Selling artworks is not the solution for banjaxed RTE

WHEN people start rooting around in cupboards in a mad search for the family silverware you can be quite certain they’re in complete despair and running out of all hope.

That’s the way things are at RTÉ right now.

Louis Le Brocquy’s masterpiece, Massing of the Armies – which RTÉ is now selling in a frantic bid to raise a bit of loose change when tens of millions is what’s required – stands as a metaphor for the massing of empty excuses at the national broadcaster.

They’re still not ‘getting it’ out there in that elite, South Dublin, obviously hermetically sealed, bubble in Donnybrook.

And the longer that goes on, the nearer we are to disaster, or a major bailout by the taxpayers.

It’s worthwhile reminding ourselves that RTÉ lost €13m last year, which, if that was all, wouldn’t be too bad. However, since 2010 they have managed to sink themselves into an €80million deficit.

That big, huge, gaping black hole – out of which there seems to be no return – is there despite a €99.5m injection arising from the disposal of their most valuable asset – land on their Donnybrook campus – for property development.

The RTÉ model is banjaxed financially as the great media disruption continues, with nobody quite knowing where consumer tastes will settle, if they ever do.

The TV licence chucks in about €190m to RTÉ each year and even a 10% hike wouldn’t come near what’s needed to sort this mess out.

And then they’re selling off art that’ll bring in about €500,000 and the Cork offices at a time when property prices are turning in the wrong direction.

God help us.