The Montrose mandarins have had their say. A half-page here, three-quarters of a page there, frontpage reports, letters to the editor, a whole hour on Liveline . . . So you surely know by now that the BBC gets two billion pounds a year and RTE only a tenth of that? That our licence is the lowest in Europe bar Italy? That the miserable £1.34 a week we give RTE accounts for just a third of its revenue and gets us two national television channels, four national radio channels, not to mention TG4, which RTE supports to the tune of £6 million a year? That its combined losses this year could be £12 million (more if it fails to shift 190 people off the payroll) and it still has to find £16.7 million for independent productions? And that all things considered, it does a pretty good job and the fact that people get so fired up about it is really a sign that they care? Right?
"They must be joking. I don't think they realise that the reason people get so sour is because they'll go to jail if they don't pay the licence fee," snarls an RTE insider who prefers - no, begs - to remain anonymous. Anonymous, because far from generating a spirit of the blitz within Montrose, internal pressure for cuts and change, combined with management, media and public onslaughts, has achieved the opposite. Confident, articulate grown-ups, many of them journalists paid to ask the awkward questions, exist in a swivel-eyed miasma of insecurity, wariness and back-watching.
And that includes the radio folk, much demoralised even before the recent confirmation of serious listenership erosion. Morale, according to the most sanguine, radio long-termers, was never as low. A perception that creativity doesn't count was cemented recently when the first casualty of the cutbacks turned out to be a producers' course. By several accounts, a recent meeting attended by the director general, Bob Collins, at which morale was an issue, failed to quell the groundswell.
Over in television, confidence hasn't taken such a pasting since Ray Burke's blitzkrieg, says an old-timer. They were "genuinely taken aback" at the recent, sustained lambasting dealt out by critics and the public. Says one: "It's been so bad that some people don't feel like going on. Well, how would you feel if you had to read letters in The Irish Times comparing you to a baboon? The level of vitriol was beyond belief. And for what? We're not doctors, nobody died."
Peter Feeney, RTE's head of millennium programming, was one who came out fighting. But a few weeks ago he was moved to head RTE's new Freedom of Information office, a radical shift from the broadcasting frontline. "Scapegoat," say some. "A man who will bring trust, experience and authority to an important job," say others.
Does it matter? Should a country get excited about a semi-State's esprit de corps? It has to matter. Whether it is concern about the use of public funds, national pride, caring for minorities, or a terror of tabloid television, the motivation, confidence and creativity among those on the coal-face of the State broadcaster's output, matters.
It matters that a household name despairs at the dearth of creativity - "We should be screaming at each other to come up with new ideas, but that's not happening." That television's managing director, Joe Mulholland, admits the station overlooks whole swathes of Irish life - from the 25-year-olds leading the IT revolution, to the marginalised areas such as Ballyfermot. (And also that, as Ballyfermot folk note angrily, when an RTE reporter does find the place, it's to position himself in front of a derelict house to pant about "gang wars".)
It matters that programme-makers feel driven by middle-class focus groups. That insiders feel shrouded in a "blanket of caution", as one of them put it, with the knockon effect that they're second-guessing their bosses politically, generationally, thematically. Or that, as Liveline's Joe Duffy put it to the director-general, Bob Collins when the latter denied receiving any political representations before transmission: "But if politicians complain afterwards, the next time it comes up, you second-guess them . . . You don't have to wait for the phone call."
It matters that senior figures in RTE cringe at tired formats lifted straight from British shows. That a sustained burst of Headless Chicken syndrome has left even the best-disposed observers boggle-eyed: senior management in sudden, desperate attempts to enlist staff for a proposed breakfast news service on the very day TV3 announces its own fluffy line-up; respected meteorologists unceremoniously dumped for two pretty, young females aged under 25 and a handsome (but crucially, slightly older) 31-year-old male; minority programmes such as Later with Kelly, Imprint and Finlay & Gallagher axed, mid-season, with a fist shaken at Cursai Ealaine, but survival - remarkably - for Clare.
It matters that a prime-time adult weekend slot - Saturday Live - is used as an audition hall for new presenter "talent".
It matters that RTE lacked the will or energy to take on the Gardai/Duchas/Seamus Brennan when it realised it was being handed a few firecrackers over a sewage works as the climax of its Millennium Eve broadcast, or an ancient burial chamber bursting with public figures, among others, (and on a consecutive year for one of them) at the solstice, leaving no room to manoeuvre for the State broadcaster.
It matters that to bypass the cap on advertising time, RTE fosters a policy of ethically questionable programme-sponsorship: Friends - watched by vast numbers of children - sponsored by an alcoholic drinks company; the new money programme sponsored by a bank; Crimeline sponsored by an insurance company, an industry surely with a vested interest in breeding insecurity. Plus the relentless "hidden" sponsorship involving cars and holidays given away by presenters spouting blatant advertising blurbs, on shows already built around plugging new books, bands and movies. Whatever one thinks of the programmes themselves, does anyone believe Later with Kelly or Imprint were cut for budgetary reasons? Studio-based programmes such as these cost a couple of thousand pounds to make.
