I think you're being very naive if you think he was simply going to hand that money back alongside taking a massive pay cut.
TV licencepayers' money and Kevin Bakhurst
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Ceist Beag
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I'm eagerly awaiting the revised contract offers for D'arcy, Duffy, O'Callaghan, Byrne et al ...
I'm eagerly awaiting the cost analysis on their live studio productions, their clerical costs per employee, their wage and pension costs for technical and administration employees etc. relative to Virgin.
In an organisation employing 1800 people the wages of the top ten earners is pretty much irrelevant when compared to organisational efficiency.
Ceist Beag
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Agreed Purple. However, if the new big boss is to be taken seriously then he should show equity in his dealings with staff and not be seen to just go for a populist move. If he was expecting his top earner to take a massive pay cut (prior to booting him out the door) then he should at least apply a similar expectation to others who were in a similar earning bracket. It may not be all that important to the bottom line but it would be important for the message it sends out to all staff in the organisation.
I can never understand the concentration on what people get paid rather than what they do and if they are adding value.
Ceist Beag
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Have you not seen the anger amongst staff at what Tubs was getting paid? Maybe you can't understand it but there can't really be any denying that it appears to be a big issue for a lot of staff. I can understand their anger. The pot of money is not infinite so they can see how it is all linked.
Yep, plenty of people in quasi-public sector jobs think every high earning individual is over paid.
I understand it and I disagree with them.
How much more money would there be if there were a few hundred less of them?
The Union suggested it was the nature of seeking to hide payments under the table at a time when discussions on cost-cutting measures were ongoing. There was no outrage when he earned €750k in 2012 and I'm sure many of his colleagues would have thought he was way over-paid then. It's understandable that they would feel that he was just looking after himself at a time they were all being told of the need to cut costs and that management weren't being transparent on pay cuts to the top earners.
True, but perhaps here they've already performed that calculation in their heads and determined that he wasn't adding value for what he was paid.
There's a widespread perception for some of the radio slots e.g. especially Tubridy's 9am slot that the vast majority of the audience tuned in because it was RTE Radio 1 at 9am and programmes such as Morning Ireland and the news generate a lead in audience.
Anton Savage wrote an article in the Business Post about Gerry Ryan on 2FM and how since he died the drop in listenership during the slot he did and the corresponding fall in advertising revenue has cost the station €58 million.
The article fails to mention that Gerry Ryan's listenership was on a downward trajectory from almost 400,00 to 296,000 at the time of his passing. And this was before spotify and podcasts arrived (they were in their infancy). You also have new stations (Nova & Spin) and newstalk building up their listenership.
Gerry's show was getting tired and the younger audience did not identify with him. I suspect he possibly would have moved to Radio 1 and negated the need for Ray D'Arcy to be brought back. Tubridy was never suited for 2fm.
Backhurst has definitely made presenters know that "personality driven" radio & TV is not in his book as a priority.
Especially with the constant re-runs of Reeling in the Years
That's one of the reasons RTE are so keen to move away from licence fee model towards a broadcasting charge.
I'm well past 35 and I only watch RTE if they are showing a sporting event I want to see.
I find the production quality, and in particular the screen plays, of their drama's dreadful. Their news and current affairs is low quality and has a very strong left wing bias. They are, in just about every way, the Public Sector Broadcaster.
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The Radio output is the same in terms of scripted stuff, must be 'worthy' or come from an insider. The only decent stuff is when they do straight readings of classics.
thedaddyman
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I like the reruns of reeling in the years. Always find them entertaining.
Aside from sport, the news on occassions (sometimes only to get the weather) and the occassional series from overseas (All creatures great and small as an example) it's very rare I watch anything on RTE. There have been some good, if unusual documentries recently (the pigeon racing one and the Pat Ingoldsby one) which were good but far too long but made by external production companies. Crimecall can be good, if only to see if there are any CCTV from the local area and in fairness, Prime Time investigates can be good as well.
The news annoys me sometimes, what was the point of vox pops in Clonmel this week?, having a reporter in the studio simply repeating what the newscaster said is another annoyance.
It's still better then Virgin though with it's endless runs of "the Chase"
I do like RTE lyric and RTE Gold.
Aside from sport, the news on occassions (sometimes only to get the weather) and the occassional series from overseas (All creatures great and small as an example) it's very rare I watch anything on RTE. There have been some good, if unusual documentries recently (the pigeon racing one and the Pat Ingoldsby one) which were good but far too long but made by external production companies. Crimecall can be good, if only to see if there are any CCTV from the local area and in fairness, Prime Time investigates can be good as well.
