When Noel Curran was asked to become director-general of RTÉ in 2010, the broadcaster was in trouble, but the full extent of its difficulties and the size of the challenge that lay ahead were unknown to him.
"When I was offered the job [in October 2010], I was outside of RTÉ, and at that stage the forecast for the following year was a deficit of €6 million. And I thought, '€6 million, we can pull that back'," he told The Irish Times in an interview in April 2013.
“By the time I joined in February 2011, in my very first day in the job, I was told that the forecast for that year was minus €30 million.”
His first year in the role was one of major budget-slashing and job cutting - but also controversy. This was the year of Mission to Prey and Tweetgate, the fallout from which was considerable and lengthy.
But such was the Government’s faith in the man they had only just appointed, there was never a question that Curran – who as director-general was also effectively the editor-in-chief – would fall on his sword over either matter.
Curran succeeded in turning RTÉ’s finances around even as the broadcasting advertising market continued to tumble. Four consecutive deficits were followed by break-even positions (modest surpluses even) in 2013 and 2014.
RTÉ’s recently published accounts for last year show – surprisingly, perhaps - that it is hiring again, while a suspension of salary increments for senior staff was partially lifted.
Curran, who was paid the semi-state salary cap of €250,000 and therefore less than many of RTÉ’s “stars”, leaves the organisation in a much better financial position than which he found it.
In the longer term, its income from both commercial sources and public ones remains far from sure, however, and Curran is likely to have been dismayed by recent Government stalling on broadcasting policy and tensions about news coverage. The attitude of the next government may not be pretty either.
But at least licence fee reform is “square on the agenda for the next year”, as Curran wrote in a note to RTÉ staff this morning.
“I don’t intend to go over the detail of what the organisation has achieved. Others can judge that, positively or negatively, for themselves,” he told employees of Montrose.
The positives include the phenomenal audiences for drama Love/Hate and cultural institutions from GAA matches to the Late Late Toy Show; a news and current affairs department that has regained much of its lost confidence; and healthy signs that it is committed to keeping pace with developments in digital technology.
Ultimately, there is very little that he, or his successor, or anyone in the Irish media market, can do about the swelling tide of global competition. Media power continues to consolidate (as evidenced only this week by ITV’s deal to buy UTV Media’s television channels).
But there is a sense now that RTÉ is up for the fight, and that the complacency of a decade ago has been shaken off.
