Summary: <br> Uki Goñi is a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Audible-The-Real-Odessa/dp/B0BBQ5QGQB/ref=sr_1_1?crid=WDMUJ3TTCUWB&keywords=uki+go%C3%B1i&qid=1688589225&sprefix=Uki+Go%C3%B1i%2Caps%2C224&sr=8-1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener external" data-wpel-link="external">historian</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/profile/ukigoni" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener external" data-wpel-link="external">journalist</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/ukigoni?lang=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener external" data-wpel-link="external">author</a> who has lived in the United States, Ireland, and Argentina.<br> <br> <br> <br> <a href="https://blog.hereshow.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Uki-Goni-scaled.jpg" data-wpel-link="internal"></a><br> <br> <br> *****<br> <br> <br> <br> Sometimes it helps to draw a parallel between two events in the news, but two big recent stories – in Ireland, the scandal of RTÉ lying about Ryan Tubridy’s salary, and internationally the over-before-it-began apparent coup attempt by Yevgeny Prigozhin, those two might seem like they exist on two totally different planes, never to intersect.<br> <br> <br> <br> But I think that there might be a parallel. To deal with RTÉ, I think that far too little attention was paid to an <a href="https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/rte-scandal-whistleblower-claims-broadcaster-gave-kickbacks-of-50m-to-ad-agencies/a848924733.html" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">anonymous article written in the Sunday Independent</a> by someone that Sindo editors assure us they know the identity of, and who is a senior Irish media ad agency figure. It tells some very important details about how the advertising world works.<br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> I’m not going to go through the article, but in short, it relates to the Tubridy affair because Tubridy was being paid out of a barter account that RTÉ maintained. The reason that account exists is because of, at the very best, a lack of transparency in the three-way deals whereby advertising agencies book advertising for a big clients on RTÉ, and possibly other broadcasters.<br> <br> <br> <br> The agency, theoretically, gets a 15 per cent commission. So some big company has a million euro to spend on advertising, they pay that to the agency, the agency adds value by using their expertise to book the most effective ads for the client’s target market; they pay RTÉ €850,000 euro for the ads, and they get to keep the difference. I’m not sure about the maths there, but I’ll let that go.<br> <br> <br> <br> But then, maybe at the end of the month or the end of the year, RTÉ gives the agency a retrospective discount. Based on the volume of ads they bought from RTÉ, RTÉ give them back a percentage of the cash.<br> <br> <br> <br> Obviously, unless the agency pays that back to the advertisers, whose money they were spending, that fattens up their commission very considerably. It seems that, in at least some cases, that’s what happened. The anonymous writer says that this practice has been made illegal in places like the US, but not in Ireland. Depending on how the contracts were written, that could constitute breach of contract, or even criminal fraud, but since we don’t have sight of the contracts, we don’t know.<br> <br> <br> <br> Why was it made illegal in the US? Think of the incentives that this sets up. Firstly, if the agency is getting undeclared retrospective discounts from the broadcaster, that they can just pocket as pure profit, then the advice of the advertising agency, their expertise that they are selling, should you buy ad space on RTÉ or on satellite channels, on Radio 1 or on TodayFM, that advice could be hugely coloured by which broadcaster gives the agency the biggest retrospective discounts, rather than just being motivated by the best interests of their clients.<br> <br> <br> <br> And what about the incentives for RTÉ? This system would create a huge temptation for them to set a very high headline price for their advertising,
