Una Mullally: Kevin Bakhurst’s ‘digital-first’ promise is a cliché

When Fran Drescher, the American actor and SAG-AFTRA union president, delivered a now-viral speech as actors joined writers on strike in the US, the sentiment sounded pretty familiar. “How they plead poverty, that they’re losing money left and right when giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs. It is disgusting. Shame on them!… We demand respect! You cannot exist without us!”

Cut to RTÉ journalist and chairwoman of the NUJ’s Dublin Broadcasting Branch, Emma O’Kelly. “Members feel completely betrayed by RTÉ, many feel that they have lost any trust that they might have had in RTÉ's top brass,” she said as the RTÉ scandal was unfolding. “I’m talking about the journalists, low-paid researchers who work on programmes like The Late Late Show and make people like Ryan Tubridy look good because they are slogging away behind the scenes on low pay.”

In Hollywood and Montrose, lower-paid, highly skilled people have been let down by executives. Studio and streamer heads, like RTÉ bosses, make a lot of money and have caused a lot of damage to morale. This has created mass dysfunction at a creative level in both worlds. The feeling of betrayal is universal, the inequality is stark, and the executives’ version of the future looks decidedly grim.

At MediaCon in 2016, RTÉ's now ex-director general, Dee Forbes, was interviewed by journalist Tom Lyons. Forbes, speaking fluently in soundbites, talked about RTÉ being a “creative beacon” and “a leading light in Irish cultural life”. These are things that are easy to say but harder to realise.

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In February of 2018, Forbes and RTÉ published their five-year strategy, announcing that RTÉ was to become a “digital-first” organisation. Last week, as the new director general, Kevin Bakhurst took up his role, he too had an announcement to make about the broadcaster’s direction. It would be “digital-first”. But digital-first is a given. It is a media cliche.

When it comes to RTÉ's future, where people watch or listen to RTÉ is not a strategy, it’s an existing context. The issue is what people are watching and listening to. What about creativity-first? What about ideas-first? What about people-first?

It is, in fact, the next era of “digital-first” which has the American film and television industry shut down. While studio and streamer executives are gleaning plot-lines from Black Mirror to deliver their future vision of “content” (featuring AI replacing actors, screenwriters, and whatever else it can gobble on the road to dystopia), the actual skilled and creative people are revolting.

[ Deciding Ryan Tubridy’s fate set to be key part of Kevin Bakhurst’s baptism of fire in RTÉ top job ]

In 2021, an interview with Forbes was published by the European Broadcasting Union. “With agility comes energy,” Forbes said, “and that energy drives further agility.” When Forbes appeared at a PAC hearing in January 2022, she said: “We need to become more agile.” This sort of executive-speak borrowed from conference presentations worryingly chimes with Bakhurst’s early thoughts in interviews: “smaller and more agile”, he said. When someone in media says “agile”, I hear “redundancies”.

Bigger, not smaller

What’s also eyebrow-raising was Bakhurst stating he was “agnostic” on the licence fee conundrum. I think RTÉ workers, Government, and the public would prefer a detailed, well-considered stance. Hopefully that’s to come. For all the talk about consigning the term “the Talent” to the bin, what the organisation could do with more of is executive talent. Anyone who watched the squirming at Oireachtas committee hearings knows that. And as for selling off land, that is not an idea; it is the absence of an idea.

In my opinion, RTÉ needs to be bigger, not smaller. It needs to claw back some of the things it jettisoned, such as so much young people’s programming. It needs to expand its podcast offering at scale beyond its current paltry menu, and not embark upon bland ideas such as Seán O’Rourke interviewing a few sort-of-well-known people, a format that is old news in the world of podcasting. Where’s the creativity?

[ The RTÉ crisis explained: Seven key points, from payments to Ryan Tubridy to €5,000 on flip flops ]

[ Stephen Collins: Coalition parties barely able to hide their delight at RTÉ's troubles ]

Any kite-flying around a potential sale of 2fm implies that the station has value, and that someone else could make it work. This is a stark admission. What is going so wrong at the top of 2fm that those charged with running the station aren’t already doing that – and brilliantly? What is so difficult about creating a music-driven station that supports and platforms the endless talent in multiple Irish music scenes that are positively brimming with energy right now?

Drop the soundbites and the cul-de-sac ideas. RTÉ has an opportunity to really change things. But if it is going to change things, it has to change them well. We’ve heard enough from people who clearly don’t know what they’re doing in RTÉ. It’s time to listen to the people – the creative people – who do. If they’re not heard, they’ll do the “agile” thing: leave. And RTÉ cannot exist without them.