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50 October/November 2023 October/November 2023 51
P
resident Eamon de Valera, the first
voice to be heard on the new Telefis
Éireann service in 1961 said in the
plummy tones he bestowed on
such occasions: “I must admit that
sometimes when I think of television and radio
and their immense power I feel somewhat
afraid…never before was there in the hands of
men an instrument so powerful to influence the
thoughts and actions of the multitude”.
So governments nobbled RTÉ’s
independence and flair
The first Director General of RTÉ television, Ed
Roth, declared there were twin incompatible
requirements, when he resigned before the end
of his first year, 1961: “The dilemma of Irish
television is that it combines two objectives:
one to establish and maintain a service which
will further national culture and aims and have
regard to the prestige of the nation and,
secondly, that the service must be a paying
enterprise”.
Gunnar Rugheimer, a Swede, joined Telefís
Éireann in 1963 and was a crucial figure in
setting up a robustly independent current
aairs division. He berated the importation of
junk programmes and the overdependence on
advertising. He was replaced in 1966 in part
prompting Eamonn Andrews’ resignation as
chairman of the RTÉ Authority.
Taoiseach, Sean Lemass, speaking in Dáil
Eireann in October 1966 in the context of a
phone call from then Minister for Agriculture,
Charles Haughey to RTÉ’s newsroom
complaining about its coverage of a row he was
having with the National Farmers Association
leader, Rickard Deasy, asserted that:
“Radió Telefis Éireann was set up by
legislation as an instrument of public policy
and as such is responsible to the government.
The government have overall responsibility for
its conduct and especially the obligation to
ensure that its programmes do not tend
against the public interest or conflict with
national policy as defined in legislation. To this
extent the government reject the view that
Radió Telefis Éireann should be, either
generally or in regard to its current aairs and
news programmes, completely independent of
Government supervision”.
Years later, Haughey’s Minister for
Communications, Ray Burke, became the
station’s nemesis, following up on his threat to
‘screw RTÉ’ by encouraging the establishment
of a commercial broadcasting service to take
Neither window nor mirror,
more he nionl vse
RTÉ is mediocre
By Suzie Mélange
advertising revenue from Ireland’s ‘public
service provider’.
RTÉ producer Bob Quinn wrote an open letter
from Clare Island in May 1969 to his colleagues
challenging the ‘Factory’ - as be described the
station.
Lelia Doolan, head of Light Entertainment,
accused management of “hypocrisy, lack of
candour, lack of trust and trivialising
prevarication” and then resigned.
Gay Byrne was the exception
Gay Byrne’s ‘Late Late Show’ had the pair on for
a full hour in which they argued about the
future of the station with controller of
programmes Michael Garvey and assistant
controller Jack White.
In 1969, Ken Gray, the Irish Times’ television
columnist commented that the strength of the
‘Late Late Show’ “is that so many people
complain about it. It seems to me that this
proves two things (1) that a great number of
people watch it and (2) that it provokes in them
some kind of reaction. So much of what goes
out on television goes unwatched, or is so
bland that it doesn’t really matter whether it is
watched or not, that a show which constantly
draws criticism is obviously fulfilling the basic
function of involving the audience”.
Gay Byrne took risks and enjoyed annoying
people. He nudged things in an instinctively
progressive direction and was helped by being
a broadcasting genius.
Radió Telefis Éireann was
set up by legislation as an
instrument of public policy
and as such is responsible
to the government
Tubs prepres to exit
Sviour from over the ses?
OPINION
50 October/November 2023 October/November 2023 51
Nobody since has had Byrne’s
talent
Broadcaster Anton Savage touched on some of
this recently in the Business Post when he said
perhaps tautologically that the latest
incarnation of the ‘Late Late Show’ had been
professional and its host likeable and calm but
that in fact the show needed to be “new,
surprising, meaningful, significant or
emotional”.
In 2012, RTÉ Director General Noel Curran’s
gave a major speech in DCU on the future of
public service media. He focused on the
financial squeeze on the organisation; the
incessant lobbying of private media
organisations which wished to marginalise
RTÉ’s remit (and who he felt saw its very
existence as anachronistic and an unacceptable
distortion of the free market); as well as the
technical challenges surrounding the
impending analogue switch-o and the cultural
shift towards non-linear on-demand
programming.
It was utterly unvisionary.
