New Zealand and Ireland have much in common, perhaps the most passionately espoused being a dislike of self-promotion.
There are few things New Zealanders dread more than to hear others saying of them that “she’s got a bit up herself”, or “get a load of that cocky git!”
In Ireland, the term they have for it, always garnished with a particular arch of an eyebrow, is “notions”. The sentence, “Yer one’s got notions”, is enough to run the blood cold. Cheek and light sarcasm are near-compulsory in both countries, and no one minds a bit of blarney or its New Zealand counterweight, yeah-nah understatement. But acting the big “I Am” is held to be unforgivably insulting to one’s peers.
This makes it all the more bizarre that both countries – despite each having a population of only five million as well as complicated emotions about the one-time mothership, Britain – nevertheless foster their own rigorous hierarchy of faux-aristocrats through celebrity culture.
Ireland is therefore somewhat embarrassed to be into its second month of a splashy scandal about a popular TV presenter’s income. RTÉ's Ryan Tubridy turns out to have been paid by a secret fund that topped up his publicly disclosed €495,000 salary with an extra €75,000. The supplement, a pay rise, was artfully documented to look like payments to and for other parties to spare embarrassment, given that RTÉ had cut most staff’s pay and made a slew of redundancies.
Tubridy did nothing wrong, but although in a recent poll only 7% of Irish people said they disliked him, nearly half thought he should never be allowed on RTÉ again. Vladimir Putin’s wayward mercenaries, Donald Trump’s lawyers and the world’s inflation-harassed central bankers must feel dreadfully ignored by Ireland, because RTÉ's turbulence has swept them down the news bulletins day after day.
The media and public connive at celeb culture for just this frisson: the thrilling chance it affords when someone comes a cropper to be loftily self-righteous about the shallow banality of celebrity – before everyone invests heavily in more of it.
An intriguing question is why public broadcasters feel they need to pay “the talent” ever more fabulous salaries. Celebrity’s money-spinning power makes it somewhat defensible, but everyone guiltily knows the money is spun on empty calories. With the decline of “appointment” or terrestrial broadcasting, most state-owned broadcasters are struggling, their social licence up for negotiation. The media is one of the few sectors with no labour shortage. There’s plenty of replacement “talent” out there if a star huffs off.
When television was first introduced, it was understandable that mere presenters ascended to deity status. To those less-worldly and less-sceptical audiences, the seeming intimacy of the technology was magical. A neighbour of mine was among New Zealand TV’s original, glamorous auto-cue readers, and my six-year-old self boggled at her ability to fit inside the glowing box in black and white, then appear on the doorstep in colour to borrow a cup of milk.
Now, presenters are anachronistic. Viewers have overwhelmingly elected to cut the cackle, flocking to streaming services without the chit-chat packaging.
Yet humans are also creatures of habit, enough of them still watching or recording “appointment” TV to keep terrestrial-style television in business, but not enough to make it truly viable.
One potential tonic is that RTÉ's chair has deplored the broadcaster’s use of the term “the talent” as divisive and insulting to colleagues.
For his solace, “the talent” formerly known as Tubridy could do worse than head to Auckland to commune with Judy Bailey, the former TVNZ newsreader being one who well knows how quickly a few shock zeros in one’s pay packet can turn today’s talent and charisma into tomorrow’s unforgiveable notions.
