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EVERY YEAR, RTÉ’s annual report prompts the same ritual.

Journalists and commentators turn straight to the list of the broadcaster’s highest-paid employees.

This year, the surprise wasn’t another star presenter. It was that senior management dominated the list. Some will see that as evidence of a top-heavy organisation. Others will argue experienced leadership is exactly what’s needed to rebuild RTÉ.

Both camps are missing the bigger story.

The annual salary-scandal is a distraction from real issues of how public service media is funded and what public service media even means now that YouTube, streaming platforms and social media have colonised how we get information.

And this isn’t just an issue in Ireland. The same debate is now unfolding in the UK. The BBC also just issued its annual report and comparing the two documents is quite useful.

The BBC annual report has striking similarities with RTÉ’s. Both institutions are struggling to compete with streaming services and social media platforms. Both have made recent high-profile mistakes which have undermined trust.

Both are seeing steady declines in licence fee sales. And both are struggling to create 21st-century public service media with 20th-century ideas, and 20th-century funding models.

In his intro to the annual review, the BBC’s new Director General Matt Brittin said:

“In an increasingly fragmented and contested world, trust in institutions and news organisations is under strain. The BBC is no exception – not helped by significant, high-profile editorial failings in the past year.

“It is vital that the BBC puts its hand up and apologises when it makes mistakes and is always fully accountable, transparent in its response and open to rigorous scrutiny.”

This sounds remarkably similar to the type of thing RTÉ DG, Kevin Bakhurst has said in front of Oireachtas committees and in media appearances.

Of course the Beeb has a bigger addressable market, which makes for a better-looking balance sheet. BBC’s revenue for 2025 – including licence fee and commercial operations – was around £5 billion. RTÉ’s was €383.4 million.

But the BBC’s financial strength comes from more than the size of the UK market. Over the past decade it has evolved into a hybrid public broadcaster and global media business.

Aside from the licence fee, the BBC generates substantial commercial revenue through BBC Studios, which produces programmes for third parties, licenses formats and intellectual property around the world, distributes content internationally and reinvests those profits back into public service broadcasting.

RTÉ, by contrast, remains far more reliant on a combination of public funding and the domestic advertising market, giving it fewer ways to absorb financial shocks. The BBC also benefits from the economics of scale. Building a streaming platform, modernising a newsroom, deploying AI tools or replacing legacy technology costs pretty much the same, regardless of whether an organisation serves five million people or seventy million.

Those fixed technology investments can be spread across far larger audiences, more programmes and multiple commercial businesses, reducing the cost per user and making continuous innovation more affordable.

The biggest commonality is that around two thirds of both organisations’ funding is linked to ownership or use of a TV – quite the anachronism in a digital age. If either the BBC or RTÉ were founded tomorrow, nobody would call them television companies.

Yet the political debate remains trapped in a bygone age. The audiences moved on years ago. The policymakers have yet to follow.

These organisations are not just broadcasters. They are attention businesses, with a host of cut-throat global competition. Every minute spent watching TikTok is a minute not spent watching Prime Time.

We need our public service broadcasters to do the stuff that Netflix, TikTok and Instagram can’t do. Reach the places the platforms can’t reach. We need to stop funding broadcasters and start funding what broadcasters alone will do: reliable news and investigative journalism; national sporting occasions; local drama and arts and Irish language programming; educational content and children’s programmes; national moments that bring people together rather than push them into algorithmic tribes for advertisers or bad actors to target.

These types of programmes are not products. They are public goods.

And the market has never been particularly good at producing public goods. But public service media exists because some things are valuable without being commercially attractive.

So perhaps governments should stop thinking in terms of broadcasters and start thinking in terms of public media outputs.

If investigative journalism is a national asset, fund investigative journalism. If Irish-language content matters, fund Irish-language content wherever audiences choose to watch it.

If children’s educational programming is important, support its production whether it appears on RTÉ Player, YouTube or anywhere else. Importantly, public service broadcasters should have the leeway to create cultural assets that can be sold.

They should also have a commercial imperative. But funding the public outcomes those institutions were created to deliver, may help those institutions rediscover their raison d’être and assist the broader ecosystem of independent broadcasters.

Easy to say, but what would this look like?

Maybe we could learn from Denmark.

Alongside funding for the Danish state broadcaster, the government there established contestable public service funds that support Danish-language documentaries, children’s programming, cultural content and public affairs from a range of producers and broadcasters.

Or we could look to Canada’s Local Journalism Initiative.

Instead of directing funding solely to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the programme funds local civic journalism in underserved communities, allowing private publishers, community broadcasters, online news organisations and non-profit media to compete for support. But predictable multi-annual funding is also a necessity.

So government should probably prioritise a more sustainable version of their commitment of €725 million to RTÉ over three years.

The debate about RTÉ usually begins with outrage around salaries and ends with a fudge around funding.

We need more focus on purpose.

If trusted journalism, Irish-language programming, children’s education and national culture still matter, then the government should fund those outcomes, whoever makes them and wherever audiences consume them. If we continue funding broadcasting rather than public value, we’ll preserve yesterday’s institutions while losing the things they were created to protect.

*Steve Dempsey is a media and technology expert and commentator. * 

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