RTÉ costs €600m a year to repeat itself

A newspaper quoted a survey that 52% of RTÉ programmes in the first eight months of this year were repeats.

Many of the non-repeats are Irish takes on British or American programmes. Examples: The Silent Millionaire and Who do you think you Are? There are many others.

Six One news is modelled on English news shows, which is fine if you are catering for 60m people, but we have only 4.5m people. Do we need two people to read the Six One news — I have counted, and can name, 22 special correspondents on the news, not including sports, weather, etc. It costs €600m a year to fund RTÉ and the money comes from a: the licence fee (taxpayer-funded); b: Government subvention (taxpayer-funded); c: advertising/sponsorship (taxpayer-funded indirectly). Can we afford this luxury? The taxpayer can’t, but the Government can (with taxpayers’ money), because it is a government propaganda machine at our expense. The director general of RTÉ, Noel Curran, thinks the licence fee is inadequate. Maybe, with all the spin from RTÉ, he is not aware of the recession and austerity. Maybe somebody on the Government side should have a word in his ear.