Does RTE stand for Repeat This Episode?

Over half of broadcaster’s non-news shows in past week were old re-runs

MORE than half of every non-news programme on RTÉ’s two television stations this week were repeats, an analysis shows.

The revelation comes as the national broadcaster’s director general Dee Forbes said this week that the licence fee, at €160, is ‘incredible value for money’ and suggested it should be ‘double that’. She later backtracked from this idea calling it ‘nonsense’.

She spoke as she launched a restructuring plan that will see 8.6 acres of the station’s prime Donnybrook campus sold off. RTÉ is also seeking up to 300 redundancies, in a desperate attempt to curb its €20m losses last year.

Now an MoS analysis shows that 52% of RTÉ One’s output for the past seven days were repeats, with more than a fifth being imported soaps. And almost three quarters (74%) of RTÉ Two’s shows were also repeats, with Wednesday’s entire non-news schedule being repeats. Asked to verify these figures the RTÉ press office confirmed that 20% of prime-time shows – that’s from 6pm to 11pm – on RTÉ One last year were repeats. The figure for RTÉ Two was as high as 45%.

A spokeswoman said: ‘RTÉ has been operating with vastly reduced commercial and licence fee income, now in the region of €330m, compared to €440m in 2008, and has been under-investing in the organisation for nearly a decade now.

‘This situation has had an impact on spending in the independent sector, which has reduced from approximately €80m to approximately €40m during this period.’

She said output has been badly affected, leading to more repeats but that by addressing licence fee evasion, RTÉ hopes to have another €40m to increase spending on original Irish content.

There has been widespread approval in RTÉ for Forbes’s drastic plan. After an unsure response to the new DG who took up her role last July, staff got behind her this week. Notwithstanding her licence fee gaffe on RTÉ radio, her address to staff was well received.

‘I think it’s an excellent plan, first because she has a plan in the first place and secondly because it’s quite drastic. That’s what we need. If we keep going the way we are we won’t be around in 10 years or even five,’ said one senior journalist. Another staff member said redundancies were widely expected.

‘It’ll be tough but it I think most people realise it needs to happen,’ they said. Another journalist said: ‘RTÉ needs a shake-up, and the decision to put content at the very core of the organisation is a good one. There’s been two much overlapping between radio, TV, news or Prime Time when you’d have four different reporters working on the same story, that’s crazy,’ they said.

‘The next thing I hope she tackles is the inflated salaries of the likes of Tubridy.’

‘Now I hope she tackles Tubridy’s huge salary’