FAITH NEEDS RESTORED TO RTE AGAIN
Posted on 8th July 2023
You can’t escape the crisis in RTE. It is wall-to-wall Tubridy and by now a lot of us even know the name of his agent, Noel Kelly. They are going to grace us with their presence on Tuesday. It’s a damn pity they didn’t rock up sooner. It would have solved a lot of bother and a great deal of self-inflicted damage to both their reputations. If, for example, I was a new and rising star, I’m not sure I would choose Noel Kelly to represent my interests. The damage to Tubridy is substantial. He was a cross-over star, able to deal with light entertainment and weightier social and political issues. To do that you must have credibility and the personality to engage with and take your audience with you. That hidden payment of €75,000 per annum smashed his credibility to pieces and made him look like a hypocrite. His friendly almost tribune of the people image was turned to dust. I suspect he also lost the respect of many of his colleagues in RTE. It is too early to say whether Ryan Tubridy has a future in Irish broadcasting but if he decides that is where he wishes to go, it may be a tough and rocky road. The entire debacle has cast a light in many corners. One of the more astonishing episodes is “Toy Show, the Musical” which lost an over-stretched RTE €2.2 million. The storyline revolved around a judo champion grandmother who is sleeping with two different men on the same street who want to watch the Toy Show. Very suitable for children! Ryan Tubridy seemed to want to have nothing to do with it and it appears that there was nobody in RTE willing or able to call an end to this madness. The new Director General has a big task ahead of him, the most important is to rebuild the public’s trust. RTE is highly dependent on the Licence Fee for its funding and if there was mass refusal to pay the fee the government would be faced by a huge problem. I welcome the D.G. taking the initiative to meet the staff and I just hope harmonious industrial relations can be restored. Kevin Bakhurst is an experienced journalist and media executive and he certainly looks to be getting off to a good start. RTE is one of the cornerstones of the State and a somewhat complicated hybrid between its commercial and public broadcasting roles. I, for one, wish him the best of luck in providing the kind of leadership the station requires.
Now to Vlad the Bad. He should be feeling nervous. The Belarusian Dictator Alexander Lukashenko has announced that Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner Group, has returned to Russia. This is despite a peace deal announced last week. Prigozhin’s private jet has been moving back and forth and it certainly suggests he does not fear for his life. It is very hard to interpret all of this as Russian State TV launched a ferocious attack on Prigozhin on Wednesday. Steps have been taken to dismantle his corporate empire and the Kremlin has moved against Wagner sympathisers in the army, detaining a veteran general called Sergei Surovikin, who goes by the nickname General Armageddon. Let us just hope the Ukrainians take advantage of this instability.
