To whom it concerns, this is The Late Late Show and here are your hosts ... the director general, the chief technology officer, the head of risk and compliance.

It really doesn’t have the same ring.

But as this week’s publication of the highest earning members of staff at RTÉ proved yet again, the era of big beast broadcasters at RTÉ is over. And in its place is the era of big beast bean counters.

Gone – except for one – are the presenters on high six-figure salaries. Vanquished too are all traces of Noel Kelly, for so long the invisible hand in “the market” for RTÉ presenters we heard about whenever someone was dispatched out in the media to justify their sky-high salaries. Now instead of stars, the top 10 earners’ list is a catalogue of suits – head of this, director of that, chief of the other.

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Writing in this newspaper in 1998, amid the first murmurings of public unease about presenter salaries, Muiris Mac Conghail estimated that the then-director general was probably fifth or sixth on the list of best-paid people at RTÉ. The top earner and the original big beast, Gay Byrne, was earning four or five times as much, about £500,000.

Now that situation has been directly inverted.

Part of the explanation........

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