Moynes rules the waves

RTÉ's head of radio, Adrian Moynes tells Emmet Oliver that while it willinevitably lose listeners, RTÉ's role is measuredby more than ratings

For somebody who holds one of the most coveted positions in the Irish media, Adrian Moynes is a somewhat reticent interviewee. In the first minute of the interview, this reporter's enthusiasm to unearth some enlightening aspect of Moynes's background is met with a candid: "My life has been utterly eventless".

Of Northern nationalist stock, an Irish speaker with a background in the arts and production, Moynes has all the qualifications needed to be an RTÉ boss. You go through the checklist and end up ticking all the boxes.

He believes strongly in public service broadcasting. He is against overtly commercial radio schedules. He is not a supporter of radical changes to the RTÉ line-up. He believes in incremental change and not sudden bold initiatives. These are the principles which guide him as he presides over 35,000 hours of radio a year.

But with an English literature degree from Oxford and a wry sense of humour, his academic and somewhat self-effacing manner can be deceiving. Moynes is frank, he doesn't so much answer questions head on, but more from the side and often with interesting results.

Asked whether his Co Armagh upbringing influenced him much, he says, "It's very, very difficult to describe this. But people of my sort of background kind of grew up in two states. I grew up very close to the Border, but psychologically I never believed in the Border. I always resented it, never believed in it, and I think a lot of people who live close to borders are like that."

Working closely with the outgoing director-general Bob Collins for the last six years has made him an important figure in Montrose.

Put crudely, broadcasters such as Pat Kenny, Marian Finucane, Gerry Ryan and Joe Duffy report to this man, and one wonders if he is as self-effacing when dealing with them.

With RTÉ Radio taking a battering in the last set of JNLR figures, Moynes faces a major challenge with the radio section of the station truly at the sharp end of competition. While RTÉ's programmes utterly dominate the top 100 TV programmes, Moynes is facing a host of radio competitors, many of them already squatting on areas traditionally the preserve of RTÉ such as news, current affairs, talk, sport and music.

While the broadcasters mentioned above have a name recognition factor which few of their commercial equivalents could match, radio people talk about "new voices", and increasingly many of them are not on RTÉ. Ger Gilroy or David McWilliams at NewsTalk, Tom Dunne, Mario Rosenstock and Ray D'Arcy on Today FM and Scott Williams at Lite FM are among the broadcasters name-checked regularly by radio industry figures.

A decade ago in the radio business, you had to be on RTÉ to be a household name. But consider the figures now - 50 per cent of radio listeners told the JNLR last time out they listened to stations other than RTÉ (known as the "listened yesterday").

Why is this? Moynes firstly rejects the contention that RTÉ has done little to cultivate young radio talent. "Radio here, within its family, has younger voices. There is Rachel English, there is Ryan Tubridy, there is Shane O'Donoghue, there are these producers who are behind the scenes and are certainly not public names, but who are young and vibrant."

Asked does Radio One, the station's flagship service, need a makeover, Moynes says, "Makeovers happen in fashion magazines, in television or print, where you go to some place and you buy stuff off the shelf and you get a look. But that's not how radio channels change."

He has a different philosophy. "They change incrementally and they change gradually. And they have to change with an alertness to what people are familiar with. You can't mess with these things because they do have significant audiences and you mess with these things at your peril. Your moves have to be well judged."

Based on Moyne's comments, few of RTÉ's high-earning stars are likely to disappear from prime time any time soon.

"I am not going to talk to you about the destiny of individuals. The broad lines of it are very sound. There will be change inevitably, because people will move on from various roles. But I think that for the medium term, the shape, the mould, the patterns, and directions of Irish radio and RTÉ radio are pretty much set. We are talking about adjustments and developments within a familiar landscape."

But Moynes acknowledges the changes taking place at Radio One and the growing power of Joe Duffy's Liveline programme, which was the big success of the last full set of JNLR figures.

"You have a very, very skilled broadcaster, and you have a very good team working with him. Put those things together, and you get a very good programme. There is a sense in which the issues of the day come up in the morning. They are discussed through the morning. And people have had a chance to get informed. They form their views. And then they ring Joe to give their opinion. It's a very established slot. Marian put it there and Joe has taken it to another phase. As the man says, it ain't broke."

