{"id":350629,"date":"2026-03-17T11:00:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T11:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/350629\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T11:00:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T11:00:07","slug":"pat-kenny-is-refreshingly-candid-about-his-shift-to-weekends-on-newstalk-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/350629\/","title":{"rendered":"Pat Kenny is refreshingly candid about his shift to weekends on Newstalk \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

With last Friday\u2019s confirmation of Rick O\u2019Shea<\/a> as the full-time presenter of RT\u00c9<\/a> Radio 1\u2019s Arena, the most turbulent period in the history of Ireland\u2019s radio schedules has drawn to a close. Over the past six months, virtually every slot in the weekday schedules of both national talk stations has seen a change of personnel.<\/p>\n

It is fitting in a way that O\u2019Shea should be the last piece of the jigsaw. Unlike the other changes, the vacancy he fills was caused not by an editorial decision but by the sad and untimely death of the previous presenter, Se\u00e1n Rocks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Otherwise nearly every programme between 7am and 8pm on Radio 1, with the exception of News at One, where Rachael English<\/a> took over from the retiring Bryan Dobson<\/a> in 2024, has seen a change of personnel since last summer.<\/p>\n

Over at Newstalk, only Andrea Gilligan<\/a> and Se\u00e1n Moncrieff<\/a> remain where they were. Moncrieff (a columnist for this newspaper) is now the undisputed long-term survivor, having presented Newstalk\u2019s midafternoon show since May 2004.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn order for things to stay the same, everything must change.\u201d Tancredi Falconeri\u2019s observation in The Leopard seems to be a guiding principle of Irish radio. All this shifting and shuffling has doubtless been stressful for everyone involved, not least the various production teams, but the new landscape still feels oddly familiar. There have been no radical alterations in format. <\/p>\n

The nearest thing is a reordering of the midmorning flow at Radio 1, with Oliver Callan<\/a> shifting to a later, longer slot and David McCullagh<\/a> coming on straight after Morning Ireland. But the general-interest chat format remains a constant throughout the day.<\/p>\n

All the focus, therefore, has been on who\u2019s doing the chatting in a game of musical chairs that has seen big names exit, slide sideways or arrive from elsewhere. Of all these, it was Ray D\u2019Arcy<\/a> who was most glaringly left standing when the music stopped.<\/p>\n

His recent interviews<\/a> promoting a new daily podcast have not shed further light on the circumstances of his departure from RT\u00c9. His account of whether or not he was given advance warning that his contract might be in jeopardy remains flatly at odds with RT\u00c9\u2019s statements on the matter.<\/p>\n

Pat Kenny<\/a>\u2019s comments to the Sunday Independent<\/a> at the weekend were rather more pointed and more revealing than D\u2019Arcy\u2019s. When you are 78 years old with half a century of broadcasting behind you, there is no need to kowtow to anyone, and Kenny was refreshingly candid about the mishandling, as he sees it, of his shift to weekends by Newstalk\u2019s management.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Whether grilling guests or praising fried food, David McCullagh\u2019s delivery is proper orderOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

He was particularly critical of the way his production team were kept in the dark about their new roles while negotiations over his own position had already concluded.<\/p>\n

Just as interesting were his views on the broader radio landscape and the role of what he called \u201cthe talent\u201d. He was critical of the shared obsession of radio managers and newspapers alike with the Joint National Listenership Research figures. \u201cI don\u2019t believe in the JNLRs. I never have,\u201d he said, suggesting that the print media\u2019s fondness for green and red arrows can create a feedback loop that damages both presenters and the programmes they front.<\/p>\n

He believes RT\u00c9 management in effect used its top presenters as human shields, diverting public and political attention towards star salaries and away from the organisation\u2019s own substantial failings. It is not a particularly popular position to take, but it is not an unreasonable one. <\/p>\n

The sums paid to some of RT\u00c9\u2019s top names \u2013 Pat Kenny among them \u2013 were impossible to justify. The responsibility for that rests with the management that agreed to pay them, not the presenters who negotiated the best deals they could.<\/p>\n

Kenny also questioned the logic of Kevin Bakhurst<\/a>\u2019s position that no RT\u00c9 presenter\u2019s pay should exceed his own salary of \u20ac250,000. As D\u2019Arcy also pointed out, this figure does not take account of pension contributions and allowances which, according to accounts for 2024, brought the director general\u2019s annual package to \u20ac339,954. Several senior managers also receive over \u20ac300,000. The salary cap, in other words, is not quite what is being presented by RT\u00c9.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a related question about whether RT\u00c9 intends to move other prominent presenters on to staff contracts when current arrangements expire. Changes in employment law, and a recent significant judgment on the status of food delivery workers, have renewed scrutiny of contracts in the media industry in general. RT\u00c9\u2019s particularly sorry history of bogus self-employment is another embarrassing management failure that has already cost the broadcaster millions, with more to come.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Ray D\u2019Arcy will need to do more than ponder aimlessly to draw listeners to his daily podcastOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

On the face of it, radio presenters, who show up daily to work with staff teams using company facilities, look very much like full-time employees under Irish law. Whether those presenters want or need the same employment protections as lower-paid gig economy workers is debatable, though. And Kenny points out correctly that broadcasters require the flexibility to respond to changing audience tastes.<\/p>\n

There is something about fronting live broadcasts to a mass audience that is closer to the performing arts than to a civil-service position, and most jobs in the performing arts are contract-based for precisely that reason. <\/p>\n

RT\u00c9 fell into the peculiar trap, over many years, of treating some of those roles as permanent when it had no obligation to do so, creating the worst of both worlds: overpaid broadcasters who couldn\u2019t be replaced. It may be on the verge of finding a new way to make the same old mistake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With last Friday\u2019s confirmation of Rick O\u2019Shea as the full-time presenter of RT\u00c9 Radio 1\u2019s Arena, the most…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9841,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[105919,159551,47886,93,61,60,47232,24562,41142,6131,152931,32975,124478,6085,41143,48154],"class_list":["post-350629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-andrea-gilligan","tag-bryan-dobson","tag-david-mccullagh","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kevin-bakhurst","tag-newstalk-radio","tag-oliver-callan","tag-pat-kenny","tag-rachael-english","tag-ray-d-arcy","tag-rick-o-shea","tag-rte","tag-sean-moncrieff","tag-sean-rocks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}