The Helen Shaw Show
Helen Shaw, the new head of RTÉ Radio and a journalist of proven ability, has arrived at Montrose full of reforming zeal. Her biggest challenge could be what to do with a talented part-timer from Howth. By Brenda Power
This time last year, the radio mandarins of Montrose were sandbagging the trenches, fortifying their schedules and reviewing programming policy in anticipation of the Radio Ireland offensive. Plans were under way to sideline the Sunday-morning religious services to free a block of prime airtime, the drive-time slot was reshaped to defend its ground against the new station's evening onslaught, and Morning Ireland switched to an earlier starting time.
Radio Ireland's proposed plans seemed especially strong in the crucial period up to early afternoon, and Radio 1 had a difficulty with that particular slot, one that was at once enviable and frustratingly insurmountable.
The good news was that it had a broadcaster—acknowledged as one of the best in the world—who had resisted all lures to leave the station. The bad news was that he was only prepared to work three days out of five, which left the listeners with a disjointed serving of their favourite star and the station with a scheduling nightmare that would never have been countenanced for any other broadcaster. Gay Byrne was not a presenter who could be issued with an ultimatum, but the then director of radio, Kevin Healy, had come fairly close.
He offered various week-on/week-off permutations, suggested that pre-recorded interviews be broadcast on the days when Byrne was absent and finally threatened to move the Gay Byrne Show from its premier 9.10 a.m.–11 a.m. slot unless he was prepared to work five days. So the switch went ahead and so, for the first time since the show began, Byrne did not broadcast from Grafton Street on Christmas Eve morning that year, interrupting a ritual to which the country had become accustomed and fuelling much media interest in the discord.
The incident was a neat illustration both of the importance of Gay Byrne in the fortunes of the national broadcasting station and of the self-defeating nature of efforts to bring him into line. Last summer, RTÉ appointed a new director of radio to replace Healy, who was moving on to become director of public affairs after nine years' service in the Radio Centre. Helen Shaw, who is the first woman divisional head in the history of RTÉ, let it be known early on that she did not believe that any one star could be bigger than the station. In one of her first interviews upon her appointment, with the radio programme Soundbyte, she expressed her dissatisfaction at Gay Byrne's three-day week. But her difficulty, acknowledged by her admirers and critics within the station alike, is that, despite her fighting words, she realises that she is indeed held to ransom by a handful of stars of considerable talent who wield commensurate power over the radio station.
“The problem in RTÉ,” according to one senior producer, “is that the shows are built around the presenters, not the content,” and so, without a firmer foundation, the lucrative prime-time schedules depend upon the big names for their support. By three o'clock in the afternoon, some 80 per cent of RTÉ's daily radio revenue is already in. Maintaining the success of this slot while regularising its clearly unsatisfactory format and addressing the problems of over-reliance on big names is therefore crucial to Ms Shaw's success in her new position.
“She has some time to play around with,” says a prominent RTÉ figure, “given that Radio Ireland, or Today FM, never materialised as any kind of threat, but she has a huge job to do.” And those allies and critics alike are watching, enthralled, to see how she plans to go about it.
Helen Shaw was a surprise choice for the top job in RTÉ Radio, and she beat off 21 other well-regarded competitors for the position. She began her career as a freelance print journalist—writing an award-winning series for Magill, among other things—joined RTÉ and later went to the BBC, where she moved quickly up the ranks before returning to Montrose at the age of 36. Grudging comments from producers and other staff who knew her during her time in RTÉ are hardly unexpected, given that some may have fancied themselves for her job, but there are certainly two distinct views of Helen Shaw within RTÉ.
One is that she is “a control freak,” says a producer, “cold, abrasive, tactless, who is isolating herself, working too hard, trying to do everything at once and refusing to delegate.” The fact that she has expressly discouraged comment to other media—Gareth O'Callaghan was reportedly “carpeted” for leaks to the Star about his reasons for quitting as Gay Byrne's stand-in—and that her flare-ups are known to be best avoided, means that very few people are prepared to be quoted in commenting upon the situation within the station.
