total budget.

I will take a break from the rant :)

*1.2m for online drama again not listed in their Commissions annual report! Is this 1.2m partly for Fair City also?

https://www.irishtimes.com/podcasts/inside-business/despite-its-725m-funding-plan-are-there-still-storm-clouds-on-the-horizon-for-rte/

https://www.rte.ie/annual-report-2022/pdf/RTE_Annual_Report_YE22.pdf

https://about.rte.ie/commissioning/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2023/06/RTE-Independent-Productions-Annual-Report-2022-2.pdf

Ah sure while I am here and have your ear.

VMTV - It owned by a large corporation… they have some corporate responsibilities towards the community, perhaps they invest in their broadcast service.

VMTV from what I know … VMTV is split between … names maybe different

1. TV3 network ltd (VMTV ONE, and I suspect VMTV MORE and FOUR)
2. Channel 6 Broadcastings (VMTV TWO)
3. UTV Irleand Ltd (VMTV THREE)

Their turnover I work out at 80m (again generous) per year, both Channel 6 and UTV Ireland are profit making.

VMTV last year had 19.5% of the TV audience, ad revenue from TV came to 281.4m, 75% of TV channels sell air time in the Irish market meaning that VMTV has a potential total of €75m from ad revenue.

ITV programming costing 20m, 15m in staffing costs (being generous), 15m for Sporting rights (again being generous), may 5m on broadcast and player costs?

maybe your talking a 5m loss or a 20m profit!

Back of the envelop stuff, but you see my point.

^^^ or Toxic Symbiosis

oh yeah an RTÉ News are on their annual bus man’s holiday!