€495k is crazy sum to hand over when you’re losing so much cash
IFOUND it hard to get excited about the inauguration of President Biden this week. A bit like Garth Brooks’ rendition of Amazing Grace, the TV coverage felt a little, well, flat. It was possibly partly due to the fact that, regardless of how you dress it up, almost 75million Americans still voted for the other guy.
It didn’t help that the new president’s speech went on a bit too long, punctuated by clapping and hollering from the small crowd of people in actual attendance. They must have been seriously shattered towards the end, all that enthusiasm and effort to make up for the unavoidably restricted numbers. Fair play to them, and fingers crossed that the new administration’s commitment to unity follows through.
It wasn’t until later in the same day that my spirits got a muchneeded boost while watching Nationwide on RTÉ One. This mid-evening show, which reports good news stories from around the country, regularly brings a sense of joy and comfort.
On Wednesday, it featured buildings and spaces included in the recent Open House architecture festival, which, like most events this year, had to go online. One of the projects was the skate park in Ballyfermot, Dublin, an impressive lunar-like facility that opened last summer.
Beautifully produced by Dyehouse Films, the report highlighted the local BMX club, which is now based there and run by Ballyfermot Youth Services. About half a dozen young teenagers explained in earnest detail what the new park means to them.
One freckle-faced youngster told how she use to spend most of her time in her bedroom playing on her PlayStation, but then she discovered the BMX club and is now out on her bike every day.
The club co-ordinators, barely out of their teens themselves, explained how it had taken many years to get the plans for the park to become a reality. But now they can barely believe they have this extraordinary facility on their doorstep and have to regularly pinch themselves to prove it’s not all a dream.
Young members are tasked with the daily clean-up, which helps with the sense of ownership of the park. ‘It doesn’t feel like it belongs to the council,’ one boy explained. ‘It feels like it’s ours.’
Unsentimental, yet incredibly moving, it was yet another snapshot of one of the large number of positive projects that are happening in Ireland right now.
A couple of hours later there was another brilliant programme, albeit with a much darker subject matter. The TG4 documentary series Finné this week told the disturbing story of Domhnall Ó Lubhlaí, for years a leading light in the Irish language movement.
Charismatic and revered, he founded Coláiste na bhFiann, kickstarting the Gaeltact summer schools where generations of Irish teenagers have spent their school holidays.
He was also a paedophile, and at one point was dubbed the ‘Irish Jimmy Savile’.
One of his victims, Liam Ó Maolaodha, was the main focus of this particular exploration. Just 15 when he was abused by Ó Lubhlaí in the early 1970s, his testimony was stunningly honest and raw. It was a powerful piece of television.
Which helped, in a strange way, take a little bit of the sting out of RTÉ’s big reveal from earlier in the day. The broadcaster finally released the figures for its top ten earners for the years 2017, 2018 and 2019. As always, they were truly breathtaking.
The idea that anyone in a company that has for years has been consistently reporting vast losses earns €495,000 per annum… well, surely even the least businessminded among us knows that makes no sense.
And I can tell you that if I was looking for some business advice, I certainly wouldn’t be going to Willie O’Reilly.
The former group commercial director of RTÉ was on Newstalk Breakfast the next morning, defending the salaries paid to the broadcaster’s top talent.
‘What these presenters bring to people’s lives has to be categorised as well,’ he said. ‘For instance, they’re box office, they’re very well respected, they’re trusted by the public, they’re very experienced in the role. And more importantly, it’s what the advertisers want.’
In fairness to Willie, he left RTÉ in 2017, so perhaps he hasn’t been keeping up on current broadcasting trends, especially in television. It’s all about streaming now, especially with the much-desired younger audiences, or if they do watch terrestrial TV, they’re recording a show so they can fastforward through the ads.
The thing is, RTÉ and the Irish production companies it commissions make some excellent television. So what’s most frustrating is that their really good output is probably made on a fraction of the cost that a show with a presenter commanding close to half a million euro, or a quarter of a million, or even just a ‘bog standard’ sixfigure sum, racks up.
All media, newspapers included, are in a state of flux. Advertising and the way we consume our entertainment and news has been changing for some time, and it’s still difficult to predict how the financial side of things is going to balance out.
But the fact is that a week before releasing its top salaries, RTÉ reported that it had lost €7.9million in 2019, which was down on the €13million it lost the year before.
Trying to persuade the TV licence fee-paying public that it’s somehow necessary to pay stars almost half a million euro is just patronising – especially under the current circumstances.
It doesn’t matter if it accounts for less than 1% of the total operating costs; it’s still a crazy amount of money to hand over to people hired by a company that’s haemorrhaging cash.
The broadcaster has insisted next year’s figures will be more palatable, that top earners have had their wages cut by 15%.
I’m not so sure; according to the calculator on my iPhone, that’s a drop of €74,250 on a €495,000 salary, leaving €420,750.
RTÉ has proved that it knows how to make brilliant public interest programming. It now needs to prove to a public that part-funds them that it knows good business.