An RTE special
Lessons to learn from a chaotic week...
This newsletter is intended to be a weekly affair, but frankly things in Ireland have taken a turn and I feel it’s worthwhile commenting on what is turning into a catastrophic sequence of events for Ireland’s State Broadcaster RTE.
Full disclosure, I worked as Programme Manager for RTE 2FM from 1999 – 2002, so I have an understanding of the organisation and indeed am familiar with a number of the names that have come up so far.
Whether you’re interested in Irish media or not, this whole saga has lessons that any media organisation could and should pick up on, the biggest question currently is how exactly RTE might extricate itself from a rapidly widening sinkhole.
To recap, Ireland’s most prominent Radio and TV presenter is a gentleman called Ryan Tubridy… He’s affable, intellectual and generally entertaining, he’s also paid over €400,000 a year by the dual funded state broadcaster, to do a one hour daily radio show and a three hour weekly TV show.
That may seem steep, but it turns out, he was also receiving undeclared payments which add up to over €300,000 over a period of 5 years.
That is the root of the current issue, which only came to light because the State Broadcaster is required to declare what it pays its top ten performers and it failed to mention the undisclosed payment.
The second part of the problem is that the State Broadcaster has spend the last number of years under Director General Dee Forbes complaining loudly and often about how desperately short of funding it is, selling off part of the grounds and battling to get the Government to improve the licence fee funding it receives.
A lot of that good work is undermined when it transpires that the richest few were being paid wildly beyond what any reasonable company in the private sector would pay.
Now we find ourselves in a position where the Director General, who was due to wrap up during the summer was first suspended and then resigned her position. She has been requested to appear before not one, but two Oireachtas committees, but says she is unable to because of ill health, caused by the current drama.
Most remarkably, RTE itself issued a 9 page statement on Tuesday afternoon that squarely pointed the finger for the whole issue at the now ex DG, maintaining that she alone negotiated and signed off the Tubridy deal and that the Board were not aware of the details.
The statement does note that she hasn’t seen the statement or responded, so it may need to be updated.
All in all, a chaotic sequence of events.
That’s not the end of it though, Tuesday lunchtime saw RTE staff protesting outside the presumably empty Executive Offices, and it’s seen the highest paid presenters on the station start their shows by listing off their salaries and insisting that they have no secret deals.
In the middle of a cost of living crisis, a homelessness crisis and rising interest rates, it’s not really appealing to hear various presenters describe how they “only” earn €280,000 or €351,000 and I think they may have dramatically misread the national mood in the rush to get off the naughty step.
So, with hearings in front of the legislature on Wednesday and Thursday, plus a detailed review of the organisation’s finance that is intended to stretch back to 2008, what happens next for RTE?
All I know is that it doesn’t look good.
What lessons are there in this debacle for other media organisations?
I think the oddest part of the scale of the RTE salaries is that compared to the UK, Irish presenting talent rarely have agents, most of the presenters on radio and even TV will negotiate their own contracts.
There are a couple of “superagents” who have racked up huge rosters of TV talent and RTE has been negotiating with these agents to secure the “top talent” that it values so greatly.
However, there’s a touch of the Wizard of Oz about the whole thing… If the same few agents represent most of your talent, and you’re the only Radio / TV operation in town, then who exactly are you negotiating against?
None of Ireland’s radio groups, Bauer Media, Wireless or Bay Broadcasting are really in the business of high profile talent theft, certainly not in the high 6 figure range. Ireland’s only other TV operation, Virgin Media, is not exactly the home of high paid stars either and they haven’t embarked on any significant talent poaching for as long as I can remember.
So, make sure you understand what the market value of your talent is, don’t negotiate against yourself and most important of all, if you’re a dual funded, public service driven broadcaster, do not do secret commercial side deals with your talent.
To close, I might share what is quite possibly an apocryphal RTE story, told to me I think by Senior 2FM Producer and legend Ian Wilson…
The Gerry Ryan Show was on air at 2FM, Gerry was a truly inspirational talk show host and could push the envelope to an extraordinary degree on his show…
Upstairs in the production office a phone kept ringing, until eventually someone in the office answered it.
“This is the Director General, I insist that show is taken off the air right now” is the first thing they hear… to which the unknown RTE person responds “Do you know who you’re speaking to?”
The DG replies, “No” and the RTE staffer says “Go F*ck yourself then” and hangs up
Maybe that’s the spirit that’s needed in the next few weeks…