Lots happens in the radio industry each week so here’s a summary of the week we just enjoyed.
Here’s what happened
We got an interesting insight into earnings at RTÉ this week, as they released the earnings of their 10 highest paid presenters.
Some of the names on the list you’d probably expect, but others perhaps not so much. Let’s take a look at who’s earning what.
For this list we’ll look at the 2021 figures as they are the latest, and we’ll compare with 2019 to give an idea of how things are changing over time. If you want to see 2020s numbers you can find them at the link below.
- Ryan Tubridy earned €440,000 in 2021, down €55,000 from €495,000 back in 2019
- Joe Duffy takes second place with €351,000, he’s down from just over €392,000. That’s a drop of around €41,000
- Claire Byrne is doing well after taking over the today slot on Radio 1. She earned €350,000, that’s up from €250,000 in 2019. It’s important to remember Claire was hosting her highly successful TV show in both these years, so her earnings are probably down a bit now considering she stepped down from that show.
- Ray Darcy had a big cut, going from €450,000 down to €305,000. That’s down €145,000. His Saturday night TV show has ended which likely explains these cuts. It’s unclear if D’Arcy has a contract renegotiation on the way, but if he does he could see earnings fall further due to underwhelming JNLR numbers in recent books.
- Next up, we have Miriam O’Callaghan. Miriam earned €263,500 in 2021, that’s down from €320,000 back in 2019, a drop of €56,500
- Brendan O’Connor earned €245,004 in 2021, I’m sure that €4 at the end there was very important in negotiations. That’s a whole breakfast roll, and you wouldn’t be the dry one to refuse the lad his breakfast now would you? He’s up from €220,000 back in 2019, a boost of 25k and a breakfast roll.
- Bryan Dobson got €209,282 in 2021, this is the same as his earnings from 2017 and 2018, but it’s up slightly on 2019 when he earned €196,961
- Mary Wilson had earnings of €196,961 in 2021.
- Darragh Maloney received €183,738
- And rounding out the top 10 we have George Lee on €179,131.
It does seem RTÉ are sticking to their plan of reducing salleries of the biggest presenters. This does mean we might see some Pat Kenny style poaching attempts , but we’ll need to wait and see.
It’s interesting that no 2FM presenters made the list, it would be fascinating to compare these salleries with the likes of Today FM or Newstalk.
All that aside, these numbers are interesting to see. Hopefully we get numbers for 2022 soon.
Is Ireland about to get a new radio station? The minister signaled her support this week for the launch of an Irish Language youth service.
This follows the BAI doing research into the concept, which resulted in interesting findings.
- 35% of young people would be likely to listen to an Irish youth station at least once a week. This goes up to 70% when content feels relevant to the audience.
- 15-34 year olds are increasingly digital only content consumers
- People felt there was a lack of Irish language content for young people. It was felt that this was a gap in the market.
It’s an interesting idea to think about. Could this be a project for RTÉ or TG4? Is this Ri Ra’s moment to shine? It could be cool to have a new station on air, especially one that is clearly providing a service to an underserved market.
Who knows if it will happen, but let’s wait and see. Let us know what you think over on our Twitter, @RadioLandIRL
The IMRO Awards took place this week, no, seriously.
We’re not talking about the IMRO Radio Awards now, these are just the IMRO Awards. The no radio in the title IMRO Awards took place at Radio Days this week and saw some awards for broadcasters. Let’s take a look at who got what.
The awards focused on those who had shown great support to the Irish music sector. Those receiving awards were
- Corks Red FM
- Claire Beck of Today FM
- Ronan Collins from RTÉ
- Ray Colclough who’s with WLR
- Louise Tighe at FM104
IMRO also gave special recognition awards to the founders of Hot Press Magazine, Niall Stokes and Mairin Sheehy.
Finally, the IBI presented an award to the former chief Executive of the BAI Michael O’Keeffe. This was for his services to Irish broadcasting since the beginning of legal independant radio in ireland.
Congratulations to all those recognised, keep up the good work.
Quick Bits
Mayo Community Radio has a new manager
Broadcaster and author Deirdre Purcell has passed away aged 77
Profits are up at a company representing many big Irish broadcast names
And that’s the summary for this week. Come back to radio land next week for more radio news📻 and be sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram for extra stories.