While the big stars at Montrose still bring in the audiences, the growing curiosity and occasional outrage about their earnings remains a sensitive issue at the station. "There is an inevitable curiosity about that. But I find it distasteful that people would want to know what individuals earn."

But surely broadcasters paid from the public purse should have their salaries disclosed? "I think that's fair enough. But I think the way we have attempted to deal with this is to indicate there are ranges. People are entitled to know what the values are. I would not be curious about things like that. I would assume that people like that, who are very talented, are well paid."

But are they paid too much? "I wouldn't agree they are paid too much. Then again, it is not a science," he says.

Radio One, however, is not Moyne's only concern. The faltering performance of Lyric FM, RTÉ's classical offering, also occupies his time.

"Its listenership has been low. I would like to see more people listening to it, certainly. There can only be three things. The kind of music that's played when most people are available to listen. The other issue has to be about the style of presentation. And the third has to be making the station itself well known. The projection of the station. We are looking at all those three areas."

What about its music policy, sometimes described as being too elitist? "There is a range of views," Moynes explains. There is a view that it should be more popular, classical hits. There is a view, on the other hand, that it should be more based on a very high-quality classical offering, for a dedicated and educated audience. But I have to say we should be in the business of building audience for classical music."

So you would lean towards the first view. "I would, most definitely."

Moynes, however, is not complacent on what critics describe as RTÉ's "greying" listenership.

"It is a concern. But that is a standing concern. You'd be foolish if you said, 'No, it's grand'. It's not grand. It can't be grand.

"The population is changing. From one JNLR book to another, from one annual report to another, the listening population over the age of 15 can grow by 54,000. If you look no further than that number, it means all these services must evolve, these channels and their schedules must evolve. But the trick is how you move them along. These are complex jigsaws.

"You are looking to the future," he adds, "and we are developing people. We bring people along.

"I think it's clear that, when major figures go on holidays, there are opportunities to test people out. Innovative things have been done. I am not greatly troubled by this suggestion that the whole thing is greying."

But if RTÉ Radio One is not going grey, does it need a bit of vigour injected into it, via 2FM? What about the constant call among advertisers and others to move Gerry Ryan on to Radio One? Is there not a need to push the boundaries a bit on Radio One, placing Gerry Ryan's younger audience alongside the more mature listenership of Marian Finucane? "When? When should Gerry Ryan move? Why should he? If I can have his audience on 2FM and Marian's audience on Radio One, and you put the two together, there is not much wrong with that, is there?"

"These radio services are not experiments. They are not test beds," he adds. "You do have to look at what their existing strengths are, and you have to evolve them, rather than change them dramatically."

But with a plethora of pop drive stations, what conceivable public service remit could 2FM have nowadays? "Well, I have heard on the Gerry Ryan show, for instance, items about things like national book day, sexually transmitted diseases, health, abuse of alcohol, housing, transport - all sorts of things - done well and responsibly, and done in informed ways. But that may not be the first kind of agenda that comes to people's minds when they think of a show like that."

But, surely, in an atomised radio market, RTÉ is going to keep losing listeners? "There is mathematical inevitably about that. It's just a fact of life. It's like this, the more shows there are, the more people's attention is going to be spread across them. People still have patterns of listening, but I think they are less stuck in them. They are looser. They graze more, they browse more. They are less loyal, if you like."

So what can RTÉ do to halt or slow down the decline in its listenership? "In one sense we have to do the same as everyone else, which is to try to be innovative and appeal to new audiences and come up with new tricks. If you are looking at it only from the perspective of those sort of ratings, the answer is simple. You provide very, very, very commercial schedules designed to appeal to the largest possible number of people. But that's not our remit. The measure of what we do is not simply audience numbers," he says emphatically.

But are there any great national or cultural events for RTÉ to broadcast any more in the atomised media market of today? "You're A Star. Isn't that a significant cultural event? I think if it recruits and compels that much attention, in the sense of bringing people together. I've been surprised by the number of people who've said to me, that over the weeks we always voted in our house."

But does RTÉ still have the shows that bring people together? "If you take something like Morning Ireland, that still has those attributes. And Marian Finucane, with her audience, still has that kind of convocational role and brings people together.

"If you want to reach the largest single chunk of the population," Moynes concludes, "there is a way to go and advertisers know that."