Changing the programme

THREE TIMES he has walked out the doors of Montrose for extended periods, and three times he has come back. But as Noel Curran prepares to take up the reins as RTÉ’s director general, next February, he may reflect that on this occasion the challenges facing him are greater than ever before.

The announcement this week of Curran’s appointment to the top job at the State broadcaster was warmly welcomed, particularly by his fellow programme-makers. Further afield, though, doubts were expressed about the ability of a journalist to turn the station’s financial problems around and deal with the inexorable increase in competition.

“It’s not the best time in the world to become DG of RTÉ,” says the media lecturer Michael Foley. “Income is declining and will continue to decline, but the greatest challenge will be the growing fragmentation of its audience.”

There’s nothing new about the seemingly limitless growth in the number of channels available on satellite or cable television. What is new, though, is the ever-greater diversity of ways we consume our visual media, through computers and mobile devices, and time-delayed from the original broadcasts.

Social media, gaming and other computerised delights are also eating into the leisure time that people previously devoted to television-watching. All of these trends spell a decline in audience share for RTÉ, a decline in revenue, or both, as viewers find ways of dodging advertising slots.

Meanwhile, the broadcaster’s other main source of income, the €160-a-year licence fee, is under pressure. The Department of Social Protection currently picks up the tab for the licence fees of pensioners, but next month’s budget might see this arrangement unpicked. TG4 is paid for by the exchequer, but Fine Gael’s communications spokesman, Leo Varadkar, says this form of funding will have to change to direct support from the licence fee.

“In these circumstances, where perhaps only a minority are watching RTÉ stations, the station may have to redefine what it is about,” says Foley. “It will be difficult, though not impossible, to defend the public-service remit.”

As the manager who reinvigorated RTÉ's current-affairs programming on two separate occasions and kept the station's main cash cow, The Late Late Show, afloat through changes of presenter, Curran knows all about public-service broadcasting. Indeed, on his appointment he specifically referred to RTÉ's "unique role and responsibility in Irish life". But he also knows that success will be measured in terms of audience reaction rather than media reviews.

"There are probably four or five people in this country writing about television, whereas with a show like The Late Late Showyou could have 500,000 or 600,000 people watching," he told the Sunday Business Postin 2004. "You judge it on the basis of the reaction of the audience you're targeting."

On another occasion the Co Monaghan man joked that being unpopular was certainly bad but that “even worse than being unpopular was being irrelevant”.

Foley says that the way for RTÉ to retain its place in the national affection is through producing strong programming that people want to watch. The problem is that home-produced drama costs a lot to make, is not guaranteed an audience and is difficult to sell on outside the country.

Sometimes, though, you don't have to produce different programmes, just better ones. In the 1990s, and again in this decade, Curran managed the trick of turning current-affairs programming into an audience favourite by re-energising staff, bringing in talented new recruits and carrying out top-notch investigative journalism. Prime Time, a programme that was once under threat from the general dumbing-down in television, blossomed with a new investigative strand and a resurgence in viewer numbers.

This, though, was achieved on the back of a licence-fee increase and a healthy advertising market. Today, in the words of Varadkar, RTÉ will have to “cut its coat according to its cloth”.

“The world has changed but RTÉ hasn’t,” says the politician who could decide the State broadcaster’s fate if there is a change of government next year. He claims the station is the only semi-State organisation that hasn’t entered “the real world” of self-financing and competition. “RTÉ is still heavily subsidised. It gets 93 per cent of the licence fee, but it certainly doesn’t do 93 per cent of public-service broadcasting.”

Even inside Montrose there is support for radical changes. “RTÉ needs a lot of work,” says one staffer. “There are some really old-fashioned practices that need to be tackled, but I don’t know if Noel will be confrontational enough to take them on.”

To friends, the 45-year-old from Carrickmacross is “a nice guy”, “one of the lads” or, as Ryan Tubridy tweeted this week, “one of the good guys”.

“Unusually for a manager, he’s not defensive. You can have a good row and there’s no offence taken,” says one former colleague.

Colleagues say they are unable to discern any overt political streak in the next director general, aside from an adherence to “centrist” views and an aversion to the “Sticky” influence that prevailed in current-affairs circles in RTÉ in the 1970s and 1980s.

Curran, whose brother Richard is deputy editor of the Sunday Business Post, studied communications at Dublin City University before starting his journalistic career at Business & Financemagazine, where he rose quickly to become deputy editor. In 1992 he went to RTÉ as a reporter on the short-lived programme Marketplace. After training as a producer and director, he was appointed producer of the Saturday-night chat show Kenny Live. His duties included producing the 1996 National Song Contest and travelling to Norway as producer for the Irish entrant in the Eurovision Song Contest, Eimear Quinn. She won the contest and his heart, and the pair married in 1999.

Notwithstanding his many successes, one colleague believes that Curran has a Teflon quality that enables him to overcome reverses. He cites RTÉ’s millennium-eve programme, which, in spite of its ambition and complexity, ended in disaster when a sweaty Joe Dolan sang in the new century.

Curran was appointed current-affairs editor in 1997 but took a six-month break from RTÉ the following year because of a bad back, a problem that friends say is now resolved.

At the start of the century he left RTÉ for the independent sector, but in 2001 he was persuaded to return to his old post in current affairs, with the task of reviving Prime Time. His term as managing director of television, starting in 2003, was marked by renewed investment in home-produced programmes as well as by the purchase of big-name shows from the US, most notably The Sopranos.

Last May he stepped down from this position, citing “quality-of-life” issues, and decided to pursue other interests. He and Quinn have recently had a child, a factor that is said to have influenced his decision. At the time, too, there was no indication that the incumbent, Cathal Goan, was intending to retire.

Balancing the books will undoubtedly consume much of his energy as director general, but there are bright spots on the horizon. The redevelopment of the Montrose “campus” is a huge project in the offing, one that promises to be a money-spinner if the economy and the property market eventually recover. RTÉ’s website, which it claims is Ireland’s leading media site, is also poised to benefit from an upturn, though its funding is increasingly a bone of contention with newspaper owners.

Overall this is, in the words of one colleague, “a hellish time” to take over as director general, but Curran will still be the most powerful man in Irish broadcasting.

Curriculum vitae

Who is he?A Carrickmacross native responsible for much of what you have seen on RTÉ over the past decade.

Why is he in the news?He has just been announced as the next director general of RTÉ.

Most appealing characteristicHis ability to inspire and energise staff.

Least appealing characteristicA lack of ruthlessness, say some staff – or is that a compliment?

Most likely to sayYou can take the man from Montrose, but you can't take Montrose from the man.

Least likely to say (his staff will be hoping)Yes, Minister.