As Village noted at the time, questions of
financial eciency, technical and managerial
competence and regulatory box-ticking needed
to be balanced by broader ones, not least by
what has perhaps always been RTÉ’s greatest
challenge of all: how to serve a perpetually
traumatised nation that no longer knows who
they are or what to believe.
There is no sign of any tighter focus or vision
since then. The debate over Ryan Tubridy was
devoid of imagination, within and without RTÉ.
Writing in Village, Mark Cullinane, then a
doctoral student in UCC, claimed that, if the
case for public service media was to be
renewed, it surely must ask, amongst other
questions:
“Can or should ideas like ‘national identity’
and the ‘public interest’ be neatly defined?
If not, how should they be teased out?
In a world where the old certainties have
crumbled, and expert knowledge of
various kinds has repeatedly failed us, do
some professions and groups still have a
privileged position to define our problems
and propose solutions?
Are journalistic imperatives like
‘objectivity’ and ‘impartiality’ possible or
desirable in a complex world where just
about every ‘truth’ is contestable?
Is RTÉ’s increasing reliance on
commercial revenue compromising its
relationship to its public, tying its
continued financial viability to demand for
mass-produced consumer goods and thus
aligning it to the economic status quo?
It is tempting for public broadcasters to
equate the ‘public interest’ simply with
what ‘interests the public’. Yet, armed with
even a moderately critical attitude towards
this view, we might begin to see various
examples of programming in a new light”.
Cullinane wondered, “for example, is the
celebration of cut-throat entrepreneurialism of
imported formats like Dragon’s Den merely a
bit of fun, ‘giving the public what they want’?
Or does it, and programmes epitomised by
2007’s ‘Ireland’s Top Earners’ which heroised
the ‘”exceptional commercial acumen” of Seán
Quinn and others like Denis O’Brien and Liam
Carroll, in fact openly valourise inequality,
equate wealth accumulation with virtue and
encourage us to see others in purely
instrumental terms?”.
John Bowman’s smug history of RTÉ, ‘Window
and Mirror: RTÉ Television 1961-2011’,
described by Colum Kenny as a “too cosy
account of the station for which he has long
worked” was quite wrong. RTÉ is a Waterford
Glass Vase: expensive, unmodern and
uninspiring.
RTÉ remains unchallenging
RTÉ has improved not a jot. It remains a bastion
of junk, bad comedy, jaded presenters, boring
news programmes: unchallenging and until
now essentially unchallenged.
It is an ideas-free oasis and as a rule avoids
probing or subversive reporting or analysis. It
shies away from serious allegations of
corruption against the government but the
frigidity is most clearly and disappointingly
evidenced by the self-consciously vapid
daytime gabfest of Radio 1. It ignores poverty
and inequality, working-class voices and even
unions. It has been horribly slow to recognise
the reality of climate change, typically covering
the environment in contrived and inflammatory
rows. In general it too often recycles its own
talentlessness on its jaded chat and politics
shows. It settles defamation actions too easily.
If the goal is to be the Nation on the Airwaves,
it always appears like a clique.
Financial and administrative
backlash
And now there’s the backlash which first
cascaded over the hapless and banal Ryan
Tubridy. But which is entirely restricted to
analysis of administrative profligacy and a
resulting orgy of pretend cuts. It is a silly time-
serving distraction from the quality problem.
Nevertheless inevitably RTÉ sees its problem
as funding. It won’t get it until there is more
public trust. It humiliatingly sold land at its
Donnybrook base in 2017 for €105m to pay for
a voluntary redundancy scheme and upgrade
facilities at the station.
But for example it has emerged RTÉsta
were paid more than €4m in allowances last
year, including nearly €200,000 on acting up
allowances, paid to 31 employees taking on the
responsibilities of a higher graded post for a
limited period of time. There were more than
1,000 allowances paid, costing just under
€4.1million. A 2017 note of a meeting of the
remuneration and management subcommittee
of the RTÉ board reveals the sense of
entitlement. Former director general Dee
Forbes, former chairwoman Moya Doherty and
others discussed how car allowances between
Gay Byrne took risks
and enjoyed annoying
people. He nudged
things progressively and
was helped by being a
broadcasting genius but
nobody else has his talent
recycling
52 October/November 2023 October/November 2023 PB
€16,700 and €24,500 were attached to fi ve
new contracts for top executives, with the
committee tellingly noting the “unfortunate
e ect” of a cap on the director general’s salary
on other pay “which left very little space for
manoeuvre at senior level”. Last year 61 people
received a car allowance, costing €656,651. In
July, Bakhurstadmitted car allowances paid
out byRTÉ, unvouched,are e ectively a way of
topping up senior employees’ pay. Benefi ciaries
do not even need to have a driver’s licence.
