Gavan Reilly: Big changes on the cards at RTÉ will have consequences for us to deal with
Timing is everything. If Dee Forbes had simply admitted in 2020 that Ryan Tubridy had already cut his pay by 35% from its peak, and simply wouldn’t accept another 15% reduction, it would have been a storm in a teacup for a day or two. There’d have been two days of navel gazing about Tubridy’s ability to draw advertisers’ eyeballs to night time TV programmes, and the circus would have moved on.
Instead, because Forbes appears to have needed to massage the figures to support a white lie about how big a cut her top presenter was taking, we had the side deal with Renault; that in turn fell through which meant paying him through a barter account. In this week’s only example of a Mayo victory in Dublin, that led Fine Gael’s ex-footballer Alan Dillon to ask what else the same barter account was being used for. Now what should have been a controversy around a big-but-expendable star is now an existential crisis, covering ‘slush funds’ and corporate hospitality, which could see RTÉ spinning off its commercial operations and prospectively even being told to stop selling ad space forever more.
I’m writing this on Monday evening when the exact shape of the government’s review into the workings and culture of RTÉ have yet to be nailed down. But it seems fairly certain that included in it will be a deep dive into the workings of the barter account - which is, in basic terms, a sort of industry credits system where an advertising agency provides commercial or hospitality services to an advertiser in lieu of an upfront cash payment. It’s standard fare within the industry but, in an era where RTÉ was holding out the begging bowl asking for a greater share of public funds, will never be accepted by the public.
What will be the final outcome of that? If barter accounts and industry ‘contra’ are not acceptable to the public (or to politicians), the only solution will be to turn RTÉ into a slimmed down BBC with no ads and no commercial role at all.
That could have unexpected consequences for us all. Would it mean RTE is still able to operate 2FM, which has been loss-making for years? Would it still try to commission ambitious dramas like Kin, if it was not ultimately trying to sell it worldwide? Would it be able to keep bidding for sports rights, if it wasn’t able to carry sponsors’ ads? Remember: the BBC can do international soccer tournaments but can’t consider the Champions League or the Rugby World Cup because of the requirement to show advertising stings for the tournaments’ main sponsors. That would even have consequences for the GAA: part of its deal with sponsors is guaranteeing them promos during the ad breaks on TV. RTÉ leaving the commercial market would also mean the end of GAAGo.
Even keeping its commercial business, but as a separate entity to its public service duties, would be troublesome given the numbers who work on-air under both guises. None of the prospective solutions are easy, nor will the process of even designing them in the first place.
- Gavan Reilly is Political Correspondent for Virgin Media News and Political Columnist for the Meath Chronicle - Article first published on Tuesday 4th July