Subscriber OnlyMediaAnalysis

RTÉ at Oireachtas committee: Less high drama, more a grim crisis. Expect ratings to slump

Ratings will inevitably drop as high drama of the summer committee hearings about Ryan Tubridy’s pay yields to grim crisis meetings about the broadcaster’s funding difficulties

Kevin Bakhurst Director General of RTÉ, and Adrian Lynch, Director Audience Channels, arriving to Leinster House. Photograph: Alan Betson
Kevin Bakhurst Director General of RTÉ, and Adrian Lynch, Director Audience Channels, arriving to Leinster House. Photograph: Alan Betson
Hugh Linehan's picture
Hugh Linehan
Wed Sept 13 2023 - 20:31

This was a different sort of Oireachtas committee hearing from the ones which had transfixed the nation during June and July.

That sequence – let’s call it Season One – had culminated with a dramatic first appearance from newly appointed RTÉ director general Kevin Bakhurst, who succeeded in giving the impression that an actual grown-up had finally entered the room. It felt like the dramatic twist any season finale needs

Now, almost two months on, with the leading man from Season One gone (contractual difficulties), Bakhurst was back, this time with several new faces on his “interim leadership team” and accompanied by the entire RTÉ board. Unfortunately, nobody seemed too interested in talking to any of them.

It took an hour and a half before Senator Shane Cassells finally directed a question to RTÉ's deputy chair Ian Kehoe. And it wasn’t until Fine Gael’s Kerry TD Brendan Griffin sank his teeth into a couple of board members – without yielding much useful information – that real battle was joined.

READ MORE

Instead the focus for the first 90 minutes remained on the director general and on chair Siún Ní Raghallaigh. Somehow, though, the dramatic tension which animated earlier proceedings was notable only by its absence.

[ Five new things we learned about RTÉ from the Oireachtas committee meeting ]

[ RTÉ paid €650,000 in car allowances last year with no proof of licence required ]

The documents released by RTÉ on Tuesday evening did yield a few micro-moments. Fine Gael senator Michael Carrigy asked about €240,000 for “pictures on a soap”. Sinn Féin’s Imelda Munster – a breakout star in Season One – claimed the committee had been “blatantly misled” over the rationale for RTÉ's subscription to London club Soho House, which has never been used for business meetings, despite that being the supposed rationale for taking out the subscription in the first place.

The new director general found it “shocking” that there had been a subscription to Soho House at all. He was “surprised” RTÉ was apparently paying €80,000 a year for someone to take pictures on the set of Fair City. And he “does not understand” why a 10 per cent pay cut for senior executives was reversed. That bump-bump-bump in the background was the sound of multiple buses being driven over multiple bodies.

More consequential in the long run may be the debate over the potential sale of the campus at Montrose, which some committee members believed could raise up to €500 million. A valuation is apparently in progress, although Bakhurst said that figure could be overstated, given the presence of several listed buildings on the site. Interestingly, he also acknowledged that RTÉ has already looked at alternative locations

With his strategic review currently ongoing, Bakhurst told the committee he envisaged a smaller RTÉ with voluntary redundancies and a reduction in outside broadcasts. This, he agreed, could mean less sports coverage, but also, he added drily, “it could be party conferences”. Nobody laughed.

[ Laura Slattery: Why did RTÉ miss 17 of its audience performance targets last year? ]

[ Ad space for sale in Christmas RTÉ Guide amid ‘challenging’ conditions ]

So where does this leave RTÉ? The broadcaster can come away from this session satisfied its message that serious reform is under way was delivered and, for the most part, grudgingly acknowledged. Where it got no traction was in making the case that a direct connection exists between political procrastination over the funding model for public service broadcasting and the unacceptable behaviour which has been revealed.

All of these reforms will be undermined if those funding issues are not addressed, Bakhurst told the committee. There were echoes of Monty Python’s Dead Parrot sketch in Ní Raghallaigh’s description of the TV licence fee. It was not only “obsolete”, she said; it was “redundant”. Furthermore it was “antiquated”. All of this was met with a stony silence from the committee.

After 24 hours of hearings, the oxygen seemed to have leaked out of these proceedings. What we were left with was a picture of a crippled organisation struggling to repair enormous reputational damage while still mired in a financial swamp. Not so much a high drama as a grim crisis. Expect ratings to slump.