Media & Marketing: Delicate negotiations are taking place at struggling radio station NewsTalk 106 between management and some of the station's most prominent presenters.
Most of the station's big names signed year-long contracts and these are now falling due. With the station only able to muster a 2 per cent share of the Dublin audience, expect some tough bargaining from the station's management.
The four highest paid presenters at the station are David McWilliams, Daire O'Brien, George Hook and Damian Kiberd. The station declined - à la RTÉ - to disclose the salaries of the presenters, but it is understood McWilliams's contract has the highest value at approximately €100,000. While the somewhat precarious position of the station might put the presenters on the back foot, the station has spent considerable sums since Christmas promoting the four mentioned above.
To lose one now would probably send out the wrong signal to the advertising community.
Internally, morale at the station has picked up since Christmas with chief executive Aidan Dunne's prediction of an 8 per cent audience share looking more achievable, although the sceptics remain unconvinced. A British radio consultant Paul Chantler is helping the station to tweak its programming. While 8 per cent looks a little optimistic, 4 - 5 per cent might be on the cards when the next set of JNLR figures is issued.
The last set of JNLRs continue to reverberate throughout the radio business, with FM 104 chief executive Dermot Hanrahan raising serious questions about the results. He has pointed to 25 anomalies in the figures relating to his station and so far he has failed to get satisfactory answers from MRBI, which carries out the research.
He claims the sample sizes in the latest JNLRs do not reflect the different demographic groups within the general population.
The chief executive of the Institute of Advertising Practitioners in Ireland (IAPI) Steve Shanahan sent out a fresh e-mail this week to agencies telling them to exercise caution in relation to the JNLRs in certain categories, at least until the MRBI has clarified.
So far Mr Hanrahan is prepared to go through the JNLR technical committee but if all his queries are not answered one suspects the situation could turn ugly for all involved.
Saatchi & Saatchi boss in Ireland
The Irish Times got the chance to talk with one of the most influential advertising figures in America last week when Saatchi & Saatchi worldwide chief executive, Kevin Roberts, visited the University of Limerick.
While Mr Roberts was less than optimistic about the year ahead ("a very , very, tough year"), his comments on the Irish advertising scene were interesting, if rather blunt.
He said Saatchi opened its office in Dublin a few years ago only to find that clients here were less than enthusiastic about being served by a Dublin subsidiary. "I was very sad about that whole thing. Clients in Ireland wanted to work with Saatchis in London," Mr Roberts said. "They kept telling us: 'we feel like we are the poor cousins just having to deal with Dublin'.
"This is happening elsewhere too, with regional and national offices being by-passed for the main centres. It is does not always mean a better service for the client," he said.
"It is not just Ireland. Canadians don't like to deal with the Canadian office, they want to be handled by New York," he said.
In terms of how agencies do their business, Mr Roberts said they continued to sell themselves short. Saatchi, which is part of Publicis, is increasingly structuring its earnings to be based on a percentage of sales, rather than a percentage of media commission. "We have done that with Proctor & Gamble and other clients are coming around to the idea," he said.
New PR business set up in Dublin
Spending on public relations may be tailing off in many firms, but the number of high-profile entrants to the industry shows no sign of slowing down. John Murray, the former deputy government press secretary, has just set up a new PR business in Dublin.
Other people who have worked in the Government Information Service - such as Jackie Gallagher and Marty Whelan - made a similar jump before and, in the case of the former, with lucrative results.
