RTÉ chief on building back trust, and ambitions to be one of Europe’s best

Trust is at the core of the current changes the Irish public broadcaster, RTÉ, has been going through for the past year.

After an undisclosed payments scandal broke out last year, the broadcaster has faced significant challenges and public relations struggles. Further revelations around lavish spending on concerts, restaurants and gifts for advertisers, as well as the funding of a doomed and costly musical, have only ramped up the pressure on the organisation.

The scandals saw trust in the broadcaster plummet and a subsequent financial headache as audiences en masse refused to pay their licence fee. The Director General at the time, Dee Forbes, resigned.

Yet out of this set up, RTÉ has emerged with a new five year strategy, a new leadership team headed by new Director General, Kevin Bakhurst, and a more secure funding arrangement for at least the next three years. Efforts remain underway to restore trust in RTÉ, from both the audience, and from the existing staff members, who felt let down by their leaders.

PMA’s editorial manager, Harry Lock, spoke with Kevin Bakhurst, RTÉ’s Director General, to explore RTÉ’s journey to regain its public trust. This interview is also available as a podcast.

Harry Lock: When you first stepped in as Director General, how can you characterise the relationship between the audience and the organisation at that moment?

Kevin Bakhurst: It was a very tricky moment for RTÉ because RTÉ is a really important part of Irish cultural life and has been for a very long time now. And there’d been a financial scandal that had erupted in the few weeks before I started the job, which involved one of the most prominent then presenters and RTÉ. It was unfolding in a very public and high-profile way. The trust that had been built up over many years between the organisation and the audience had been quite severely fractured at that point.

And at the same time, there was a real issue within the organisation, because I think all the staff here felt extremely let down by what had emerged and were also very angry. So we had an internal and an external battle to fight in terms of showing that things were going to be different and the organisation would be different and these sort of things wouldn’t occur again.

Read more: New funding structure and some added certainty for RTÉ

HL: How do you do that? How do you make sure that it goes beyond words, do you think, in those early days, at least?

KB: I was very conscious that words are important. But in the end, actions are what count. And I said that publicly. There are a number of things [we did].

First of all, we were under intense scrutiny. Scrutiny both in the media and also from parliamentary committees and questioning from staff. I felt it was important we should be as open and transparent as we possibly could about admitting the failures there have been and being clear about how we’re going to address them at the same time. I think that was new to the organisation. I don’t think people were used to probably that degree of openness. And certainly, I probably did far too many media appearances and committee appearances alongside my senior colleagues.

The second thing was people expected to see some real demonstration of change early on. I decided on the first day that I was going to stand down the then executive team as a whole. There were a number of issues around a number of people that had emerged on that executive team. So I stood down the whole team and then set up what I called an interim leadership team to lead the organisation.

HL: Did that pay off, do you think? Has that worked out to be a successful move, do you think?  

KB: Yes, I think it was actually a critical first step in showing that this organisation is under new management and new leadership. I maintained some people from the past executive team who were not implicated in some of the issues and in fact helped clear up the mess. But some people had left the organisation.

It has taken a year to get the new permanent leadership team in place, which has got a lot of new thinking and new blood from outside the organisation.

HL: How did you manage to delineate between a new change, while also not trying to erode everything that the public still did love about RTE?

KB: It’s always a challenge. You need to keep the organisation running and you need to keep people motivated and producing brilliant programmes and brilliant content for audiences whilst you’re going through this very turbulent period. That is challenging. In some ways it may have been easier to clear out the whole of the executive. It’s what a few people wanted but, in my view, we had to demonstrate fairness as well.

So it’s about getting the right mix. But that was the challenge. We had some important programming with the elections, sport events we had rights to, and investigations. The ongoing news and current affairs programming, and programming that’s also important as part of our remit in terms of entertainment and documentaries and so on.

Part of demonstrating to audiences your relevance and that you matter as an organisation is to still carry on producing brilliant programmes and great content. I’ve said to the staff in the organisation here, on a number of occasions, and I’ve said it publicly that for a long period, the organisation was carried on their shoulders because they did continue to deliver those amazing programmes.

“We have come up with a very ambitious and compelling strategy for the future to turn this into not just a good public service organisation, but in my view, we will be one of the best in Europe when we’ve implemented that strategy.”

HL: One comment I read from you was that it was a big source of frustration that the financial revelations overshadowed a lot of the brilliant content that RTÉ produces. How do you think you can shift the focus away from that and back on towards the content? 

KB: It was frustrating that brilliant content sometimes was drowned out by the noise around the controversies.

We have demonstrated a really significant amount of change in the last year. And it’s been much more far reaching than simply the change of leadership, although it’s been important. But I definitely think this would be the general perception. We have demonstrated real action in dealing with some of the failures. We have come up with a very ambitious and compelling strategy for the future to turn this into not just a good public service organisation, but in my view, we will be one of the best in Europe when we’ve implemented that strategy. We will serve audiences better and actually be a better place to work for those people who are here.

Partly as a result of coming out with that vision of the future, we also now have a guaranteed level of public funding on a multi-annual basis for a number of years. We are in a very different position than we were a year ago, where there was a lot of uncertainty around our funding at the same time as the crisis.

HL: Earlier this year, RTÉ published a new five-year plan which promises transformative change. One of the principal goals is rebuilding trust with the audience. What is that strategy and the scale and ambition of it?

KB: The strategy that we’ve published has a number of pillars. And what we did was we went out with a framework with those pillars. We went out to do a widespread consultation with stakeholders externally and with staff internally. And then we published our five-year strategy. The key pillars are familiar to a lot of media organisations and public service media organisations.

One: we need to invest in our digital future. And we have been doing that increasingly, but there needs to be a real step change in investing in things like our player and our radio app and invest in the digital side.

