RTE should be reporting the news, not making it, but hardly a week goes by without new stories about the national broadcaster – or, more precisely, its ineptitude at handling its own finances.

Last week was exceptional, even by RTE standards, as it made the headlines for three different reasons.

One was a former employee’s rant about programming. The other two stories, seemingly unrelated, are curiously interlinked.

First, we have RTE’s latest wheeze at balancing the books. Not content with selling off land, it’s now selling off its possessions, namely some art that has adorned the studio walls.

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You get the feeling the only money-making scheme left is to sell off the staff.

Unfortunately, RTE doesn’t actually employ its top stars – they’re all “independent contractors”, meaning they’re free to walk at any stage.

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While 200 or so middle managers, assistant directors and deputy heads have been tasked with searching for loose change down behind the Late Late sofa, RTE has announced some touchy-feely news to try to counteract all this negative publicity.

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It’s working on a new chat show for 2020, and the big news is that it’s absolutely positively going to be presented by a woman.

Gender equality is a particular obsession with RTE, and it can hardly have escaped its notice that of the four chat shows, only one is presented by a woman.

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While Ryan Tubridy, Ray D’Arcy and Tommy Tiernan get the headline gigs, Miriam is reduced to filling in during the summer months.

All that will change in the spring when Saturday night will see a new show, to be hosted by one of five female presenters.

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According to reports, Jennifer Zamparelli, Kathryn Thomas, Doireann Garrihy, Angela Scanlon and Stephanie Preissner have done pilots.

The plan, apparently, is for Ray D’Arcy’s chat show to end its run at Christmas, Tiernan to take over until March, and then the new female-presented show to run until April.

It is, of course, a welcome development. As Tiernan has shown, a fresh approach to how you interview guests can overcome the hurdle of there being a limited number of interesting people to interview.

However, a subtext seems to have been overlooked.

D’Arcy’s annual €450,000 salary has been the subject of much discussion, and cutting his season short will give RTE a perfect reason to slash it.

I believe that, ultimately, is what this move is all about.

For all its posturing about gender equality, it seems RTE has hit on a novel way to save money on the new chat show – by getting a woman to present it.

It defies belief that the announcement of a new, female dominated chat show should be the source of criticism.

Know what? RTE has managed just that.

Herald