[David]

You are living in a dream world if you think RTE will be scrapped for good - it has too much heritage to be thrown into the trash can, just like the BBC, many right wingers want it to be closed down too. Not going to happen.

RTE, whether you like it or loathe it, is the national broadcaster of Ireland - in radio it still attracts a large and loyal listeners - yes, the Irish moan about the quality of programming, but if it were to all go off air, there would be massive uproar.

RTE and even the old Radio Eireann has always been a hybrid of funding, as Ireland is too small of a country to have a national broadcaster funded only by public money - so they have some commercials.

I would suggest that RTE television channels should be funded differently - with one channel only funded from commercial means.

RTE 1 - purely funded by the licence fee, and has all the public service obligations of a national broadcaster - news, current affairs, documentaries, big dramas, national occasions, culture programmes, political coverage etc and will carry no adverts or sponsorship

RTE 2 - the commercial channel, aimed at a catch all audience, providing the big entertainment shows, chat shows, sport, quiz shows, movies and all the content aimed at getting the best commercial return - the channel which has all the adverts and sponsorship. The Late Late Show for example would air on here

RTE News Channel - continues as is, the 24 hour news channel of RTE, with increased funding from the licence fee to boost the channel

RTE Jr and TRTE - continues as the kids TV channels of RTE, funded by the licence fee

On radio, I would make RTE Radio 1 commercial free, and like the BBC have no adverts and all funded from the licence fee, with RTE 2FM and Lyric FM the commercially funded stations. 

RTE Radio Na Gael should be commercial free (I have no idea if it is now sorry)

In this way, RTE can both be a national broadcaster, publicly funded, but also be commercial, but those are clearly defined.  RTE big earners who want the big salaries, must work for RTE 2, where the commercial money is.

Just an idea - I wait for the back lash and arguments that all that I said above is impossible.

I like this idea (Irish TV licence payer here!)

Looking at the schedules today though, even turning RTÉ1 into something PSB only would be a struggle, and require increasing programming budgets due to the sheer amount of repeats and imports propping up the main channel. I’d argue against classifying the Late Late as entertainment though (so I’d keep that on RTÉ1). 

They could prop this up with more simulcasts across RTÉ Radio 1 and RTÉ News Now for the morning, a live afternoon lifestyle show in the afternoon maybe and pulling from the archives more in the evenings. 

RTÉ Radio stands out as areas where you could make savings too. Does RTÉ need 9 radio stations? No. 

Shifting commercial output to just RTÉ2 also risks alienating demographics. If that happened, I wouldn’t be shocked to see an RTÉ2 skewing younger and more entertainment heavy and creating an RTÉ3 skewing older and more international drama heavy.

[JamieMurph25]

Looking at the schedules today though, even turning RTÉ1 into something PSB only would be a struggle, and require increasing programming budgets due to the sheer amount of repeats and imports propping up the main channel. I’d argue against classifying the Late Late as entertainment though (so I’d keep that on RTÉ1). 
[...]
Shifting commercial output to just RTÉ2 also risks alienating demographics. If that happened, I wouldn’t be shocked to see an RTÉ2 skewing younger and more entertainment heavy and creating an RTÉ3 skewing older and more international drama heavy.

I mean this would be like KBS in South Korea, with KBS1 commercial free (since 1994 following a revision of the licence fee over there) with mainly news and fewer entertainment shows, while KBS2 in mainly entertainment and sports shows and few news programming and it runs commercials

Also the idea of creating RTE3 for older viewers reminds me of when the Czech public broadcaster launched CT3, it was a temporary station for older viewers and it was on the air during the pandemic, closing in the first minutes of 2023. But personally, my best bet for RTE3 would be a cultural station.

[Rdd]

Amid the ongoing controversy (it’s not been off the front pages / news site headlines in Ireland in the past week) a few nuggets today about Patrick Kielty’s incarnation of the Late Late - it’s a thirty episode order, which is a substantially shorter season than the traditional 40 weeks or so, and the contract is for three years.

[NI92]

Amid the ongoing controversy (it’s not been off the front pages / news site headlines in Ireland in the past week) a few nuggets today about Patrick Kielty’s incarnation of the Late Late - it’s a thirty episode order, which is a substantially shorter season than the traditional 40 weeks or so, and the contract is for three years.

Just to complete what you said
* 30 shows and would be paid on a pro-rota basis if additional shows required
* €250,000 salary
* €20,000 to cover pre-production & rehearsals to September
* Kielty will also pay his own travel and accommodation even though RTE offered to cover this

[chinamug]

Amid the ongoing controversy (it’s not been off the front pages / news site headlines in Ireland in the past week) a few nuggets today about Patrick Kielty’s incarnation of the Late Late - it’s a thirty episode order, which is a substantially shorter season than the traditional 40 weeks or so, and the contract is for three years.

Back in Gay's time (up to the 90's) 30 or so episodes would have been the normal run for the Late Late.  If you exclude Christmas/New Year and Good Friday 30 weeks would cover 7 or so months of the year.

[JMT1985]

I feel Patrick will host from September until Christmas, but will then take a longer break over Christmas and Easter in his incarnation of the show.

I had a feeling €250,000 would be his salary, as it seems a reasonable starting point for him to work for RTE.

The only thing I would like to know is how Patrick is planning to continue with his BBC Radio 5 Live show which airs on a Saturday morning from 9am to 11am - a bit of an ask of Patrick, if he plans to continue with the live Late Late Shows on a Friday night.

[Jon]

I don’t think Kielty will be too worried about having to work twice in 14 hours and then having the rest of the week off. I would assume his compensation from the BBC wouldn’t be too far off what he’s getting from RTE.

As for the show they could remove the Eurovision selection from the programme and make that a one off special instead replacing that weeks episode of the Late Late. The Toy Show also seems to be a strong enough brand to spin out into its own thing. Those things would save 2 weeks.

[JMT1985]

If Patrick does decide to produce The Late Late Show live on a Friday night. The show usually ends around 11.30pm ish right? So to get back to the UK in time to host his Radio 5 Live show on Saturday at 9.00am, will be quite a rush.

Solution could be to head up to Belfast, and produce his 5 Live show from BBC Broadcasting House in Belfast or the BBC could have an arrangement for Patrick to use one of their radio studios in the RTE Radio Centre at Montrose.

I doubt Patrick will want to fly through the late night hours back to London or Salford to then host the radio show at 9.00am.

[Jon]

Those options have already been mentioned by myself, yourself and others earlier in the thread.

[JMT1985]

Getting back to the RTE scandal which seems to be never ending. I have found the recent financial statement that RTE released about their income, it seems they release them two years in arrears.

Their income for 2021 was €148.3 million from their commercial side and €196.1 million from the licence fee, so €344.4 million in total.

When you look at that, it looks both huge and small. Huge, that RTE a small Irish broadcaster pulled in over €344 million in revenue, but peanuts compared to the £5 billion pulled in by the BBC.

How hard could it be to pay the top earners (talent, a word used in the loosest terms with regards to RTE presenters) to pay their salaries from the commercially generated income, and thus avoiding all this self inflicted hell they are going through now?

€148.3 million from the commercially generated income could easily cover all of the Top 10 highest paid presenters at RTE.