Top RTÉ presenters must accept 'boom years over'

RTÉ’s TOP presenters cannot expect the same pay levels they currently enjoy when their contracts come up for renewal, the station’s managing director of radio has said.

Claire Duignan said presenters could not be blamed for looking for the best deal in the boom years especially when alternative offers were on the table, but times had changed.

“We will not be negotiating the kind of fees that were negotiated a number of years ago. That is not the kind of environment we are living in,” she said.

Ms Duignan said presenters had to be sensitive about other people’s circumstances.

“I do have issues with people who would not have a sense that the world has changed. They need to get in step with the drive down to more modest remuneration.”

The managing director, who took over in March last year, would not comment on an interview in this newspaper recently in which Marian Finucane defended her salary of more than €500,000 for a four-hour broadcasting week, nor Finucane’s absence from the airwaves since the end of June.

Ms Duignan explained that many presenters were contractors who had a number of “non-service” days written into their contracts. “Different people have different priorities in their lives between work and the other things that they do,” she said.

“All I can say is that presenters negotiate their contracts in a particular period of time, they negotiate the financial terms and the non-service days.”

Ms Duignan said this week’s relaunch of 2fm, which has a completely new morning schedule, had been well received by listeners and advertisers and she was confident the station could be turned around within 18 months.

The station has embarked on a revamp which will see it orientated towards an older audience aged between 20 and 44.

“I think there will be movement in listenership. I’m largely looking to take audience from Today FM from Ray D’Arcy, from Newstalk and the regional stations.”

The station made profits of more than €7.5 million in 2007 and 2008, but made a €1.67 million loss last year. Ms Duignan said it was essential the station got back to profitability because it receives no licence fee subvention and the money it makes helps to fund all RTÉ’s other radio stations which do not make money.

She described Hector Ó hEochagáin’s appointment as the new morning presenter as a “gamble” worth taking given the success of the weekend show he co-hosted with Tommy Tiernan on 2fm.

“I think Hector is a born radio man who understands an audience very well.”

She said Colm Hayes and Lucy Kennedy had managed to retain all but 10,000 of the audience that the Gerry Ryan Show had at the time of his death when they filled that slot during the summer.

“If you read the papers you’d think they were bleeding hundreds of thousands of listeners, but they weren’t.”

Axing the Colm and Jim-Jim Breakfast Showwas just business, she said as was the decision to drop weekend 2fm presenter Nikki Hayes. "It was losing listeners ... If it had been growing its audience, that show would still be on air.

“There has been a culture change that has gone right through RTÉ Radio. The culture change is that you have to make hard decisions. I don’t believe I am serving either the listeners or the staff in RTÉ if I baulk from making hard decisions even if the outcome of those decisions is painful for some of the people involved.”

She said RTÉ Radio One was outperforming the market. The minimal changes in the schedule with John Murray, former presenter of The Business show, replacing Ryan Tubridy in the 9am to 10am slot, reflected that.

“I chose him partially because it was unexpected. I don’t like doing the predictable. I think John is a really intelligent, warm and perceptive broadcaster,” she said.