The news annoys me sometimes, what was the point of vox pops in Clonmel this week?, having a reporter in the studio simply repeating what the newscaster said is another annoyance.
It's still better then Virgin though with it's endless runs of "the Chase"
I do like RTE lyric and RTE Gold.
Firstly, anyone reading Bakhurst's CV will be astonished to see him being described as a "journalist". To my mind, any such designation should imply having worked for a considerable period as a person seeking, evaluating and writing content for published media.
After his MA in mod lang, Bakhurst articled in accountancy with PWC before dumping it for a graduate position at the BBC. Only for a period of about 1 year was he involved as an actual reporter - that was for a business programme and he had scant enough quals for that domain. Before and after that short reporting stint, he was an editor all the way. This seems strange to me as one can hardly edit fairly unless one has plenty of experience of gathering content - I'm taking it here that BBC editorship involves more than its literal meaning of curbing hyperbole, avoiding libel and sharpening up phrasing: it also has to surely involve encouraging junior reporters and keeping seniors from veering off on solo runs - tasks only doable if you have some street cred as a reporter yourself.
I was therefore astonished to see him moved into RTE News/Current Affairs after the Mission To Prey disaster. It needed someone from outside RTE but surely a well-known ex-journalist and current editor from BBC, ITV, etc would have been a better choice.
In business you sometimes see major investors/stockholders appointing an outsider to deliver a business plan on a troubled company whose original management team remain. Of course no sooner is the new MD appointed when the existing team form a cohesive drag on everything he/she tries to push through. Surely, it is only common sense that the stockholders ask the existing team to nominate an MD from among themselves to deliver the new plan and that new MD allow normal selection processes to replace him/herself in their former role as finance/sales/production/tech director ? People are happier being led by someone who has been through the trenches with them in the past.
The dilemma for Bakhurst was he was damned (by the €25k-€50k staff in RTE) if he let Tubs back into Radio and will be damned in the future by being the dagger-wielder from abroad by virtually everyone in RTE. If Bakhurst saw his appointment as an opportunity to shape the quality of content in RTE in the coming years, the Tubridy situation has turned his job into that of a feared British axeman of our National Broadcaster - a figure destined to be hated by all.
His only chance at glory would be in his determination to match every commercial or organizational decision with one equally well-publicised on improving programming quality. A hard old station, to say the least.
After his MA in mod lang, Bakhurst articled in accountancy with PWC before dumping it for a graduate position at the BBC. Only for a period of about 1 year was he involved as an actual reporter - that was for a business programme and he had scant enough quals for that domain. Before and after that short reporting stint, he was an editor all the way. This seems strange to me as one can hardly edit fairly unless one has plenty of experience of gathering content - I'm taking it here that BBC editorship involves more than its literal meaning of curbing hyperbole, avoiding libel and sharpening up phrasing: it also has to surely involve encouraging junior reporters and keeping seniors from veering off on solo runs - tasks only doable if you have some street cred as a reporter yourself.
I was therefore astonished to see him moved into RTE News/Current Affairs after the Mission To Prey disaster. It needed someone from outside RTE but surely a well-known ex-journalist and current editor from BBC, ITV, etc would have been a better choice.
In business you sometimes see major investors/stockholders appointing an outsider to deliver a business plan on a troubled company whose original management team remain. Of course no sooner is the new MD appointed when the existing team form a cohesive drag on everything he/she tries to push through. Surely, it is only common sense that the stockholders ask the existing team to nominate an MD from among themselves to deliver the new plan and that new MD allow normal selection processes to replace him/herself in their former role as finance/sales/production/tech director ? People are happier being led by someone who has been through the trenches with them in the past.
The dilemma for Bakhurst was he was damned (by the €25k-€50k staff in RTE) if he let Tubs back into Radio and will be damned in the future by being the dagger-wielder from abroad by virtually everyone in RTE. If Bakhurst saw his appointment as an opportunity to shape the quality of content in RTE in the coming years, the Tubridy situation has turned his job into that of a feared British axeman of our National Broadcaster - a figure destined to be hated by all.
His only chance at glory would be in his determination to match every commercial or organizational decision with one equally well-publicised on improving programming quality. A hard old station, to say the least.
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In fairness to him, those within journalism would very much consider editor a journalism role. just as they would include photo journalist, newscaster, reported, investigative journalist, copy writer. etc..
The challenge there is it's difficult if not impossible to rescue a broken system with someone who has grown up happy within that system. It takes awareness of the issues and a real motivation and desire for change to achieve results. I didn't hear from many within RTE during this, but none suggested awareness of a system in need of significant change. Without external influence any change would likely have been superficial window dressing.