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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
— October – November 2013
MEDIA neWsTalK
T
HE ‘Move the Dial’ campaign for
Newstalk, fronted by Pat Kenny in
the weeks before his on-air debut
on commercial radio, was some-
thing of a mixed blessing. The initial launch,
with a poker-faced Kenny solemnly informing
Youtube viewers that if they experienced dif-
ficulty retuning their radios, they could call a
special hotline, may have led to some social-
media mockery, but then again, social media
mocks everything, and the internet’s disdain
did get the campaign trending.
The poster campaign that followed, cost-
ing over € million according to some reports,
pushed the same message, with Kenny’s face
prominently displayed alongside the Move
the Dial message with a comprehensiveness
that Seán O’Rourke wistfully but accu-
rately described as giving Dublin the feel of
Pyongyang.
With RTÉ unable (or unwilling) to match
the independent station’s ad spend on the
new season, Newstalk executives can congrat-
ulate themselves on their coup, poaching one
of the national broadcaster’s marquee names,
but the campaign held at its
core a mixed message.
There’s an old rule in
politics that you never name
your opponent. In urging
audiences to ‘move the
dial’, Newstalk may not have
identified RTÉ explicitly,
but the underlying mes-
sage was clear: Newstalk
was the alternative, RTÉ
was the default listener’s
choice. RTÉ may not have
had € million to spend on
an advertising campaign
for Sean O’Rourke, but
Newstalk’s efforts (and reg-
ular articles in Independent
Newspapers boosting the contest between
the two) had much the same effect.
Whether Kenny or O’Rourke wins the
major battle of the airwaves won’t be clear
until at least until the end of
the year, when the next JNLR
research figures are published,
and realistically it will be at
least a year before clear pat-
terns emerge.
Meanwhile Newstalk’s
second major autumn
announcement, the return
on Ivan Yates, brings its own
problems. His highly-pub-
licised bankruptcy bought
him some measure of sympa-
thy, but also raised the hackles
(or should that be heckles?) of
many listeners, who saw in his story echoes of
how the political class protects its privileges.
Yates may not have been a TD for a decade,
but he had the misfortune to re-enter the pub-
lic spotlight just as the banks showed junior
minister John Perry the kind of leniency few
ordinary citizens can expect. His interview
with Pat Kenny (on Kenny’s first morning at
the Newstalk helm) brought with it a backlash
of comments about his political pensions.
It was not the only
time Yates misjudged the
public mood. His on-air
gaffe in discussing Majella
ODonnell’s public head-
shave on the Late Late Show
(“ghoulish and inappropri-
ate”) stands in contrast with
the €, pledged to
the Irish Cancer Society
in the week following her
appearance.
But then, Newstalk has
always had a women prob-
lem, and not just in the lack
of female voices among its
presenters. At one point,
the station’s listenership
was skewed % male, and though that is
improving, its listener profile remains as
blokeish as the daily line-up. And strangely,
for a station targeting a younger news
audience than RTÉ Radio One, the first team
feels like it’s growing older. Yates, at only two
years older than Sean Moncrieff, is actually
the youngest of the trio made up of himself,
Pat Kenny, and George Hook. Moncrieff how-
ever sounds as though he comes from another
generation.
Newstalk’s coup in attracting Kenny dis-
guises the other main personnel exchange
in recent times, when the ‘Off The Ball’ team
walked (or were pushed) at the end of pro-
tracted negotiations over how to grow the
innovative sports programme.
Reborn as the ‘Second Captains’, the crew
moved their format online, podcasting twice-
weekly from the Irish Times website, and
debuting on television on RTÉ. The irrever-
ence and fresh ideas of the ‘Second Captains’
had already reinvigorated sporting coverage
on Newstalk, uniquely harnessing an audi-
ence that wasn’t actually that interested in
ball games and contests, and it could do the
same on television. Giles and Dunphy are still
top dogs, but they look grey and tired com-
pared to the upstarts.
Meanwhile, another Newstalk alumna,
Claire Byrne, is one of the anchor presenters
of ‘Prime Time’, a gig Pat Kenny had to vacate
when he jumped ship. Newstalk seems unable
to grow and retain its own brands, instead
buying in already established – and ageing
- names.
Is Newstalk more than
Kenny and Yates?
The well-marketed commercial station fails to cultivate its own youthful talent.
By Gerard Cunningham
The eternal
President is
everywhere
Kenny’s face
prominently was
displayed alongside
the Move the Dial
message with a
comprehensiveness
that gave Dublin the
feel of Pyongyang
“
