So, one down – six to go. With the election of newcaster Aengus Mac Grianna as the worker representative on the RTÉ board, the State broadcaster’s boardroom is looking less bare – but not by much.

Mac Grianna replaces Joe Little as staff rep, but there are still six other board positions to fill and they are in the gift of the Minister for Communications, Alex White. On August 31st, the term of office of the previous ministerial appointments Tom Savage, Fergus Armstrong, Alan Gilsenan, Karlin Lillington – who is an Irish Times columnist – Patricia Quinn and Sean O'Sullivan ended. That's two-thirds of the RTÉ board gone and not immediately replaced. It's a situation that would be unusual on any board – even a school one. Best practice corporate governance would not permit such a hiatus.

But it's not just six media-savvy board members that the Minister has to round up before the month is out. Five members of the board of the Broadcast Authority of Ireland (BAI) will also finish their five-year term on September 30th when ministerial nominees Bob Collins, Paula Downey, Séamus Martin, Michelle McShortall and Maria Moloney step down. That's more than half the BAI board.

Under the Broadcasting Act 2009, there must be nine members and there must be a gender balance – although with an uneven number it’s never going to be 50/50. The Minister’s office says “it is expected that the appointments to the BAI board will be completed in advance of the authority’s meeting in October.”

Appointments to either board are seen as prestigious and high profile – and the public knows it.

This summer the Oireachtas Committee on Transport and Communications called for “expressions of interest” from members of the public interested in serving on the board of RTÉ or the BAI and received 65 applications. It’s a healthy enough number, especially as the sign-up is for a five-year term – long in modern board practice where three years is increasingly the norm and not just because it increases the chances of attracting high candidates who are not willing to serve for half a decade.

However, enthusiastic applicants who posted in their CVs during the summer and are dusting off their best suit in the hope of attending a board meeting in RTÉ in late September (the Minister promises to appoint a new board by then), or in the BAI in October, can relax – they won’t be needed until the new year.

And yes, it is confusing. It’s the Minister’s nominations that are required urgently. The few board members that remain now on both the BAI and the RTÉ boards (the station’s director general, Noel Curran, is an ex-officio appointment) were appointed by the Oireachtas committee and their term of office runs until February 2015. It is to replace these people that the expressions of interest were sought. Although the Minister signs off on them too; so in practice they are also his appointments.

While these committee appointments are not quite as pressing as those governance-challenging empty seats around the RTÉ boardroom table right now, time is ticking.

Once the committee has sifted through the applications, it has three months to advise the Minister of preferred candidates. The call for applicants said expressions were needed “in the event of the committee being invited to make such nominations”. When it comes down to it, it’s difficult to imagine the Minister not asking the committee, especially since the public has been encouraged to get involved.

Given the challenging, fast-changing media environment, the chair of both boards will be key appointments. Former director general of RTÉ Bob Collins is at the board’s helm at the BAI and his replacement will likely have the same mix of management and broadcast experience at a very high level built up over a long career, and be a name familiar and respected in the broadcast industry; the background of the new RTÉ chair is certain to very different from the outgoing one, PR professional Tom Savage.

Perhaps the appointment in the UK of Rona Fairhead as chairwoman of the BBC Trust – a similar role to the chair of the RTÉ board – might give him some pointers as to the type of CV required. While she has worked in the media, it's been at the pointy end. A law graduate with a Harvard MBA, she worked for Pearson as chief executive of the Financial Times Group. She is also non-executive director at HSBC and PepsiCo and a government-appointed business ambassador.

Minister Alex White doesn’t have much time to come up with a chair with such a stellar mix of business and media expertise – but that’s what needed.

Twitter @berniceharrison