Agreed, a % of the fee should go to TV3 in return for some public service programming….nothing like a bit of competition to shake up the fat cats at RTE.

Tv3 should get 0 % for the absolute dross they pump Into our homes. Imagine what you could get with your licence fee; washed up celebrity island, when monkeys attack etc

Agreed. Imagine trying to compete with a loss making company who also take the vast majority of the advertising spend in the country. No level playing field. There is a reason we only have one private channel in Ireland.

The very annoying process of RTE just purchasing shows from the USA when no time slots are available here (end up with after midnight showings), just so TV3 get outbid: Boston Legal and The Kennedys spring to mind.

Also RTE needs to look at ways of making money, you cannot buy any of their shows on iTunes and the RTE Player only steams for 30 days. There are actually shows I want to buy and I cannot. We also now have RTE competing with the printed news online, I’m not sure the tv license fee shouldn’t be allowed for that.

It will be interesting to see if Labour stands up to RTE (typically no one in the Irish media does as most are on the payroll, or want to be) and cuts the funding to RTE, forcing them to scale back.

this is not a pro rte rant ! just getting that out of the way. i heard a doc on radio about rte v private . RTE has to cover every type of news/sport in order to cater for the entire demograhic which leads to them having a higher number of employees. But the private news corps will only cover main stream news and events to attract revenue. In a sence cherry picking what gets brodcast. Im not making an aurgument on paying or not just something i heard. Happy Friday

Tv3′s line up …. Ireland’s worst best fattest thinnest best criminals . They don’t spend much cause they just show crap. Rte show ear to the ground enough said worth every penny

@Scarr: And RTE’s lineup is a paragon of high quality entertainment? Most of their valuable content consists of foreign shows which we’d see anyway regardless whether there was a bloated state organ to overbid for them or not.

Where can see/hear/read what she had to say?

RTE’s managements obsession with murder and crime must surely be a mental health issue at this stage.

You want better programming AND no advertisements? Choose one I’d say!

In fairness, the BBC have much, much more funding. There’s just alot more people in the UK. This isn’t to say that RTE isn’t horrible bloated though.

@Chris: Why should we have to choose? They already have a pretty envyable budget.

I’d agree with that.
Plus get rid of the overpaid celebrity presenters

You’d really want another version of Fair City??? The worst programme in the universe with the worst actors and actresses???? Id rather watch water boil

Agreed.

I’m not personally a fan of Fair City, but it is popular despite\because of the cheese. There may still be a place for it yet.

doesn’t have to be soaps either does it??
A decent crime drama or something, anything!!
Pure Mule was an excellent series, as was Love is the Drug, so the talent is out there. Bachelors Walk was great too.

Pure Mule, Love is the Drug, and Bachelor’s Walk were good for RTE. They were not great compared with the competition: The Sopranos, The Wire, Sherlock.

We have the choice of the best TV in the world over the past 20+ years. Pure Mule doesn’t get into the top 100.

2fm is not funded by the licence fee

Is 2fm funded purely through non-licence means?

The licence fee does not fund 2FM and a couple of other RTE activties (such as AERTEL). However there is indirect funding, as 2FM of course uses facilities and services (like RTE’s news staff) that ARE funded by the licence fee.

Australia fund their television from the exchequer, is that not much the same thing as paying a tv licence? Having seen the dross from New Zealand that washes up late night over here I really wouldn’t want to go down that road either. It makes Fair City look like Golden Globe material.

Actually furthur research shows that all your fine examples of countries that abolished the tv licence replaced the funding lost from government funds.

Gerry with respect. Quality TV is in the eye of the beholder. What one person regards as quality TV another man views as “dross”. And I am not going to dictate to anybody else what constitutes “quality”. My point is that with access to the Internet the Irish Citizen no longer has to reply on the State propaganda broadcast mast in Donnybrook for Information – that might have been the case in 1950 but it’s not now in 2012. It’s called freedom to choose and without any help or supervision (to protect us from the Tsunami of information) from RTE or any other organisation who gets a slice of the broadcasting pie. If you really must insist on maintaining a public broadcasting service (I don’t) despite having access to the Internet then I suggest it should be funded from direct taxation – and should be a tiny, winnie fraction of the money they get now.

@Gerry: If RTE is really worth what they spend, then people will be willing to pay for it. If it isn’t then people shouldn’t be forced to pay for it against their will.

The point was in reply to your examples of countries who did away with TV licences, not whether there should be public broadcasting. ABC in Australia receives €738m from the exchequer. They just didn’t abolish the licence, they replaced it with funding.

Problem there is that no one would be it.

The best shows that are on the RTE are the one you’d have seen a few weeks earlier on Channel4, Sky Living, etc…

Don’t tell me you never ever watch it.

