Reality will bite when TV winner gets pay cut

RTÉ’s run of bad luck with reality TV shows has reared its head again, with the revelation that the winner of the Five Women Go Back To Work show will face a pay cut.

The high-profile programme follows five women competing in the hope of landing a job on a new magazine at Ashville Media Group in Dublin.

However, it emerged a number of weeks ago that staff at the group have been asked to take a 10% pay cut as an alternative to redundancies.

This means that the winner of the RTÉ show will be faced with a pay cut as soon as taking up the job.

It’s not the first time an RTÉ show has blown up spectacularly. Who will ever forget the show Cabin Fever which, literally, sank spectacularly off Tory Island off the coast of Donegal in 2003.

Meant to be broadcast over eight weeks (until it sank after two weeks), it consisted of 10 contestants, most of whom had little or no sailing experience.

However, disaster struck on June 13, 2003, when the vessel ran aground. All of the nine remaining contestants and two crew were rescued by the Arranmore Lifeboat, but the vessel broke up on the rocks.

Ironically, the incident happened on Friday the 13th, and the ship’s name had been changed for the show. Sailing lore suggests that any ship renamed prior to setting sail will meet with a sorry end.

A report carried out into the incident stated the vessel breached its operating licence and had no effective watchkeeping.

It found contestants were fatigued at the time of the accident, and that the Global Positioning System, which could have helped the investigation, was taken from the vessel by skipper/owner Rodger Barton and lost ashore before the investigator from the Marine Casualty Investigation Board arrived.

Another recent RTÉ reality shows, Fáilte Towers, also failed to pass off without incident. The Irish Examiner revealed in late November that none of the 12 charities involved in the show had received a cent, almost three months after the last episode had aired. At the time, RTÉ confirmed no charity had been paid and could not say how much money would be made available because it was a “quite complex” system.

However, later that day they confirmed the exact figure and confirmed the money would be transferred within the next fortnight.