So why the gauche urgency? In such a vacuum, speculation rules. Was Kelly cut because its small audience was pulling down the station's average? But this would imply that our public service broadcaster - pledged to look after minorities - was chasing the ratings . . .
Such mixed messages are hardly conducive to the image of a confident, independent-minded State broadcaster.
"RTE should be less concerned with audience figures and more concerned about producing quality programmes - that's why they get the licence fee," says Michael Foley, lecturer in journalism at Dublin Institute of Technology, and media commentator. "Their job is not to compete directly with TV3. TV3 will always be conservative because it has to sell audiences to its advertisers. It's RTE's job to be innovative and challenging and it shouldn't be afraid to say to the Minister, `Our figures for that slot are lower because we are producing quality'."
It is this professional confidence that is lacking in the mandarins' responses. "If the Late Late Show is down 9 per cent, then why don't they simply admit it?" says an exasperated insider. "Why don't they just come out and say `yes, the figures have fallen with Gay Byrne's departure - but they would have fallen anyway'. The market now is made up of individualists who can follow sports all evening - can even follow an individual player if they have the right interactive gadgets. And you can argue all you want that RTE's liberals have killed off its Middle Ireland audience, but all the extra channels have something to do with it too. That means not that RTE is going to have a smaller share of the cake - it means everybody is going to have a smaller share of the cake."
If viewers switch away from Prime Time to a TV3 weepie, does that mean RTE has got it wrong - or simply that it's taking its public service remit seriously? If nearly three-quarters of that sought-after sector, the under-30s, has little or no interest in politics and is not too bothered about social justice (as suggested by a recent Sunday Times survey in Ireland), is there any point in trying to use even the simplest political satire to reel them in? RTE may have its faults, but it also has problems to which even its worst enemies must relate.
There is no doubt RTE is looking into its public service soul. "There is a lot of self-questioning going on inside the station," says one staff member. But the nature and thrust of that questioning at management level has seemed wilfully opaque even to those mostly closely involved. Why do some programmes survive and others not? What magic ingredient saves one and condemns another? RTE is full of producers who fret and wonder.
Meanwhile, independent producers report similar problems, compounded by their outsider status. Anne Daly of Esperanza Productions - which produced When Happiness is a Place for your Child and Dropping the Number 10 for Dili, winner of the TV Journalist of the Year Award - believes the core problem is that in Ireland, there is no clear definition of what constitutes a "public service" programme. "We have never obtained a commission from the Independent Production Unit (IPU) in RTE, even for documentaries like those two that ultimately became awardwinners. People are often surprised to find we spend most of our time trying to raise money to make documentaries like these and that we inevitably end up subsidising them ourselves through our other work. I suppose because these documentaries win awards and end up receiving hearteningly good reviews, sometimes I wish we could apply directly for some of that licence fee money - because then, the public would end up getting more of them. They clearly want them . . ."
And let no one think that that £16.7 million figure for independent producers is a done deal. James Hickey, the chairman of the broadcasting sub-committee of Film Makers Ireland, is snapping at the legislators' heels: "We're concerned to establish the future basis for the calculation of how much is to be allocated to independent production. A revised draft of Section 29 of the Bill has still not been published and we therefore don't know what the story is in relation to it."
Very few at RTE will like the sound of this.
The IPU - imposed by legislation to foster competition and on which RTE is obliged to spend some 8 per cent of its revenue - goes right to the heart of the angst among many RTE producers. Subtract news, sport and daily programmes such as Den TV and already 40 per cent of RTE's features and variety programming is produced elsewhere. Much of the unhappiness stems from the fact that as RTE farms out more and more production - as it must - its staff producers are left with the old staples and a decreasing sense of ownership of their own schedules. Its afternoon programme has gone out to Tyrone Productions (using RTE's facilities); the obligatory docusoap/survivor series is also going out. This leaves many in-house producers in a state of high frustration, unable to pursue individual programme ideas after a season on the treadmill of the revenue-pulling, headline shows. They claim to be peddling faster, under greater pressure, with fewer resources, while noting acidly that at the higher echelons of production and administration, people already underemployed are becoming more inflexible and obstructive.
Reflective people on the inside - and there are many - freely admit they have brought much of this upon themselves. The huge production expansion in the 1970s - resulting in the expensive, disproportionate numbers of staff now in their late 40s and 50s - allied to highly restrictive work practices, has sustained the cautious, civil service-like bureaucracy in the organisation.
There are 368 employees on managers' salaries for a permanent staff of 2,000. While this includes "non-people-managers" such as lawyers and engineers, it is still too many, especially when it includes many promoted because they were good at their jobs and not because of any management flair.
In a complete reversal of commercial common sense, RTE's vast array of car parks has grown in tandem with Dublin 4's stratospheric real-estate values. And just at a point where programme-makers - the station's lifeblood - feel most redundant, a vast and costly building designed to bring them in from the prefabs they've been exiled to for 20 years (behind the landmark buildings hogged by administration) is finally opened.
Change has to come.