We actually cannot receive RTE channels, I even bought a saorview box, still nothing – so I cannot watch it in my house. But due to inspector calls we had to pay the tv license.

We rent and cannot put up an aerial, so we are stuck with paying the TV Tax but do not receive any service. We have a free-to-air satellite and receive all the UK channels fine through that. Even more annoying is that RTE is actually broadcast on the Astra 2D satellite but encrypts it, this encryption stream is for the pleasure of Sky customers only (who did a deal with RTE), go figure that one out!

Google Saorsat. Problem solved.

Agreed. DVR is just another form of downloading.

On a side note, I do not thing RTE should be allowed to purchase US TV shows with the licence fee, it should be solely used for Irish material, foreign programming should be for the private sector to provide.

The main difference is that there’s usually some restriction placed on DVR services – depending on individual ones, it could be a time limit on storing recordings, a limit on the number of recordings to be stored, or simply encrypting them in such a way that they cannot be moved to a PC/DVD or otherwise transmitted beyond the DVR ‘box’ itself – making it near-impossible to share on and/or profit from the recording, similar to many of the ‘catch-up’ streaming websites like 4oD or BBC iPlayer here in the UK. However, with a ‘free’ recording such as you could download, you can print off DVDs and sell them, or upload them to yet more sharing services and make them too easily accessible. Essentially, they don’t care so much about you as an individual seeing it, but about you having the potential to spread and even profit from the recording.

Second difference is that it’s easier to trace and prosecute non-license-paying TV/DVR owners than it is to trace non-license-paying PC owners. Buying a PC doesn’t raise a solid enough flag that they’d be able to obtain a court order to search the premises, and so they could only ever catch you if you willingly let them into your home; buying a TV or DVR box or some other TV accessory means that if you refuse them access, they will be able to get legal assistance to gain entry at a later date.

Thirdly, the quality of uploaded and pirated recordings are frequently not as good as those you’d get via DVR, which executives fear might reduce enjoyment and thus drive fanbases away. This is more of an excuse than a legitimate reason, really.

Fourth, pirated copies skip advertising, which most DVRs do not, and even if you skim past it, the network can be justified in claiming that they have shown the ads to you, and thus claim revenue, which is lost if downloads are used.

Fifth, many pirated copies cut out credits and stuff, and thus harm those who work on shows by removing their main publicity method (although this is a minor concern unless you happen to be on the lookout for your own CGI guy).

Sixth, they can’t track viewing figures via pirated downloads. These viewing figures go a long way towards a) encouraging producers etc. to sell licensing to shows for less where they know they’ll get a decent audience and thus more likelihood of a market share in merchandise, DVDs, further seasons, so so forth; b) encouraging advertisers to pay more for a slot in the schedule; c) keeping these shows on the air, as no one will want to pick something up for a second series if the viewing figures are in the toilet, even if secretly half the world is addicted via downloaded copies.

All that said, I’m not anti-downloads. All too often, I’ve been forced to when a show is cancelled without producing DVDs and the rights never picked up over here or some similar “no alternative” situation. But there are reasons why they take different views of DVRs and illegal downloads.

I do the same.
Although I am aware that legally I should still pay the TV licence as my PC monitor can receive RTE.

Don’t recieve an rte signal watch all my content online with the crappiest net connection of 0.8mb and would never dream of even typing in rte’s web address. I get my news from here and papers so when the TV guy calls looking for money I will be doing a “Monty Burns” release the hounds!!!
Plenty of college grads out there with all the new ways of doing media stuff but can’t get work! Get rid of the old and in with the new because the amount they are losing shows us experiance accounts for nothing in rte!

I wouldn’t mind paying as much if RTE would drop the adverts, but now they have a double income stream and they’re still at loss and produce rubbish!

I don’t think rte is to blame…from what I can see most of what’s on tv is rubbish..

You didnt watch the Euros this year on RTE, then, or the Olympics now?

yeah eoin, 3 hours of football every night a little break for an hour then another 3 hours! while the odd programme is good(few and far between)most is rehashed dross, cut out the dead wood(job for life) and give new talent a chance, i watch olympics on BBC a great service with quality programming and few ads

@Chris: True, but in that case why should we be paying over the odds for public sector rubbish when we already pay for it from the private sector. The whole argument in favour of the licence fee is not to produce rubbish.

aw, what about (complaining)charlie bird in the artic?

My point exactly ;)

When they have to get hackneyed sports punters to cover these things it shows how disorganised they are.

They seem to be very good at plugging in all the cheap economics and politics lecturers in to endless RTE programmes from across the road in UCD, I fail to see why they can’t do the same with other areas of UCD given how reliant they are on it for content.

@Marko, great point about natural history, history, and geography, folklore, nature, wildlife etc.

