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

Why was Donie O'Sullivan, who was scheduled to appear on the Late Late Show (LLS), pushed aside (and I know it wasn't Kielty's decision) in favour of the 2 Johnnies even though a hotel room had already been booked for him by RTÉ?

Did it not occur to the people behind the scenes on the LLS that many viewers might have been interested in Donie's analysis of US politics?

The Boy That Never Was, Funding: -

IFCIC helped with production cashflow

• Finnish Impact Film Fund
• Aristo-Invest
• BAIE Capital
• Finnish Cultural Foundation
• Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation
• Kelonia
• Konstsamfundet
• Otava
• Saastamoinen Foundation
• Tesi
• Screen Ireland funding from various funds (Development, Production Continuation Fund, Publicity and Marketing Assets Production Fund, Sustainability Advisor Fund)
• Creative Europe
• Section 481 Gov of Ireland
• Morocco Shooting Support

Production Companies

• Aurora Studios
• Subotica

End screen has the usual Supported by your Licence Fee, I some how doubt that this will appear on international version of the production.

It would be interesting to know how much RTÉ actual invested in this series. Seems to have been commissioned via the Acquisitions / Co-Productions department

If you want to pay for the Currency's column on the new CFO of RTÉ by the former Commerical Director, Mr Willie O'Reilly, he seems to think we have forgotten he left on a redundancy package also. The Currency owned by former Deputy Chair of RTÉ Ian Kehoe

Accountants are known to be cool, calm and collected. RTÉ’s new CFO will need these qualities in spades

You knew her predecessors, were they cool, calm and collected?

https://thecurrency.news/articles/160086/accountants-are-known-to-be-cool-calm-and-collected-rtes-new-cfo-will-need-these-qualities-in-spades/

I'd actually say that the idea of TV3 showing it might have been a bigger issue. I think they only started showing the programming in 1997.

Couldn’t have put it better myself, Ginneral.

I am guessing it will be replaced by something similar, though I didn't see any announcement. Katherine Thomas hasn't been out of work for the last 2 decades and she's largely worked for independent producers with the odd stint as a stand in radio presenter.

Well, the legion of Mary got Stringfellows in Dublin shut down many years back, early to mid 2000s or so. I still remember seeing footage of Alan Hughes and his then partner (now husband) walking out of there to be greeted by placards. Hilarious stuff.

We still get those 'I haven't seen it, but I hate it' people. Just in different guises. Catherine Noone tried to start a campaign against MMA. She'd never even watched it, and was just going on an article she'd read.

It's bizarre, plenty of priests spoke about knowing a Fr Jack, or a Bishop Brennan. My uncle's a retired priest, but he loved the show.

Kevin Bakhurst's salary

So on several occassion Mr. Bakhurst has stated that he took a pay cut to return to RTÉ, we assume as Deputy DG & MD of News and CA he was on about €250k - €300k per year, based on salaries of other Executive Board members.

He left RTÉ in 2016 on the arrival of Dee Forbes and when to OfCom

Ofcom publishes the salary details of its Board and Executive Committee. In addition to the individuals named in the Annual Report, there are several individuals whose salaries are greater than £150,000 per year. The names, job titles and salary bands of those individuals are set out in the documents below.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/annual-reports-and-plans/other-financial-reporting/

2017 - £235K - Group Director, Content Media and Policy

2018 - £241K

2019 - £241K

2020 - £248.3K

2021 - £248.3K

2022 - £255.75K- Group Director, Broadcasting and Online Content

In 2022 Dee Frobes had €259K (now this includes the car allowance, but Excludes the Pension of 58k)

Today £255,750 amounts to €303,701 (I am not sure if OfCom include car allowance or Pensions in their total figure*), even still he's not working for OfCom that cover far more than RTÉ does.

And it is only a pay cut due to foreign exchange rates, you could also argue a pay cut as the cost of living in Ireland is also higher, but I doubt he cares about €160 or £169.50 each year maybe he took out a Black and White TV license!

*Pensions, allowances are included in the annual reports, but I think my argument still stands.

"Sales" are published weekly here...
https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/d5f84-tv-licence-sales/

July and August 2024 figures show an increase of about 10,000 in each month compared with same months in 2023.
A cynic might suggest that some of the bailout money is being used to "buy" licences from An Post. In other words, a subsidy to both RTE and An Post.

And looking at both they year and monthly trends the licence fee will be come close to making the 2023 figure.

Yearly would put it at 770,898

Monthly would put it at 777,122

or €27m about the figuring of the government in their bail out.

Fair City returns to 4 nights a week from Sept 20th, just shows that the programme has no reach beyond a week.

https://extra.ie/2024/09/08/news/rte-wants-audience-reaction

A spokesman for RTE stressed that it is a ‘recurring contract’, adding: ‘RTÉ has been running this Audience Reaction Panel since 2007 and that ensuring we receive regular feedback from audiences is an important

Almost all of these are recurring contracts, so over the next 5 years: -

1. 1.2m
2. 1.9m
3. 0.6m
4. 0.3m
5. 1.8m

Total - 5.8m over 5 years

While "ensuring we receive regular feedback from audiences is an important… element in RTÉ continuing to serve our audiences."

Is the funniest thing I have heard in a while.

https://extra.ie/2024/09/12/news/irish-news/george-hamilton-new-channel

He was once one of the top earners, yeah there is a reason he isn't getting paid as much, and Nugent AFAIK took up one of those nice exit packages (but I could be wrong on that).