Sir, – I regret having to revisit the circumstances of my leaving Today FM, but a letter published by The Irish Times (August 17th) from Peter McPartlin, the current chief executive of Today FM, leaves me no option but to put the background to my departure on the record. Mr McPartlin was not employed by Today FM when I left in October 2011 and therefore he has no direct and contemporaneous knowledge of the circumstances that led to my departure.
In early 2011 I gave a copy of preliminary findings of the Moriarty tribunal to Willie O’Reilly, the then chief executive of Today FM. This followed a series of discussions with him about how damaging the tribunal report could be to the owner of the station, Denis O’Brien.
I pointed out to Mr O’Reilly that owning more of the Irish media than any other individual, Mr O’Brien should, in theory at least, be more sympathetic to airing the views of those who might disagree with him. Mr O’Reilly decided that it would be in both his and my best interests to avoid any discussion about Mr O’Brien, or any of his business interests, on Today FM without first clearing it with him.
Mr O’Reilly also told me that Mr O’Brien’s people had been angry when the Moriarty tribunal was raised as a topic on the Sam Smyth on Sunday programme.
I received the first letter from Today FM raising the issue of ending the programme on March 22nd, 2011, the same day that the final report of the Moriarty tribunal was unexpectedly published.
On that same day, I showed the letter to John McColgan, the chairman of Today FM, and he told me that after the findings of the tribunal, I should ignore it. When a number of newspapers made enquiries later that week about my being dropped from Today FM at Mr O’Brien’s insistence, I asked Mr O’Reilly about the status of the letter; he said that it was “as if it hadn’t been written”.
I also spoke to Mr O’Reilly about Denis O’Brien writing to me at my home threatening to sue me personally.
The listening figures for Today FM as a station were dropping and independent analysis showed that the number of people tuning in to the Sam Smyth on Sunday programme was falling less than the numbers who had stopped listening to the station.
When the controversy over the publishing of the Moriarty tribunal subsided in late summer last year, Mr O’Reilly resurrected the prospect of dropping the Sam Smyth on Sunday programme. The station was doing root and branch change in programming, he said. Sam Smyth on Sunday was dropped in October last year. It was the only major change in programming on Today FM.
Mr McPartlin declared his letter to be the “for the record”. I would appreciate if you could attach this letter to that record. – Yours, etc,