[chinamug]

Has viewership fallen as the licence income has fallen, or are people just not paying yet still watching.  I'm guessing the consequences of not paying aren't that significant.

Viewership seems to be down about 25% year on year across the board. Obviously Sporting events and The Toy Show still bring in huge numbers but the everyday stuff is way down. They were supposed to move sport to RTE 1 but that seems to have been forgotten as without Sport RTE 2's share of the audience would be tiny.

A lot of people that didn't pay the licence fee were chancing their arm (and generally getting away with it) but there would be a large section of Irish society that don't watch RTE at all, there's noting on it of interest to them. If you're not into sports you'd never need it. They keep up to date with Irish news from online sources, Newspapers and Radio. The new licence Dodgers would be different as it's a real annoyance factor at RTE that's stopping them paying.

I think a big problem for RTE is the 35% or so that use Freesat and Saorview. On many TV's there's a separate EPG for Saorview and Sat. They watch something on Satellite and then forget to turn back to the Saorview EPG. There's always a reason in those household to turn over to Freesat, because the picture on Virgin Media is so bad. Not as much of a reason to switch back.