RTÉ admits paying Tubridy €345,000 more than declared

I think the hey-day of the soap is definitely gone, but they are still watched by some. The 2000s caused a flood of British soaps going out 5 nights a week, leading to plenty disappearing by 2010, Brookside, Family Affair, The Bill, Crossroads and more recently BBC have axed both Doctors and Holby City.

I think Kevin is doing much as what Dee did and that is just to knock everything down without any real consideration.

There is no reform in these cuts. If anyone can explain to me why you'd choose July and August as the breaking point rather than November and December, please let me know, with Production returning in Feb 2025.

Breaking in July and August makes little sense, while we do have wet weather all year round, July and August surely are better for filming rather than November and December.

I would love to see the currently filming schedule of Fair City.

Good example here of how bad he was at interviewing the bigger names. a total bag of nerves. Sutherland tells an anecdote about Shane McGowan and Tubridy can't sit still nor keep his mouth shut, just a series of mini-interruptions.

Just glad he's gone. His 'tribute' to McGowan had he been on the LLS would have been dire. Probably couldn't find two people so far removed from each other in this country.

As much as I dislike him as an interviewer that wasn't terrible.

He mostly stayed out of it until the end and it was time to start wrapping up the anecdote anyway.

It's great though, isn't it? The public were told constantly Ryan was a megastar who had to be given shedloads of money to stop him leaving for the BBC or C4 or CNN, and now here he is on a regional Irish station and a UK station that hardly anyone listens to over there. More fool RTÉ for not calling his bluff earlier. Ryan was never a megastar, he was just well connected.

Ray Darcy, if his contract was not renewed I think would hang up his broadcasters earphones and just retire. His diction wold be good enough for a small UK radio station but I don't see him leaving Ireland. Living on a diet of porridge and sour dough bread, he doesn't have any huge outgoings.

The only thing Tubridy has in his favour is his diction and accent can work in the UK,

Joe Duffy however is the special case. No-one in the UK would be able to understand him. He has got zero pull outside of RTE. Even the likes of Galway Bay Fm would not want him because he's too Dublin centric in his views. I really hope Kevin Backurst has some balls when it comes to contract renewal time, and heavily reduces Joe's fee. 350k a year would a large amount for a talented broadcaster working prime TV on a national station. 350k for 90 minutes a day on a radio station that due to its timing has got pretty much a guaranteed listenership is genuinely obscene. He's not a smart man, but he surely knows that him doing Liveline is the only thing he can do. So offering him a reduced contract of 100k should be cause for champagne in Duffy Towers.

Yes, I'm not sure how many RTÉ personalities can now say (via Noel Kelly) "If you don't pay me megabucks, I'll have signed a contract to host a show on BBC1 by the end of the week." If RTÉ continues to fall for it, then they really are a bunch of fools (but worryingly, fools with other people's money at their disposal.)

I'm even not sure where the "Pay me loads or I'll go the BBC" negotiation argument comes from... the UK has more than enough talented people to fill media roles, so why would the BBC need to look across the water to an Irish presenter? The Irish who have made it big in UK broadcasting are those who went over while they were still young and at the start of their careers.

I honestly think that whole argument about "Pay me more or I'm off to the BBC" is an anachronistic red herring. I think it was a reality in the past when people like Gay Byrne did flirt with US networks in his heyday but in recent years it was nothing more than an excuse for those within the golden circle to pay themselves higher salaries than the market actually dictated.

I don't believe for a second that Dee Forbes ever considered the likes of Ryan Tubridy flying the nest for UK radio to be a possibility. She wasn't a fool. She was a cynic with a blank chequebook. Far easier to just give the people already in the job whatever they wanted rather than actually do your job and secure the best person for the best price possible to the licence payer. As I said in a previous post, it's the Irish state body mindset. Performance, metrics, capability doesn't come into it. It's someone else's money, books don't need to be balanced. Don't rock the boat. Collect huge pension and golden handshake on your way out the door.

Shame that Dee has a bout of (what a poster magnificently said some while ago now!) "Long Coward"

Whatever happened to accountability and responsibility?

That’s exactly what happened ….with ‘relativity’ down the line, as was reported.

Nice person called Fred O’Donovan was the head honcho at the time.

On the hole, so to speak!

You mean some crap like he loves Ireland too much to leave it

I remember when LFC (Liverpool football club) fans were concerned about their club they, as a very large group, made contact with the bank (I think it was RBS) to threaten a product boycott if they provided further funding for the then owners of LFC. It worked.

I never understood other large groups not taking this type of coordinated action. It’s easier now than ever before, via social media, to coordinate such action.

So could we, and all the people from Ireland, target the advertisers of Virgin radio in an effort to get our money back from Ryan Turbridy ?

A very simple - ‘we won’t listen and will boycott your products until Turbridy pays back the money he owes’.

To be honest, I think even if he had a very tranquil, pedestrian show on BBC4 of a Sunday evening with a mainly over 60's audience, he couldn't get by on a diet of Irish "diddly dee" - It's 2023. The UK is a very different place to Terry Wogan's heyday. I don't think that constituency really exists anymore....... ie red trouser wearing English middleclass who just love a charming Irish lilt on the wireless to remind them of rugged coastlines and pints of Guinness........! I sincerely doubt anyone listening to Virgin UK at 10 am of a morning after Chris Evans is going to buy that stuff.

That's why the move is intriguing to me. I don't know what they think they are getting with Tubridy. From the DLB's perspective, it's almost a puzzler too. He certainly doesn't want to move to London. If he had any ambition or desire in that regard he would have made this move 15 years ago instead of taking over the LLS to turn it into a weekly wake. He would much rather be at home in Dublin and safe in the bosom of RTE. So all I can see is he's A) making a small few quid by his standards but paying the bills and b) looking to the disinterested spectator in Ireland like he's made a success of himself outside Ireland. This will ultimately keep his caché high enough to engineer a return to RTE in a couple of years time, when he hopes this will all be forgotten. Would anyone blink an eye now if Jonathan Ross returned to the BBC? Of course not. Sachsgate is ancient history. Most people would barely remember it. That's the long game Tubs is playing I think.

He is gone. Leave him off. Just wait a few short years and RTE will prise him back from the UK for a snip at €500k per year complete with a picture of him pointing at some random person (aka another RTE celebrity). Then you can start your boycott.