Ray D'arcy on RTE Radio 1 **Mod Warning post 1** 27th Jan Forward

Ray's departure from TodayFM was similarly unceremonious if I recall correctly. Obvs someone else's fault on both occasions.

The Ray D'Arcy Show on TodayFM in the early 00's was very popular and enjoyable show with a fresh team around Ray. But Ray just got increasingly self righteous day by day. If you didnt live a regimented life like him you were a wrongun in his eyes and he could never conceal his rigid and judgemental attitude. Rarely heard much positivity about him from former colleagues, if anything he was described as a rat abandoning a sinking ship.

I havent listened to him much at all in the last 15 years, snippets hear and there but whenever I did hear him he was still a sanctimonious ***hole.

Being rude live on air to the Nuacht team for daring to interrupt his carefully planned out shows. Gowl, a massive gowl is what he became.

Anyway glad RTÉ have ended his show, he was undeserving of it. Hard to imagine anyone hammering down his door with offers unless he was willing to change his entire approach to presenting.

Cant see it though, too far down the rabbit hole and admires himself far too much to even realise how much of a tool he is now.

So where does he go do you reckon or what does he do?

OK so I don’t like the guy as a broadcaster for all of the reasons mentioned above - and yes he’s earned a very tidy sum so I hope he’s been saving for his retirement.

While it can’t be easy losing your job, I reckon he knew the writing was on the wall and who knows what was said throughout the last few weeks behind closed doors. I reckon he’s working his way nicely through the change curve right now and as a human being I hope he’s ok.

Pat Kenny left RTÉ and carved out a brand new audience for himself on commercial radio- not an easy thing to do, but PK in fairness is no ordinary current affairs broadcaster - there’s high skills there.

How would you even label what Ray Darcy did day in day out? Filling broadcasting air space with “stuff” is probably an accurate enough description - we know RTÉ radio is a somewhat captive audience- they generally don’t switch dials but he’s been losing listeners which is not at all a good sign and hard for a commercial station to justify taking him on for that reason alone.

Does he do some sort of Sunday afternoon music show? Or weekend lunchtime panel discussion on the news of the day? It’s very hard to know-

Maybe he'll go back to TV work with virgin or something. Gameshows or documentaries or something

Morning Ireland just quoted some fairly slating comments from some newspaprr column about DArcys lack of ability while talking about the story

I’d say that the traditional way as to how contracts are handled is that the show goes on , on the understanding that ‘some agreement will be worked out’ and backdated accordingly. The Tubridy debacle was the first blip to this.

Was Darcy’ s last show under the old contract to go out yesterday, Thursday?

So , was it a case that D’Arcy felt that he was such an IMPORTANT COG in the RTE machine that it would not let him go. So he feigned a ‘ walk out’ in the hope that it would go out after him to bring him back and offer an increased amount of €XX, XXX.

Has his artificial sence of worth caught up with him at last?

Was that in What the papers say? Pauric Lodge doing it this morning. Over on Rte Gold, Will Leahy was fairly gushing about D’Arcy and mentioned the anoraks going into overdrive so Good Morning Will 😉

From my memory Ray replaced a very interesting show which was nature based. That show was shoved down to night time - to my mind that was. a great loss of diverse interesting contributors. Wish I could remember the presenters name.

Mooney Goes Wild.

that show was not nature based, presented by derek mooney. he did however had / has a separate show Mooney Goes Wild.

Why the suicide pos Oscar. ? Why not just leave Ireland and go to Switzerland and enjoy the scenery?

That’s what D’Arcy suggested that he might do if Enda Kenny ever became the leader of our country!!!!!!

Yes, could be. It's just that the traditional RTE way was to let the talent say goodbye on air.

Apart from the Tubridy affair, the only example I can think of is Ian Dempsey on 2FM many years ago after he decided to go to Today FM. I recall he was told to clear his desk and just go by then Director of Radio, Helen Shaw.

Ultimately, the perception seems to be that the slot was underperforming in terms of listeners so he was going to be moved on by the new management one way or the other. No compromise could be worked out to put him on Lyric or Gold or somewhere else on the Radio 1 schedule on much reduced money or whatever.

well if I’m confined to listening to RTÉ radio 1 for my retirement there must be something seriously wrong with me 😀

He’s believed to be taking over live line - he’s just left the other station

Ray has said the whole affair was ‘badly handled’.

But enough about his show, what about RTE?

Oh right. The days of talent development within RTE seem to be over so.

That's Bauer's job now. Same with production staff.

Let them get their experience in Bauer media and then RTE tempt them over with better pay, terms and conditions, using licence fee and bailout cash.

At the same time offering existing staff early exits (using even more licence fee and bailout cash).

What a great business model!