RTÉ already having its cake and eating it – now it wants a slice from people with no TV
AS DEE Forbes approaches the end of her first year in the job, any performance review she conducts on herself will surely be framed along the lines of ‘be careful what you wish for’.
While it’s the most important job in Irish broadcasting, being RTÉ director general is also a poisoned chalice, as she has discovered to her cost. The first external appointment to that position, she arrived with the reputation of a reformer but as her recent, much-derided comments about the licence fee reminded us, it doesn’t take long for even the most independent spirit to start drinking the Montrose Kool-Aid.
While she subsequently tried to roll her comments back, her assertion that the €160 we are legally obliged to pay would still be good value at twice the price was a wince-inducing gaffe that enraged many punters who feel that they are already paying too much.
Ms Forbes then tried to clarify her remarks, and pointed out that: “What I was saying was that the licence fee here in Ireland is incredible value at 40c a day.”
That may be a matter of opinion. But what is a matter of fact is that the licence isn’t 40c a day. It’s €160 a year.
RTÉ lost €20m last year. It is, in effect, broke. That’s why Ms Forbes has also made the more forwardthinking move to raise revenue by selling some of the plush Montrose campus and seeking some redundancies. These are ideas which had been long mooted, and it is good to see that they will soon be implemented.
But it doesn’t change the fact that we live in a country where you can go to jail if you refuse to subsidise the State broadcaster.
As if that wasn’t ridiculous enough, Communications Minister Denis Naughten has even resurrected Pat Rabbitte’s longdiscredited idea of a broadcast tax.
Of course, Mr Naughten says it wouldn’t be a broadcast tax. It would just do the same thing.
This plan would target the estimated 32,500 households who no longer even bother having a TV in their house, and who use their laptops and tablets for their viewing needs instead.
Welcome to Ireland, where you have to buy a TV licence – whether you have a TV or not.
The problem facing both the Government and RTÉ is fundamentally one of philosophy. In their eyes, people have an obligation to prop up the State broadcaster and they see it as a justifiable tax. The rest of us do not. I’ve always been baffled about why the people of this country became so enraged over the water charges, yet only occasionally grumbled about the TV licence.
After all, both cost roughly the same amount and regardless of where people stood on the issue, everyone would agree that water is, obviously, a rather essential service. On the other hand, RTÉ is not.
The unenforceable and, frankly, ludicrous idea of charging people a TV licence every time they buy a tablet or laptop shows a Government and national broadcaster desperately flailing around for extra funds. It’s like looking at Official Ireland frantically rummaging around the back of the sofa to see if there’s any spare change lurking behind the cushions.
While it’s easy to focus on the salaries paid to the highest profile pres enters such as Ryan Tub ri dy (€495,000 in 2014) and Ray D’Arcy (reportedly in the region of €500,000), such figures are merely a distraction from – and proof of – the profligate way in which members of management spend the money at their disposal.
THE problem lies not with the front-of-house talent, who are entitled to drive as hard a bargain as they can, but with the people who agreed to such elevated wages.
RT É often looks like a relic from a by-gone age. The licence fee is just the most obvious example.
Any public service broadcasting arguments which are employed are immediately debunked by the fact that it is also able to corner the market in advertising.
This dual revenue stream, which is not available to other European state broadcasters, is a classic example of Montrose having its cake, eating it and then demanding a slice of ours because it is still hungry.
The media landscape in Ireland has come to resemble a bomb site in recent years. Advertising revenue is down, wages are down, more jobs have been lost than created, and this has been replicated throughout the Western world.
Yet, blissfully flying in the face of commercial reality, RTÉ and the Government are trying to figure out new ways to relieve us of our money.
Telling people they must pay for something they don’t want or even use, or face the prospect of going to jail, is simply a legally mandated way of demanding money with menaces.
It belongs to a different, two channel-era, and is both morally unjustifiable and self-defeatingly expensive to enforce. Rather than looking for more money, RTÉ should be forced to join the real world and learn how to operate on less. One eminently viable prospect has been strangely absent from the debate – why not make RTÉ a subscription service?
Sky, BT and Virgin all operate via subscription. Yet mention such a prospect to senior staffers in Mont rose and the colour drains from their face. They know they aren’t offering a service which people would willingly pay for.
Like everything else in 2017, if you can’t make money, you cease to exist. Let RTÉ survive by ads and/or subscription fees. If it can’t?
Well, as the man says, that’s showbiz.