We are being played as RTÉ loses its shirt year after year
FOR a media organisation that’s been a basket-case financial failure since at least 2010, RTÉ shows no real signs at all of abandoning its flair for unwarranted largesse when it comes to the ‘talent’. This week we learned that the 10 highest-paid presenters at the station were now pocketing €3.2m annually between them – great work if you can get it.
Ryan Tubridy pulled in almost €5.6m in the 10 years to the end of 2019, Joe Duffy was paid €3.75m in the same period, while Miriam O’Callaghan had to make do with just over €3m.
RTÉ bosses, in a clear attempt to calm the horses, say the money paid to the stars of radio and television was reduced by 15% in 2020, the year our world fell apart. As Mrs Brown might say – that’s nice.
The almost unremitting annual losses at RTÉ come to a total of over €86m since 2010. In the 10 years up to and including 2019, the national broadcaster had only three years when profit was recorded.
Mr Tubridy, who earned a few cents under €500,000 in each of the three years to the end of 2019, wouldn’t get out of bed for the €200,000 overall profit (yippie!) made by RTÉ in 2014. The €700,000 profit recorded in 2013 would just about be enough to separate Tubs from his duvet.
That’s it. After that, RTÉ lost its shirt each year.
OH WAIT – there’s that outlier ‘net surplus’ of €42.1m reported in 2017, which is pretty impressive, you’ll have to admit. That’s until you dig down and discover that wasn’t an operating business profit at all, having resulted entirely from RTÉ’s massive disposal of a hugely attractive landbank at Donnybrook that was ripe for development.
This property play was worth an eye-watering €100m to RTÉ, which begs the question: in what condition would they have been otherwise?
The bigger question is why the government allowed a financially ruinous State-owned company to dispose of enormously valuable land that belonged to all of us and put the money into their own company accounts, that more resemble a colander?
Therein lies the secret to the organisation’s failure to wash its face financially over all these years – they have the government by the you-know-whats.
Politicians fall into panic at the thought of an RTÉ journalist at the door with a microphone and a question. This flows from the overwhelming prospect of being held to account by RTÉ broadcasters, some of whom have been favoured with wages that are multiples of their own (TDs get €98,000; the Taoiseach is paid €211,742; Miriam O’Callaghan got €320,000 in 2019).
Of course, politicians aren’t the only ones kowtowing to the RTÉ juggernaut. Across the media, journalists of all complexions are reluctant to challenge RTÉ’s air of superiority and entitlement that flows directly from the station’s ‘public service’ remit, as if that same mandate doesn’t apply to all journalism. However, when it comes to the gigantic wages paid to Tubs, Ray D’Arcy, Joe Duffy et al, we’re all entitled to our tuppence worth, having earned that privilege through our rather tasty €160 licence fee, which between all of us came to just over €190m in 2019. That’s money pushed under RTÉ’s door every year – otherwise, we go to jail, where we can watch the station for free.
In a world gone mad, these enormous payments to RTÉ elites demonstrate how tone deaf the station’s bosses are, and how much they are still captives to the ridiculous notion that the ‘talent’ could be lost and the station damaged, if rational compensation were imposed.
Over Christmas and each weekend the station allows us a glimpse of second and third-string presenters and journalists, many of whom, clearly, have the ‘talent’ as well. RTÉ needs to nurture an atmosphere of internal competition, a process that takes at least two or three years before the public becomes familiar with the personalities of the new offerings.
RTÉ has failed to learn anything from the departure of Pat Kenny – perhaps Ireland’s greatest, multiskilled broadcaster in 2013. As with Chicken Licken, they should have discovered that the sky hasn’t any plans to fall in on top of them.