RTE Tax

I have no problem with RTE receiving most of the TV tax but why is it limited to them? If other media outlets are providing public service broadcasting then why should they not get anything?

cork said:

TG4 do public service broadcasting.
RTE itself does precious little. RTE 2 is dire.

RTE1 - Eastenders, Fair City, Winning Streak etc - all pretty poor stuff.

Think - the licence fee should go.

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TG4 are in receipt of a portion of the licence fee. I have seen plenty of countries where there is no licence fee and believe me, what we have here is much much better than the alternative of no state funding. TBH cork your comments are extremely lame - "RTE does precious little" ... is that really the best you can do as an argument?
I would agree that how the licence funding is broken down could be fairer (see this breakdown article from 2012) as RTE1 do seem to get far too large a share. I'm not saying what we have is perfect but certainly I'm happy to retain the licence fee and for the state to have a say in how it is used.

I think 2fm is a channel that does not play music older the 1990.

Yet - licence money goes into this.

Slightly ot...but I have a problem about people in the north being able to enter competitions etc in late late...but without paying a licence fee. We can't enter theirs

amtc said:

Slightly ot...but I have a problem about people in the north being able to enter competitions etc in late late...but without paying a licence fee. We can't enter theirs

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You think that's bad; they can get our passports but we can't get theirs!

Plus postage from here to ni is same but is international rates other way!

All things considered, I think RTE has, overall, done quite a decent job recently.

Traditional TV is going through a huge change as a result of Netflix and programs available on "the internet". Every TV station is facing difficulties here and RTE is doing a good job by focusing on news, current affairs and (where budgets allow) sport, which are not under pressure from the oforementioned newer mediums.

In particular I think the 4 areas below are a super addition to RTE's offering and constitute proper Public Service broadcasting:

Doc on One podcasts - really getting into these and some are superb. Highly recommended when heading out for a stroll
RTE junior - granted some of the content is from C-Beebies, but a fair bit of home programming too. The best thing is no commercial ads and it finishes before 7pm when it is time for bed
Food and recipes - not as good as BBC Good Food, but getting better all the time
RTE Investigates - this is quite good and hopefully RTE will go deeper with its investigative journalism

I've been trying to ascertain whether RTE's budget is limited to the license fee + advertising revenue only, or whether additional funding from the government is made. If funding is only via the license fee + advertising revenue only then I think it constitutes good value. However, if additional payments are made from the government coffers then we should know about that to make a cost-benefit judgement.

As mentioned before, I would still like to see the allocation of Public Service funding tendered out to more participants but am getting happier with RTE's offering.