Second is to continue a real focus on delivering fantastic content for audiences. We already work with our independent colleagues on a lot of programs, but we will be spending more with the independent sector. So, we’re going to be probably even more important to the heart of Ireland’s creative economy.

Thirdly, we’ve committed to making more programming and investing more in productions around the country and outside Dublin. We already have a number of centres around the country, and we do quite a lot of work particularly in Cork, in the south, but we are going to move the balance of spend and people away from Dublin and invest more around Ireland to better reflect Irish life and Irish stories. We will invest in the creative economy around the country. We are going to be a smaller organisation and we’re going to have a smaller physical footprint in terms of the buildings here in Dublin.

“I think by maintaining relevance and providing the right kind of content, those are two of the tools that you need in terms of re-establishing that connection with the audience.”

And we’re going to be smaller in terms of people. We’ve said over the five-year strategy, we need to be smaller. We’re around 1,800 people, and we would expect around 400 people to be leaving the organisation over that period. There’s going to be no compulsory redundancies. For me that’s a non-negotiable term, whatever happens under my leadership. There is as much security as we can offer during a period of significant change.

We have made it really clear that part of the strategy is actually significant investment in learning and training and retraining opportunities for many people who want to stay here. There will be a change in culture for those people who remain here, which will make it a much better, more exciting place to work.

We will change the structure of the organisation and the way we spend money as we will increasingly move some programs out of internal production into the independent sector. We will also be working in a different way and put more investment into digital and gradually continue our transition away from linear services, which remain incredibly popular and strong here.

HL: Moving towards that new direction of becoming a streaming destination and having this digital transition, what do you think that’s going to do? Is it part of the objective of rebuilding trust with the audience?

KB: When you’ve lost trust the way we did last year, it’s a long road back. And that process is underway, by delivering relevant, much-loved content, content that’s important, investigative journalism and actually news and current affairs, reliable, trusted news and current affairs. The levels of trust in our news have remained extremely resilient during this whole period, which has been very satisfying to see. The teams here have done a really good job not least of which in holding RTÉ to account during the period. Trust is an important part of the puzzle. So is affection and so is relevance. I think by maintaining relevance and providing the right kind of content, those are two of the tools that you need in terms of re-establishing that connection with the audience.

HL : With a new funding model, how hopeful are you that that is going to lead to improved outcomes both within the organisation and also with how the audience feels about funding RTÉ? 

KB: Critically for the organisation, what the Irish government’s agreed to is guaranteed levels of funding for the next three years, five years really in effect in terms of public funding. And the levels of funding we get, particularly in years two and three and beyond, are sufficiently above the levels we get at the moment that we can carry on providing our public service remit and investing in the changes we planned.

We have the headroom in terms of the level of funding that the government’s agreed. Although the licence fee is going to be maintained in Ireland, we will play our part in continuing to try and make sure that people feel it’s value for money and that they will pay it. In the end, if that income falls, as it has been doing consistently for years, we have a guaranteed level of funding.

It’s off the back of us publishing a five-year strategy that the government believes is the right strategy.

It’s my job and my team’s job to make sure that we hold to our side of the bargain, which is to deliver on that strategy and to continue providing fantastic value, trusted content for Irish audiences.

“And always, it’s a question of demonstrating change, but also demonstrating to the audience that we have increased public money and they will see the benefit of it.”

HL: How are you defining and measuring success, and what specific milestones or deliverables will you use to demonstrate progress to both internal staff and external audiences over the next few years?

KB: There are some real concrete deliverables in the strategy that we want to deliver early on. And always, it’s a question of demonstrating change, but also demonstrating to the audience that we have increased public money and they will see the benefit of it. And hopefully, a number of staff will see the benefit of a better run organisation too.

We’re already investing significantly in the RTÉ player, our video streaming service. There are more boxsets on there than there’s ever been before. The number of people using both live streaming and on-demand content on the player has increased massively in the last six to 12 months. The functionality of the player is much better and it will get better still. We’ll introduce mandatory sign-in so that we know our audiences better and we can make better recommendations for them so the experience will be enhanced. We’re working on a new audio app for our radio and audio services, and we’ll be investing in podcasts so audiences will get a much better experience in trying to access and find and use RTÉ radio and RTÉ audio services.

We’re going to revamp our news app so that will be a better service. We are also demonstrating change to the independent sector. We are already now able to commission on a multi-year basis some of our more popular programmes which before we could only commission on an annual basis which gives the independent sector more stability.

So, all these things will be demonstrations that we are in the process of making a lot of changes to the way we run the organisation to make sure that the mistakes of the past can’t reoccur. There are also the proper procedures in place and that we handle things like risk and compliance across the organisation in a proper way. That’s not as obvious to the outside world, but it’s obvious to parliamentary committees who talk to us as well.

HL: What is your overarching guiding philosophy in terms of leading a public broadcaster and in terms of building trust?

KB: I think my overriding thing is that you need to demonstrate, and you need to think about, what is the right thing to do? Is it, if you’re discussing it openly, a defensible decision? And is there proper integrity at the heart of that decision? Are you happy to stand over it when it is publicly discussed and explained?

And not everyone’s going to agree with every decision, clearly, and they don’t. But if you can explain why you’ve taken it, why you’ve decided to spend money in a particular way, why you’ve decided to make the changes that you’ve made – and that they’ve been carefully considered – and that at the heart of it you are as transparent as you can be about as many of these decisions and you’re happy to explain them and are not afraid to tackle difficult questions, in the end, it comes down to demonstrating that in making those decisions, you’ve been thoughtful and you’ve shown integrity and you are respectful of the fact you are publicly funded and how you are spending public money and that you surround yourself with a team who will take the same approach.

And that is the approach that the new leadership team takes and that I expect people throughout the organisation to take.