The media, political and public obsession with the way RTÉ has conducted its business over the last number of years shows no sign of abating and there are certainly questions to be answered.
One important element which is aired occasionally but then drowned out by stories of car loans flip-flops and barter accounts is the importance of public service broadcasting.
This is vitally important in terms of news, where credibility, authority and independence are the three most important factors.
Our business is sport where the public service elements are different and might perhaps be summed up as visibility, diversity and access.
The general public discourse around sport on TV has been dominated this year by the story of GAAGo and the right of the GAA to monetise its games, not for profit but for reinvestment in those games.
The pitchforks have been dusted down and the metaphorical town hall marched upon with the demand for everything free to everybody. We have written elsewhere about why the GAA and RTÉ as a partner are right to stand their ground and continue to develop their service as a best in class offering.
They also provide the technology behind URC.TV which won a prestigious UK Sporty Industry award earlier this year and which is seen as a vital way of making the tournament more accessible to its core audience.
Likewise the SSE Airtricity League of Ireland is on the rise in terms of public interest but with at least 95 per cent of its fixtures streamed rather than broadcast to the big box in the corner.
Club Rugby including dominant periods for Leinster and Munster were hidden behind a paywall for 20 years without a whimper from the general public and has survived.
A more mature approach between RTÉ and Virgin Media to share rights and work together on big events like the Six Nations has seen free-to-air coverage for every men’s women’s and U20 game in that tournament.
We really do not know how lucky we are.
This year we will see every minute of every game at the FIFA Women’s World Cup, just as in December we saw every minute of every game at the men’s tournament in Qatar.
We witnessed every minute of every game of Ireland’s Double Grand Slam in the Six Nations just as we will see every minute of every game at the Rugby World Cup.
All for the price of a TV licence, unless of course you are over 70 in which case you genuinely get it for free.
The cost of that licence is €160 a year, or 44c a day, and we also have to watch a few ads if we are watching live.
That is less than the price of a single ticket to watch Ireland play Italy and England at the Aviva Stadium this August.
But the value or otherwise of that figure is less important than the service it delivers.
Travel to France or Spain, Germany or Italy, Portugal or the United States and see just how much of a major tournament you will see on public free to air television.
I’ll save you the cost of travel. You will see the home nation’s games, and if you are in Portugal you will see Brazil but that’s pretty much it. You won’t find the promotional and production skills that we take for granted at RTÉ and Virgin Media. You won’t get analysis or discussion.
We are in a place that anyone across Europe, with the exception of Britain which led the way in public service broadcasting, perhaps until more recent years, would see as a sports fans nirvana.
They honestly would not believe the amount of coverage that they could watch in a hotel or Airbnb with no additional cost whatsoever.
The debate about RTÉ is focused, without the occasional flip-flop sidebar, on governance and financial management.
If it goes deeper into the model itself, then we might gird our loins for what comes next.
Outside of a public service remit, can we justify showing the Women’s international friendly against France, the Camogie Quarter Final between Antrim and Tipperary, the European Rowing Championships or the Heineken Cup Final?
Can we continue to exist in a world where eleven hours of sport will be shown on RTÉ 2 during the afternoons and early evenings of Saturday and Sunday this weekend, backed up by another ten hours on Virgin Media?
The bath water that is being let out on this whole debate is huge in volume. We need to ensure that sport is not the baby that gets carried out with it.
