Is this RTÉ finally taking its head out of the sand?
TO the surprise of absolutely no-one Oliver Callan has been confirmed as the permanent host of Ryan Tubridy’s old slot at 9am on Radio 1, and raking in a lot less cash for it than his predecessor.
‘It wouldn’t put me in the top ten best-paid presenters at the minute but we are in a whole new world,’ said the satirist about his €150,000 salary and two-year contract. ‘I didn’t negotiate on the money. There was no negotiation on it because there is a pile of people who want to do the job.’
Callan’s matter-of fact candour says it all about the landscape at RTÉ; of the pool of rivals who might not command his fan base but are well able to step in for him at the drop at a hat. Of their willingness to work for a sum of money that generations of self-regarding RTÉ broadcasters would have considered far beneath them. And finally, of the pointlessness of RTÉ’s high-profile presenters continuing the tradition of staying tight-lipped about their earnings under cover of ‘commercial sensitivity’.
How times have changed. It may be hard to credit it but as recently as the Tubridy fiasco, RTÉ’s socalled Talent were still being paid as if they were national treasures, enormously gifted, blindingly charismatic and almost impossible to replace.
THEY had benefited from the RTÉ ecosystem which seems to have been inspired by the Hollywood studio system of old in how it nurtured and promoted its stars, sprinkled them with celebrity fairy dust so that they became household names while trousering salaries of sixfigure sums into the bargain.
But even when the business model that bankrolled the cosy arrangement had all but collapsed and the station was forced to go cap in hand to the Government for funding, the culture of entitlement and exceptionalism still prevailed.
The Tubridy saga showed that the gravy train was still chugging along in Montrose, thank you very much, even as audiences and advertisers departed in spades. But the upside to the embarrassing disclosures was that RTÉ was finally forced to take its head out of the sand and face some harsh realities.
The days of Directors General pleading poverty and arguing for new funding models and inflated licence fees in front of Oireachtas committees while paying its stars more than the Taoiseach for a few hours work a day came to a halt. The star presenters would be obliged to settle for significantly smaller salaries and more scrutiny of their extra-mural activities.
Súin Ní Raghallaigh, the chair of the RTÉ board, admitted that the station was ‘bidding against itself’ in the fees it paid its highest earners. Director General Kevin Bakhurst agreed that trust had been shattered between the public and RTÉ and vowed that no RTÉ stars will make more than €250,000 under the broadcaster’s cost-cutting plan.
‘I think we need to be realistic about what the public expects us to pay, they fund us,’ he said.
He even dangled the threat of outside competition, saying that ‘we have some fantastic presenters at RTÉ and there are some elsewhere that I wouldn’t mind bringing in.’
Callan’s salary shows that Bakhurst has remained true to his word and that high-earners like Joe Duffy, Miriam O’Callaghan and Claire Byrne are due for significant pay reductions when their contracts come up for renegotiation.
Indeed the satirist admitted so much on radio when he said he was the first ‘post-new-world RTÉ contract. So sorry to break the bad news (to the other stars),’ he said.
But while the news that Callan’s pay was a ‘cause for concern’ among RTÉ’s highest earners, it has been greeted with a certain amount of schadenfreude by the licence-fee payer.
Indeed, it is quite likely that cuts will also be expected from the tiers of well-paid managers at the national broadcaster, as it transforms into a more efficient, slimmed-down operation, comparable to other media organisations.
FOR all its shortcomings, RTÉ provides excellent news and current affairs coverage that is now, more than ever, vital to our democracy. The team of producers, journalists, presenters and editors who, week after week, churn out programmes must be properly paid.
But RTÉ is no longer the cradle of stardom it once was. Our stars are treading the boards at the West End or becoming box office draws in Hollywood, picking up Golden Globes, Oscar and Bafta nominations. They are not presenting chat shows on RTÉ radio and TV.
The days of the late and great Gay Byrne bringing glamour into our homes once a week are over. As Patrick Kielty’s comparatively modest pay showed, the RTÉ ‘stars’ who followed in Gay’s slipstream can no longer justify their inflated salaries.
Because the baton for electrifying our cultural life with starpower and entertainment has passed to Saoirse Ronan, Andrew Scott, Cillian Murphy and Paul Mescal – all the wonderful performers who learned their craft in this country and inspire the next generation of entertainers.
Not the heads at RTÉ.