I think you will find that those programmes in the archive / library are sold abroad but there is not much demand for them so when they are sold they are sold inexpensively. They don’t bring in much revenue.

What’s your next not thought out point?

PS – Comparing BBC to RTE is a bit like comparing a local free sheet newspaper to the biggest selling paper in the country. Why would you think they are comparable?

As an addition, RTE is always compared to the BBC, which is a juvenile argument based on no knowledge of costs. Get a grip and keep your moaning to something you may know about, like, why is your tea not hot enough or something like that.

I never understood why RTE bought them in the first place. Independant, private sector operations should be encouraged, not absorbed into state bodies once they look good.

Not everyone can afford to pay monthly subscriptions whether it is UPC / Sky / Broadband or an of those of any description.

It IS the national broadcasters remit to provide free to air. Your points are null and void and based on the idea that everyone has money to pay for monthly subscriptions. They don’t.

And then you go on about the BBC freeview…. what did you expect, were the BBC to come over to Ireland and build the digital network to support saorview / freeview for nothing and provide free set top boxes, etc. I mean seriously do you have any clue what goes on…. your comments are completely laughable.

Do you also believe in the tooth fairy or Christ on a bike?

Why am I bothering…. you clearly have no idea what the hell you are talking about… go do some research! Grow up and stop your misdirected moaning.

I forgot to mention that I think the rugby analysts are most entertaining on RTE also.

Typical Irish negative attitude to Limerick. The University of Limerick is home to the Irish Chamber Orchestra.

Lyric get what they need to operate. I’m not sure giving them extra would help.

Not really. If we didn’t have public service broadcasting which is mandated to do certain things we’d be looking at reality TV and talent shows 24/7. Honestly. The schedule would consist of a Big Brother clone for the afternoon, some reality caper with Twink, Barry Egan and Amanda Brunker for Prime Time and Ballyhaunis: The Musical seeing us off to sleep.

Amen Brother.

I never watch any of the channels that are being funded as I subscribe to SKY TV.
I have two TV’s in my home but refuse to support something that I don’t avail of.
That is my argument for not having a TV licence.

Jesus, I’m glad I’m not a license fee payer. If I was I’d be contributing to the wages of the worst actors and script writers of all time. The crew of fair city.

Mutt, the Licence fee is as much a tax on the public airways as it is a payment to RTE. Your argument is extremely poor. I don’t avail of a lot of things the state provides, but I still pay income tax.

Bill Kennedy.
It appears you say yes to every tax that is bestowed on you without questioning where your hard earned money ends up.
Do you not feel the need to question for instance the An Post collection charge of Euro 9.62 ?
This appears an excessive earner for An Post. AT YOUR EXPENSE.
Non RTE acticities amounting to Euro 35.00. AT YOUR EXPENSE.
What is poor is you being critical of where your money goes.
And we are just talkin about a tv licence.

@Billy: When you consider the that the licence fee levied goes almost entirely to RTE it’s quite clear that it’s not really comparable to a luxury tax like cigarettes or alcohol.

People don’t watch Late Late for Tubridy, they watch it to see the guests. We are perfectly entitled to complain about presenters we don’t like who almost ruin the programme on us. Why should people pay for a service which is not fit for purpose? Yes, GAA sports coverage is good, but not everyone is a sports fan!

They love to broadcast US shows late night. They shouldn’t be allowed to buy US shows, TV License fee should be for Irish production only. Let the private sector broadcast US shows.

Nice one Keith! lol

Coz has no viewers

It’s not just people in the Gaeltacht areas who listen/watch Irish language programs. Big audiences in the “Galltacht”, Northern ireland and overseas.

Telling someone to ‘get over themselves’ for making a legitimate and fully within their rights decision to speak their national language is ignorant and offensive.

Troll Keith!!

Sasanach!

Irish = cultural fascism. A state forcing the learning of a language upon its people despite the fact that most of them don’t want anything to do with it.

How are you getting on under that bridge? Any word from the billy goats gruff?

Jesus lads, Keith is obviously being sarcastic. And stop with the troll comments. That’s why the neg button is there.

Jesus lads, stop with the taking up for Keith comments. Keith know’s what he did and now he’s going to have to deal with the fallout. I’m sure he appreciates you defending him though. It’s cute.

Troll :)

lol.. Brilliant!

Because, unlike english language programming, the private sector hasn’t stepped up tot he plate in this regard. But putting your opinion of the Irish language aside, TG4 do make quite alot of original and interesting programs of their own. And on a budget a fraction the size of RTE’s.

TG4 gets money directly and does with it as it will within the rules.

RTE provides things like studio time, news and other such support to TG4 and gets assistance money to do so.

This won’t continue if the two are completely separated – something that has been proposed a few times.

Hope that helps.