If RTÉ buys in a larger and larger amounts of programmes form home and abroad and thus makes less and less, has its staffing levels cut to pieces, and its radio output is chasing figures not making decisions from a public service point of view, then why have RTE?
I strongly support RTE and the licence fee. But I will fail to support a failing RTE, an RTE that fails to meet my expectations as a public service broadcaster. RTE are getting out of transmission, they privatised their OB units (was this process an act of government?) they are breaking up on the network side, and they will not be leading the DTT experiment. They no longer see them self in competition with Sky, where Sky advertise on RTE for more subscribers and RTE allow Sky carry RTE encrypted and NOT CLEAR to Irish licence payers living in Ireland.
The radio schedule is being slashed for the autumn, and I have one other question, WHERE ARE THE AUDIENCE COUNCIL WHEN THIS IS ALL GOING ON?. There will need to be a fight to save RTE before this Government and that authority allow bskyb or newSINternational buy our state owned broadcaster or worse, (no there isn’t a worse).
I read that the Audience Council sets a standard for itself and RTE, one of many “High quality schedules available to all (i.e. free to air)“. So which bit or byte of the NDS encryption system that encrypts RTE signal into Ireland is FTA (free to air), No bits, its RTE failing its own tests, again.
Make this an Election Issue [plea #2] when FG FF PD LAB SF GP SP and anyone else seeking election call to you door in the next 11 months seeking your support, ask them about the Health Service etc. and add on this simple question, “will you are your party give a commitment to force RTE to transmit FTA on satellite into Ireland?”
Perhaps put along side health, it looks like a trivial request, but if 100’s of thousands of Irish people could join a ‘free sat’ RTE BBC ITV, then 100’s of thousands of massive subscriptions to sky could be redirected to the betterment of some regulated service in this state rather than into the unregulated shareholders on BskyB’s bank accounts.