“EXCITING” IS ONE way to describe the change at 2FM, as station boss Dan Healy did on RTÉ Radio One last week. Here are other words that sprung to mind for a group of broadcast industry veterans who have been surveying the past week for the state-funded station: unprecedented, astonishing and dangerous.

The exodus began with Doireann Garrihy announcing that she was leaving her breakfast show after five years at the station.

Next were the 2 Johnnies who said last week that they were leaving their drive-time show. Jennifer Zamparelli dropped another bombshell when she announced her departure after more than 10 years at the station.

The 2 Johnnies and Garrihy finished up yesterday, while Zamparelli – who was with the station for a decade – has been officially replaced in the 9am weekday slot by Laura Fox.

But the departures have sparked much speculation about what might be happening at the station and RTÉ overall, following on from the governance and financial scandals over the past year.

‘Unheard of’

“The fact that four senior presenters in daytime slots – some of the biggest slots really – have decided to walk away is almost unheard of, and generally in radio, presenters get fired rather than quit of their own accord,” Classic Hits programming director Liam Thompson bluntly summarised when speaking to The Journal this week. (The company is a commercial station and a rival of RTÉ)

“It’s not an unhappy accident,” said Thompson, who was a programme manager for 2FM for three years at the turn of the century and provides analysis on the industry in a regular newsletter.

It also leaves many questioning the future of the management who managed to lose some of the company’s most high profile names in such a space of time.

According to the 2 Johnnies themselves, who spoke to Brendan O’Connor for RTÉ Radio One last week, they will “leave the door open” and believe they will be “back on radio someday”.

The reasons behind the surging departures have been theorised at length over the past week. A lot of the early focus has been on a register of external  interests which will be required of top earners in RTÉ. 

Under new regulations at the broadcaster, employees and contractors are now required to declare gifts above a value of €50 and must declare any conflicts of interest.

This is as a result of the shockwaves of last summer’s controversy around secret payments to former Late Late Show host Ryan Tubridy.

Factors at play

But it’s understood that other factors may be at play for the bigger names among RTÉ’s roster.

Change at RTÉ could soon see the revenue from commercial lessened, with another thought being that if a presenter has the ability to earn significant sums through external work such as sponsorships, then why should the station also not benefit financially from that work?

Equally, it’s thought that some changes coming down the line could see an increased focus on the public service remit of the wider company, with the youth station required to play a role in this as well.

In the commercial radio sector, a raft of stations have been running content in media literacy, sometimes on air or across their social channels, along with visits to schools to discuss the industry.

According to Willie O’Reilly, former group commercial director for RTÉ, the departures are a “genuinely unprecedented” situation. There are no easy solutions either, he said.

“People are wondering what’s the way out of it, so let’s just step back for a moment. It’s a big hurdle, this will create a lot of churn in audience and will destroy any bond built up between the listeners and those presenters – not for all of them but a sizable amount of them.

“The other issue is that every managing director worth their salt needs a plan B, but now you need a Plan C, D and F. That’s a lot. Only a licensing fee subvented station could get through this because for a commercial station it would almost be existential.” 

The length of time spent at the station by some of the big name departees is another cause for concern. “It takes time to build up a relationship,” O’Reilly said, “And it takes maybe 18 months to really get a show working smoothly, which is a significant time investment.”

For Thompson, he believes the solution for the crisis at 2FM has to be bold thinking and recognising that the station is unlikely to ever reclaim the heights experienced when Gerry Ryan helmed its morning slot, drawing upwards of 300,000 listeners before his death in 2010.

“Trying to recreate your glory days doesn’t work as a strategy, particularly with a younger audience that doesn’t know what you’re trying to replicate,” he said.

“When you put what’s happening together with unhappiness around freelance workers at RTÉ broadly, the register of interest stuff, there is a real unease that needs to be addressed.

“We have to remember 2FM is part of a public service broadcaster, jointly funded by licence fee and commercial revenue. There’s a lot of money involved and the station’s own JNLR ratings haven’t been amazing for some time.”

He added that BBC Radio One, 2FM’s nearest equivalent in the UK, has managed to improve and diversify its content in recent years trough specialist shows, focusing on “content for an underserved demographic”.

On a broader scale, the BBC has made strides in its offering by the BBC Sounds app allowing access to a vast library of its programming.

Move to Cork

Thompson pointed to RTÉ’s own strategy to streamline and improve its output, published last year, which indicated a “bigger production base in Cork and a smaller one in Dublin” as a way of doing this.

Thompson, who is a member of the JNLR committee, said that the station has struggled in Dublin and Cork, and faces a stiff challenge generally in other cities thanks to a number of commercial stations geared towards the under-40 market.

Thompson argued that as a way of freshening 2FM’s identity, RTÉ needs to “go one step further” and move the station to Cork, where its population of 220,000 would be able to sustain a station while providing “plenty of different talent and voices” for the station.

While he accepted there would be logistical challenges in such a move, it would present a chance to “breathe new life” into 2FM.

“It’s worked for Raidió na Gaeltachta in Galway and for Lyric in Limerick,” Thompson added.

What next for the influencers?

For influencer-style presenters such as Garrihy, according to one expert who works with many of them, it has to be remembered that they are the “face of small media companies” at this point, thanks to their involvement in running external events and other gigs.

This makes them valuable in the industry, with or without RTÉ. An example can be seen in the 2 Johnnies who sold out the Three Arena, and next week will be running a mini-festival called ‘Pints in a Field’ in Dublin’s St Anne’s Park. Craig David features as a supporting act. 

Latest filed figures show that the duo, Johnny B and Johnny Smacks, shared directors’ pay of €404,183 at their firm last year.

“They don’t really need RTÉ at the moment,” said Irene McCormick, an ex-television producer for RTÉ and ITV who now runs a course aimed at content creators in South East Technological University in Carlow.

“Previously there was a tendency where you had to wait to be chosen to be discovered – now the audience gets to choose who gets to be discovered. It’s a much more organic way to become famous or be recognised as talented and I think that’s a really good thing.”

However, McCormick said she would not discourage the upcoming generation of influencers from shying away from RTÉ or other traditional media. She said they will offer “discipline and professional behaviours” that may not be learned when working via social media.