[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.