RTÉ admits paying Tubridy €345,000 more than declared

To the outsider, this looks like an open goal for Bakhurst. Decide not to renew Tubs contract, blitz the media with strong talk of "reform going forward" and RTE have "listened to the people of Ireland who've shown us they need to see real action" blah blah blah..............steady the ship and watch the licence fee payments start creeping back up.

But of course, to the insider this is all self explanatory. You don't hang Ireland's highest paid broadcaster, national treasure and all round good egg, out to dry. In a tiny place like Dublin's media bubble you don't finish the career of a guy who you've had many an enjoyable long lunch with. You don't REALLY want to turn RTE into some Swiss bank where people need to fill out forms to go have a shíte. What you WANT, is to get back to the snug, cosy, affluent reality of overpayment for under performance. You want to get back to squandering money like water and taking a blank cheque from the government of the day when your books don't balance. No one at RTE wants to work in a Ryanair clone, where famously pens and pencils are ordered singularly and not in boxes!

It would take a very strong and principled individual to start the reforms that are needed at RTE. It won't be this DG.

Bakhurst has talked the talk, but his only action so far is to try bring back the guy who is the face of the scandal. A complete and utter failure of leadership.

It would be like the government reappointing Seanie Fitzpatrick to a senior banking role after the crash to try and solve the banking crisis.

Bakhurst is not interested in genuine reform. He's the wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time.

RTE reportedly cancels Suzanne Jackson's TV show The Style Counsellors.

The beloved show hosted by the former CEO of SoSu Cosmetics will not be renewed for its fifth season.

Its possible to be popular and capable of very serious wrong-doing. They are not mutually exclusive. Whether someone is popular or not is beside the point, particularly when they play a part in the downfall of their own organisation. Tubridy has helped put the survival of RTE at risk, and the survival of hundreds of jobs, not to mention people taking pay cuts, while he was taking secret payments, a real metaphorical stab in the back to his colleagues.

He's not popular within RTE, but I guess that doesn't count. Bakhurst doesn't appear to think so anyways.

He's making Dee Forbes look competent and a hard bargainer at this stage. I'm guessing he lacks decisiveness which is key to a successful leader.

I doubt even his most bitter and envious detractors would say that Ryan has been responsible for serious wrongdoing tbh.

0.01/10

Hundreds of thousands of people tune into him whenever he's on TV or radio, he clearly is very popular. That doesn't mean that everyone likes him of course, some people just don't gel with him but that's fine, but he is still clearly one of the most popular people in Irish broadcasting. The Director General really has no option but to take him back, he thinks he's being smart by delaying it, but he has just made the controversy worse. He won't look very smart if Ryan goes off to the UK. And at this stage I honesly wouldn't blame Ryan if he just accepted a BBC offer and abandoned RTE.

They love her in the Arts sector, but when you minister for craic 's ceol !

Slightly different because TG4 have always been under scrutiny about its establishment, and it provides a public service, largely can't get away without making programming.

I'd be bother if TG4 wasn't providing the kind of service it does, and there are certain aspects of TG4 that we should be critical off.

TG4 made a decision to work on a project called Cine4, resulting in an Oscar nomination and critical acclaim, meanwhile RTÉ invested in The Toy Show the Musical. Commercially English language film would be a better bet for RTÉ but they don't even do this.

He's a poor to average broadcaster at best. I've tried to listen to his radio show and I can only ever get 1-2 minutes in before I have to switch over.

A good broadcaster should grip you and hold you there, even through the ad breaks. Can anyone seriously say Tubridy does that?

The mistake Forbes and Bakhurst made is to believe Tubridy was a great broadcaster. This mistake is the reason RTE are currently in an existential crisis.

How can the DGs not see what everyone else has known for years? Do they even bother listening to RTE radio?

My heart goes out to you on the loss of your two best friends, I guess a lot of people wouldn't understand the pain involved unless they experienced it themselves firsthand.

Maybe the username could still be used as a tribute to their memory?

Mind yourself either way.

My sympathies - always hard when a family pet dies, but dogs particularly so.

I don't think anyone was under any illusion about how poor a broadcaster Tubridy was.

You can never disentangle the fact that we're talking about a semi state here, with approx 50% income from a mandatory fee foisted on every household in Ireland. What do all these companies have in common? Waste on an industrial level and lots and lots of overpaid, unsackable lifers on increments for time served. Performance is only a concept in the private sector.

Tubs has been cosseted with kid gloves all his life in RTE. Failure rewarded with promotion. His laziness and lack of ability rewarded with a short radio show that requires him to do next to nothing and a chat show that he was allowed to bastardize into a weekly stroll through his comfort zone.

As Butters often said, it was his prime time slots that ensured some kind of audience, not his personal pulling power. For the DGs and Boards, he was part of the furniture and NK ensured he was handsomely renumerated on successive contracts. His entire media career is a bloody farce, like something out of Russian propaganda state TV. He's great because they tell us he's great. Don't ask any questions and pay him.