Former commercial director Geraldine O’Leary
lied to the PAC in June that RTÉ’s membership
of Soho House, a swanky London club was in
substitute for the closure of RTÉ’s London o ce
and intended to economically address the need
for somewhere respectable to host meetings.
Documents show that accommodation was
booked by RTÉ on just two occasions since
2019, both times by O’Leary and that “no
meetings took place in Soho House”.
RTÉ said it had reduced its total fees paid to
its highest paid presenters by more than 15%
in 2020 and 2021. In 2021 ten of them led by
Ryan Tubridy and Joe Duffy got between
€189,000 and €440,000. Some 13 of RTÉ’s top
20 earners are managers or executives –
earning between €275,000 and €201,661.
At the end of 2022, the lowest-paid workers
in RTÉ, some of whom work restricted hours,
started on salaries of between €24,000 and
€26,000, rising over time to between €32,000
and €41,000.
RTÉ has for a long time improperly classifi ed
its workers as self-employed, generating a
penal liability for PRSI contributions. In this
context, documents released by RTÉ in
September reveal that RTÉ has “to a large
extent” accepted the decision of Department
of Social Protection deciding o cers who seem
to reckon the mis categorisation affects
between 356 and 700 workers.
RTÉ was hoping to further reduce sta ng
levels by ‘200 or 300’, according to its 2019
annual report. Newstalk has registered a
complaint that the cuts are window-dressing
i.e. that there are none.
Kevin Bakhurst told the media committee
that since he took up his position he has moved
“decisively and quickly” to address “clear
procedural and oversight failings within the
organisation”. You’d think he’d not crossed the
threshold of the place before Summer 2023.
Bakhurst announced immediate recruitment
and discretionary spending freezes in
September.
He told the media committee that an outline
plan to overhaul the broadcaster will be ready
in October, with a “full strategic reform and
transformation plan by the end of the year”. It
has been reported as likely that it might
comprehend cutback in outside broadcasts,
commissioning content and investment in the
online player; a voluntary redundancy scheme;
and reduced coverage of sports and political
party conferences — still leaving a €28 million
defi cit for this year after the country recoiled
from paying the licence fee. On 4 October
Minister Catherine Martin told the meadia
committee will need to go further then all the
cuts o ered by Bakhurst if it is to obtain the
€55m in government funding it is seeking.
A full valuation of the Montrose site has been
commissioned, and may suggest up to €200m,
but secretly RTÉ sta value their Dublin 4
omphalos more than anything in their lives and
they will fi ght like piranhas to avoid moving
somewhere more appropriate — like Dublin’s
O’Connell St.
Meanwhile the media committee has been
told of abject plans to introduce registers of
interests and gifts for RTÉ sta .
It won’t be enough.
It needs a plan with a vision — for quality,
fairness and accountability.
In 2021, the BBC published an impartiality
plan which included:
•
“Thematic reviews” covering output in key
areas of public debate to ensure a breadth of
voices and viewpoints are refl ected, with the
fi rst to cover UK public spending and taxation
•
Increased responsibility for the BBC’s
Editorial Policy team, with reviews to content
by internal management to assess how much
it meets the corporation’s editorial standards
• Monitoring of such “impartiality metrics” as
editorial complaints, sta training, audience
perception and demographic data
•
Making the BBC’s editorial guidelines “more
prominent and easy to use” for all BBC sta
•
Putting two experts with non-BBC experience
on its Editorial Guidelines and Standards
Committee.
Commissioned by the BBC’s board, and
arising from the impartiality plan a report
published in January reviewed the BBC’s
coverage of government fi nancial policy. As
part of the process it reviewed 11,000 pieces
of BBC online, TV and radio content plus social
media posts from October 2021 to March 2022,
and spoke to more than 100 people inside and
outside the BBC.
We need something similar for RTE focusing on
quality and editorial controls. Ultimately RTÉ will
remain mediocre unless it implements a clear
new vision of quality, more assiduous current
a airs investigations and accountability.
It needs a plan
with a vision — for
quality, fairness and
accountability
But not worth €80k or even €60k
O’Lery: Lir nd gone; Coveney: inept over Toy Show nd gone