The other view of Helen Shaw is that she is “probably the most brilliant producer of her generation, decisive, creative, [and] imaginative,” according to another producer. “She has ideas and she thinks radio, and, let's face it, we haven't had many people at the helm here who have come up through the ranks,” says a veteran broadcaster. “She may have ruffled a few feathers, but her vision of radio is very exciting.”
What is unusual about Helen Shaw is that most people you talk to have no difficulty in holding both views about her at once.
“I do not have a very pleasant personal relationship with her,” says yet another senior producer, who prefers not to be named, “but I have to say I admire the changes she has made. She is very single-minded and driven, and I believe in her ability entirely. Previously, things were getting stale, management was benign but ineffective—with Helen there is definitely a sense of leadership.”
How exactly she plans to deal with her most pressing dilemma is anybody's guess. “The split schedule, with Joe Duffy and then Gareth and now Des Cahill standing in for Gay, is totally unsatisfactory, and Helen has made that clear,” according to a programme-maker. “It's inevitable that whoever fills that slot on Mondays and Tuesdays will be compared to Gay and will never get a chance to develop in their own right—it's known to be a poisoned chalice within the station. But what can she do? There is a feeling that she might just tell him to go, if he's not already planning to retire in June, but then broadcasters like Gay Byrne don't come along every day.”
For some years now, the station's heads have debated whether to transfer Gerry Ryan, 2FM's eminent broadcaster, to an early slot on Radio 1. Ryan, who debated joining Radio Ireland last year, has a huge listenership on 2FM, but the fact that his style is so different to Byrne's has put him in the frame as successor. “The only difficulty there,” according to a senior broadcasting figure, “is that you'd lose his 2FM audience and risk alienating Radio 1's listeners, who tend to be more conservative.”
The other scenario being considered is that Marian Finucane could move to the 9.10 a.m. slot with a current-affairs programme; but, again, “Liveline gets more listeners than the 1.30 news, so it will need a strong presenter to replace her.” Both Emily O'Reilly, who was widely praised for her brief stint on Radio Ireland's Daybreak programme last year, and Richard Crowley of Morning Ireland will replace Marian Finucane when she takes a break later this year, and both may be considered as possible replacements.
“She knows where the fault lines are in radio, and so she tries to suit horses for courses,” says the producer of one leading show. “If someone's ‘being carried' she'll talk to them and try to see where they fit in best. She did that with Gareth O'Callaghan; he's taking over Drivetime on 2FM from Barry Lang.”
But others complain that her lack of tact and brusque personal style inform all relationships with her. “She took a very senior broadcaster out for dinner to discuss his plans and needs in the station,” said the producer, “and when he nervously remarked, ‘This is like a date,' Helen snapped, ‘No, this is certainly not a date!' And everyone was upset about the way the dismissal of Treasa Davidson was handled. She'd given long service, and she deserved better than that.”
Treasa Davidson, the presenter of Playback, had actually retired from RTÉ three years earlier, but she had been retained, along with several others, on a “half-job” contract. She says she was summarily informed that her programme was being axed and, when she went to Helen Shaw's office to ask for a reason, she was told, “Did nobody ever tell you your voice had deteriorated?” Ms Davidson says, “I felt physically sick. My voice is my livelihood. Of course it had aged, but people wrote to me and told me that I sounded the same as ever—even Cardinal Cahal Daly wrote saying he would miss me. And Playback had the biggest listenership of the Saturday-morning schedule. I'm only getting a pension of £7,000 from RTÉ, so I have to look for a new job.”
Helen Shaw has denied being quite so abrupt with Ms Davidson and, ißn an e-mail to Radio Centre staff, explained that the contracts of retired personnel “cannot continue indefinitely,” as such a practice “affects our ability to make commitments” to newer, younger employees.
E-mail, along with her monthly open-forum meetings, has become a favoured method of communication with the new radio director, “to the extent that you're now afraid to go to your e-mail for fear of what you might find there,” says a researcher. After Today with Pat Kenny broadcast a live interview with a convicted terrorist—Sammy McCrory, on the phone from inside the Maze on the day of Mo Mowlam's visit—there was war within the station when it emerged that the director general, Bob Collins, was still considering a request from the newsroom to conduct an identical interview. Ms Shaw excoriated the team involved in the interview and later e-mailed staff, warning them off similar stunts in future: “You can bet your wage packet,” she warned them, that the same thing would not have happened without serious repercussions within the BBC.
