RTÉ’s problems: TV funding unfit for purpose

RTÉ boss Dee Forbes is 15 months into the job, and Ireland waits on for news of how she plans to tackle the challenges facing the country’s mainstream broadcaster. 

There’s been a not altogether surprising suggestion that the €160 licence fee should be higher — Ms Forbes thinks it should be doubled — and vague, management-speak waffle about making choices, adapting to change, reorganising, hacking away at duplication, getting smaller and nimbler, and focusing on content, the last being corporate argot for programmes.

There will be job losses which, with the company’s land sale in Dublin, aims to help in the short term to plug holes in the balance sheet. Yet the problems thrown up by an industry architecture turned inside out by technology, and its impact on viewing options and advertisers, remain to be dealt with.