'My shows made RTÉ €50m. Now I resent paying my licence fee'

Dev urged viewers to demand “sturdiness and vigour and confidence” from the new station rather than “decadence and disillusion”. 

I wonder what he would have made of Eastenders and Fair City. Maybe he’d already had a premonition. The station he launched that night would eventually sound the death knell for De Valera’s Ireland. Perhaps we should be thankful for that mercy.

For most Irish people in the early days of the 1960s, watching television must have been an extraordinary experience — something we take for granted today — considering there were barely 30,000 television sets in existence when RTÉ went on air, mostly in well-to-do homes along the east coast where a hazy-greyish coverage from transmitters across the water could be picked up.

Within weeks, newsreaders such as Maurice O’Doherty and Charles Mitchel were household names, while continuity announcers Thelma Mansfield, Nuala Donnelly, and Kathleen Watkins became pin-up superstars.

Gay Byrne quickly became Ireland’s answer to Michael Parkinson, with his knack of making a parochial chit-chat format the most discussed show on the station. It became addictive, as he tactfully pulled the carpet from beneath the old guard, dragging Ireland kicking and screaming into more modern times. While RTÉ would like to think they’re not, the days of viewer loyalty are long gone.

Licence fee

A year after the station launched, the television licence fee was introduced. Last week, we received a reminder that our licence was due for renewal. My wife passed it to me and said nothing. She knows how I feel about paying it. I have reached the point where I resent handing over €160 — even more so in recent times, when I recall those misappropriated slush funds and dodgy book keeping that surfaced in the aftermath of the Tubridy debacle 18 months ago.

I’m not one of those I-hate-RTÉ types. Far from it. I worked there for 17 years, and they were among the happiest of my career. I made great friends, and enjoyed a level of success I could never have found anywhere else

Over that period, my radio shows generated in excess of €50m for the station, while commanding a daily audience of over 250,000 listeners, making it the second most popular radio show on 2FM, after Gerry Ryan. I rarely boast, but it feels good now and then.

Looking back, it was a remarkable achievement, but it didn’t just happen. It took a huge amount of work and sacrifices. Unlike other shows, I didn’t have a large team of producers and researchers. I did most of the work myself.

My feelings towards the licence fee run deep. Times have changed, and RTÉ is no longer the fulcrum of Irish life it once was. Apart from its excellent news and current affairs programmes and home-produced drama, most of its output is no longer relevant

Ireland’s broadcasting revolution started in earnest in 1989, when competition arrived in the shape of local radio and TV3, alongside the lure of what lay outside Ireland that was accessible here. Then Sky arrived in 1992. 

Irish viewers were no longer topically restricted, and the playing field quickly grew to accommodate greater challengers and multiple variety. By 1994, we had a choice of more than 10 channels to watch, and RTÉ was fighting a losing battle.

One major problem with a company that employs almost 2,000 people is that it’s easy to become institutionalised and cosy in a distorted mindset, and to lose sight of not just competitors, but to not see the problem of complacency creeping in among your bread and butter audience. Greater choice dilutes loyalty.

Smaller firms can achieve greatness far quicker than behemoths that have no choice other than to move at a snail’s pace. A company of that size relies on too many department heads and middle managers; and that is, and always has been, RTÉ’s problem.

In 1997, a competition commenced to find a new managing director for RTÉ’s three national radio stations. I threw my name into the hat, because I genuinely believed I understood the intricacies of radio, having spent over 15 years in the sector by then.

I made it through to the final five. Bob Collins, the director general at that time, presided over my interview, flanked by the four most senior directors across television, news, marketing, and sales. During the interview, I was asked how I would reduce the costs of running radio by €5m.

I told the panel I would cap salaries at €100k, make the shows longer, halve the numbers of producers and pay the shows’ researchers more. I also told them I would utilise the independent sector to produce and present shows externally, while reducing the overall number of staff by half. 

I didn’t get the job. In hindsight, I’m not surprised. RTÉ still wasn’t ready to face up to the cold reality of commercial broadcasting.

Of course, there were times when RTÉ commanded listenership and viewing figures that still make my eyes water, but they ended with the arrival of competition and, ironically, Ryanair — more stations and cheaper destinations.

Before then, RTÉ stood for something unique and patriotic, in a way that Aer Lingus did whenever you crossed the Atlantic in one of their 747s, exquisitely captured in its ad with the powerful caption “You’re home”, and the haunting air of 'Gabriel’s Oboe'; back in the days of two-channel land, when The Late Late Show was the hottest ticket in town, and Glenroe was an instant reminder that you had school the next day.

RTÉ no longer carries clout, as it finds it more and more difficult to place itself in viewers’ priorities when there’s so much to choose from, including the hundreds of other stations broadcasting non-stop diets of cheaply produced programmes

Unless RTÉ resorts to drastic measures to cut costs, while also offering a different product rather than weak imitations, they will end up on the scrap heap within 20 years, much like the Queen of the Sky, as Boeing’s 747 was affectionately known.

I don’t watch television, but I paid my licence fee yesterday, begrudgingly, as I don’t want to go to court, or appear in a tabloid headline or — worse still — be threatened by a judge with a criminal record.

RTÉ knows that the threat of conveyor belt justice will continue to help to finance an organisation that hasn’t been sustainable for years, one that will eventually have to be gutted so it can rebuild in a way that gives it a unique place among its challengers in constantly changing times.

It’s ironic that a 1956 report by the Department of Post and Telegraphs stressed the urgency for a homegrown television service, stating that many of BBC’s programmes were downright inappropriate: “Some are brazen, some 'frank' in sex matters, some merely inspired by the desire to exalt the British Royal Family and the British way of life.” 

Even if there was a time when RTÉ competed successfully with such a giant, the truth is it can’t any longer, and forcing people to purchase a licence when they don’t watch RTÉ is unmerited and below the belt; as it would be if you were forced to pay road tax on a tractor you haven’t driven in years. 

What would Dinny Byrne make of it all?