“But at least she makes decisions, and makes them quickly,” says another programme-maker. “Previously, you might come up with an idea for a programme, and six months later you'd still be waiting for the go-ahead. Now, you open your e-mail and you have an answer that same day: ‘Yes. Helen.' And even when it's ‘No. Helen,' at least you know where you stand.”
When the post of editor of Radio 1 was advertised recently, Ms Shaw invited one senior producer to apply for the post and then appointed a different candidate, Anne Marie O'Callaghan, who had worked in both BBC Radio 4 and Radio Ireland. “She certainly has ruffled feathers, and now the appointment of a second young woman, from a diverse background, has upset a few suits,” says a broadcaster, “but where's the harm in that? And, because Anne Marie O'Callaghan has a strong arts background, we're hoping that's a sign of Helen's commitment to the arts. At the moment, the schedule is dominated by Morning Ireland and Gay Byrne and Pat Kenny and Marian Finucane, and the arts programmes are very much the poor relations.”
Other changes that Ms Shaw has so far introduced have involved tightening up programming so as to give listeners less of an opportunity to tune out. Brendan Balfe presents Two for the Show on Sunday mornings following the splitting of the service to broadcast the religious services on medium wave (a change that required ministerial approval, as it involved an increase in broadcasting hours), farm prices have been dropped and consigned to Aertel—to the disgust of the outraged readers of the Farmers' Journal—and Saturday View now incorporates the one o'clock news, instead of beginning at 10 or 12 minutes past, when it ended.
Other changes on the horizon in RTÉ may have a more profound effect on the station. A major organisational review, headed by Eugene Murray and Liam Miller, is currently under way to examine all aspects of the station's operation with a view to honing budgets and pruning the flab, and a parallel review is being carried out by the station's unions. Both are expected to report by the end of May, and then a range of generous redundancy packages is expected to be on offer for a short time. RTÉ has 1,300 full-time, “permanent and pensionable” employees, many of whom have been in situ since the station opened and are now nearing retirement age, and so it is anticipated that a substantial number of the necessary job cuts can be achieved without too much pain. A further 600 staff are on “continuous employment” contracts, which effectively mean they have no real security of tenure.
Helen Shaw has fought to achieve more permanent contractual arrangements for her producers, although their finalisation is being delayed by negotiations over pension credits for time already served. She altered the managerial structure so that, instead of senior personnel commanding what one producer described as “their little fiefdoms,” each now takes charge of a different section of broadcasting time and all the programmes within it, divided into daytime, evenings and weekends. She has also ensured that the station's two “radio cars”—actually outside-broadcast units in vans—are permanently on call for broadcasters. Previously, says one well-known broadcaster, “we had to book them months in advance.” And Konvenience Korner, Lee Dunne's radio soap, is now broadcast on a daily basis for ten minutes, instead of for longer slots twice a week, which has filled the gap between the close of the Gay Byrne Show and the lunchtime news and weather. In a first step towards continuity on the 11.00 a.m. to 12.40 p.m. slot, the separate definition of the stand-in programme as Upbeat was quietly dropped, as was its signature tune, which has been replaced by the more familiar tune that announces the Gay Byrne Show.
What more success the new director—who is said to revel in the nickname “the Midget from Hell,” which she earned in the BBC—will have with that slot remains the subject of much comment and speculation within RTÉ. Whatever the outcome, a failure of determination will not have played a part in it. “We call her the Führer on Wheels when she comes flying out of the office, red in the face, ready to give somebody a roasting—and when you've been roasted by Helen Shaw you stay roasted,” says one young producer. “But she doesn't seem to hold any grudges. She might bawl you out one week—and she tends to use quite emotional language, like ‘you betrayed me, I'm so disappointed'—but the next week you'll get a really great gig.”
The height of the partitions in the open-plan Radio Centre offices provide another, literally unforeseen, problem for staff: “She's so small that she could be standing behind you listening to you bitching about her,” says a producer. “She tends to shoot from the hip, certainly not the hail-fellow-well-met type, but you always know where you are with her.” One veteran broadcaster remarked, “I don't believe she is fully aware just how much people are behind her.”