The RTE News Thread

Today's Six-One news seemed to have technical issues in Studio 3 this evening. It went well despite the issues present for the whole bulletin. There was no high up camera pans from the ceiling. The sports news was done with Eamon Horan reading it from the main desk instead of being done from the big screen behind him.

Studio 3 has to be one of the smallest news studios used by any state broadcaster. It is just 728 SqFt in total. It is no wonder there are always technical issues.

Size and technical issues have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Technical issues can affect studios large and small, and there's no relationship between the size of the studios and the number of technical issues, inverse or not.

Nuacht TG4 has launched a new studio set look this evening. The studio looks good, it’s very much like a cross of ITV’s current set with the old TC7’s BBC News Set.

You are right about that. Nuacht TG also has new music and graphics. The graphics are simple, and the music is very intriguing.

Here is a screenshot of the new look: https://twitter.com/cghuairim/status/952974743380119553

The background graphics on the studio screen are somewhat reminiscent of Westcountry Live, the studio design reminds me more of an old ABC World News Tonight set, and there's a lot of blue in the graphics overall.

So having an opinion is not right anymore on this forum? I just have the feeling RTE needs to improve their news presentation, and one way would be to move out of the broom cupboard that was built in 1961 for the old style short bulletins, and move into a more spacious studio to bring better news presentation. They have the room. Studio 2 would be a perfect fit for RTE News. Even TV3 upgraded their 1998 Studio One for their news presentation. RTE needs to do the same.

Having an opinion is one thing, but trying to state something that ludicrous and provably wrong, as factual, is way beyond merely having an opinion.

You're not wrong for thinking they should move RTE News out of Studio 3. You're not right either. But that's an opinion, and it's not necessarily right or wrong.

But stating that because a studio is small means there will always be technical issues, is just plain ludicrous. It's not an opinion, it's a complete mis-statement. As I said before, there is no correlation between the size of a studio and how many technical issues it has, inverse or not. That's actual fact. What you stated was factually wrong, which means it's not an opinion.

Read a dictionary, and actually learn what these words really mean.

Thanks for the lesson. In my view, RTE will not move out of Studio 3. Money at RTE now is so tight it seems they will stick to what they know is cheap. RTE never learn. It would only take a slight increase in their news budget to make RTE News that little bit better. They rather spend it on US and UK imports which they then shove on air at 1.00am, just so that TV3 could not get them, or pay morons like Ryan Tubridy 500,000 euros a year for five hours a week on radio and a two hour a week TV talk show. Pathetic.

I could be reading too much into that - but I guess you aren't Ryan's agent?

Or to put it another way - you say he is paid 500,000e but how much of that is directly out of the licence fee/broadcasting tax and how much is suplimented by advertising?

In reading some of the blank space between the lines, I'd say you'd like some of his 'pathetic' high wages to go into the news department. Question is, would the increase in budget gain extra viewers to RTE 6.01 or the 9pm news?

If the answer is "well, actually I doubt it", then best leave Ryan alone to do what his is good at (my opinion, I find his 9am Radio One show very listenable - far better than the whingers and moaners of Your Call on Radio Five Live) being a very competent broadcaster. If he brings the audience in, then he should be renumberated well for it.
If he doesn't, boot him off to Newstalk.

First off, Ryan Turbidy works a lot more than 7 hours for that 500K.

Second, the RTE News budget is probably one of the larger ones in RTE, and really, I would suggest any increases, if needed, should be on the newsgathering side, in creating more international bureau, rather than on the presentation side. Currently, they only have bureau in London, Brussels and Washington. They had a bureau in Beijing during the 2008 summer olympics but not since, and maybe an Asian bureau would be a good thing. Maybe Tokyo, maybe Singapore, maybe Hong Kong, just throwing a few ideas out there.

Third, RTE is a rare broadcaster, where presenters and newsreaders work on both radio and TV routinely. BBC used to this a bit, but RTE does this with regularity. They need to. Unlike the BBC, they couldn't do what they do on licence fee revenue alone.

If you look at the RTE Annual Report for 2016, you'll see they were running at a defecit of almost €20million up from a defecit in 2015 of almost €3million. That's not sustainable. And that was despite an increase in revenue from commercials and licence fee of about €3million.

As much as RTE News might benefit from a budget increase, the likelihood of that happening is somewhere between slim and none.