Personal grudges and vested interests aside, there is a lot to be nervous about, viewed from the trenches. "We're a bit like Aer Lingus when Ryanair came along," says one staff member. "We were producing some good stuff, sure, but the monopoly led to complacency and laziness. It's not so clear how good we'll be when we're unprotected. The transformation will be traumatic, but there is no going back."
Round the next bend lies the threat (no mention of the promise) of digital television. "Basically what we do is in decline," says another staffer. "Concepts such as `public service' and `schedules' will hardly exist in 20 years time. By then, everything will be on demand. People will be assembling their own schedules."
Government plans to privatise RTE's transmission network - a public asset - reducing the State broadcaster to "a tenant that will have to pay for it", in the words of Michael D. Higgins, has only deepened the depression around this gloomy prognosis.
Allied to this is the trauma for all involved as the old monolith comes to terms with competition law and the sharp end of the business world. The television production facilities department, for example, is being transformed into a separate "business unit", selling its services to producers who must cost them as they would any outside service. Full invoicing will begin on January 1st next year. Sound commercial sense, perhaps - but, as BBC-watchers note, this is precisely the route taken by John Birt which is now being reversed by the new Greg Dyke regime.
A history of crying wolf to the unions (and to the independent sector) with the aid of outrageously opaque public accounts, has left RTE management with much ground to make up. Thus, the unions employed their own consultants to verify the need for 300 redundancies. And that's only the start. To ensure the same output with fewer staff, both sides have been grappling with a Transformation Agreement, designed to introduce a radical overhaul of work practices. Whether the carrot on offer - thought to be 2 per cent, a lump sum of £750, plus a little more at local bargaining level - is sufficient, is another matter.
Management has also had to come up with a more creative redundancy offer. This is believed to include extra inducements for the over 55s/early retirees, such as limited weekend work for an outside cameraman, for a few years. A new component is a severance deal for younger employees, believed to be seven weeks salary for every year worked, to a maximum of three times the person's annual salary. So a producer on £30,000 a year could get a maximum of £90,000; not bad - though not a fortune either, out there in the hideously insecure and expensive world of independent production where the former employer is effectively the only show in town. But if the package is made too attractive, it could bring on a haemorrhage of the best and brightest, leaving the time-servers and the burnt-out behind. Management will have to be cunning indeed to get the result it needs.
A worthy attempt to set up an honest discussion-forum between workers and management has resulted in the establishment of a partnership model at various layers in the organisation. Head of radio, Helen Shaw, puts much of the morale problem in Radio 1 down to the "question of us communicating [to staff] where we are, to get a sense of common cause. Otherwise, with the kind of difficult year we have ahead of us, with the kind of savings we have to make, none of us is going anywhere . . . I know there have been particular areas where radio producers may feel they've been left outside the key decisions. I chaired a partnership meeting recently and I've been actively trying to deal with this." So far the jury is out on the merits of this partnership; some believe it needs time, others that it's a devious ploy for management to bypass the unions.
In any event, the perception remains of management flailing around, sowing insecurity, reluctant to delegate yet still lacking authority, doing little to buoy up a nervous, dispirited workforce or boost motivation. "We know we will have to make programmes cheaper. We know we will have to be more flexible in our work practices and be more competitive with costs. But management needs to have more confidence in us," says a television staffer. "Traditional demarcation lines can no longer exist but the corollary is that we can't have that lack of trust. You need trust when barriers come down and goodwill is on the line."
Says another: "There is no one saying - `Look, of course we have problems, but the glass is half full'. You hear nothing that's affirming or encouraging. All we hear is gloom and doom and cutbacks and TV3 and the Independent Production Unit wheeling away all the money. You go in there in good humour and come out wanting to slash your wrists. Where good work gets done, it's done almost in spite of them." The resignation a week ago of Helen O'Rahilly, the respected director of television production, has further depressed morale. After less than a year in the job she is returning to the BBC as editor of a digital channel unit in the documentaries and history department.
For all the frustration and disappointment, there is a loyalty to what many RTE people acknowledge to be an organisation with a decent heart. They are quick to point to its invaluable library and archive services, to its successes as a programme buyer and producer, to its achievement in maintaining an audience share in radio and television that is the envy of counterparts around the world. Outsiders too will point to RTE's conspicuous successes, in areas such as news, sport, in home-produced series such as Would You Believe?, Nation Building, Seven Ages and the rare but doubly welcome stab at drama. However, for many of these producers and managers, once pivotal figures in Irish cultural life, that old sense of power, centrality and ownership is slipping away. An era is over.
Even then, the onslaughts will not abate. Other multi-media groups with a vested interest in weakening RTE will carry on trying. Bob Collins will continue to make inspiring speeches about public service broadcasting while politicians stare him and his ilk down with the licence fee. From these mighty concerns flow those of direct interest to the ordinary viewer. A routine, defensive refrain from RTE people is that they never heard anyone in a supermarket talking about "public service broadcasting". So do they mean that only the chattering classes care about it? But what is it anyway? Do we want a public service broadcaster or should the market decide? What have we to lose? That's the question. A Late Late Show devoted to just that - with an audience drawn from all walks of life - might set the ratings soaring again.
Kathy Sheridan can be contacted at: ksheridan@esatclear.ie