Although RTE's stars receive huge attention in the media, and command huge salaries, their success is often based on the team of researchers, producers and reporters who work unheralded in the background.

Tubridy's main gripe was the removal of reporter Katriona McFadden from his team. A close friend of Tubridy, McFadden plays a large part in the show, and has worked closely with Tubridy for most of his RTE career. Tubridy insisted that the decision to reshuffle her and her colleagues to other programmes and other presenters was a mistake and asked Leddy to account for her decision. She obliged. Tubridy's show wasn't working, she told him. Dramatic changes were needed.

Dramatic changes are what RTE is getting at the moment, with some old hands at the national station calling the recent reshuffling of staff the most drawn-out they've ever seen. It began at the end of May with a complete change to the weekday schedule at the station, and this weekend, less than 50 days before a finalised schedule must come into effect, they are still continuing.

To many observers, the changes, which have been sparked by the recent success of Dublin station Newstalk 106 in getting a national licence, are not before time. In just three months, when Newstalk goes nationwide, RTE Radio will face its stiffest competition ever. Leddy has been brought in specifically to counter this threat. On Friday she scored her biggest success yet when RTE Radio announced that it had signed up Eamon Dunphy, who recently announced his intention to leave Newstalk after two years presenting its breakfast show.

'Cold and clinical' When the news of Dunphy's next move broke on Friday morning the atmosphere was said to be "beyond tense" in Newstalk.

While management at the station reeled at the news that Dunphy had been poached, staff were warned that they would be severely reprimanded for talking to media or leaking any other news about the presenter's departure.

Dunphy is not due to leave the station until mid-August when his contract expires, just in time for RTE 's constantly changing autumn schedule. Until then, Newstalk might consider changing the first line of its breakfast show presenter's biography on its website: "The way things are is never good enough for Eamon Dunphy", it reads.

The exact make-up of Dunphy's programme is not yet known. Although the Sunday Tribune understands that he will feature in a weekend slot, a spokeswoman for RTE said: "We have no details on the day, time or format of the programme.

We've just agreed in principle that he's coming on board."

Dunphy will be presenting a programme for one hour a week. This weekend, there was speculation that the Sunday current affairs programme, This Week, might make way for Dunphy's slot.

Dunphy's move was unprecedented. "I am surprised, " a radio insider told the Sunday Tribune this weekend, adding that the move mightn't satisfy someone as independently-minded and uncompromising as Dunphy. "Commercial radio by its very definition gives the presenter more leeway to do what they want to do.

When Dunphy was at Today FM and Newstalk, he could do whatever he wanted to. . . Unless he has cut an extremely exceptional deal, he will have to answer to others in RTE. He's going to find it a culture shock the way the producer system works in RTE radio."

The success in poaching Dunphy masks for the moment the controversy and upheaval Leddy has caused within RTE since she joined the station in January of this year. A former employee of RTE believes "she has been brought in to kick ass. She is not of the RTE gene pool and is coming from a BBC background".

But Leddy's tactics have angered employers and presenters, many of whom have recently found through media leaks that their jobs have changed. In private, she has come under fire from staff for not communicating changes before releasing the details to the media.

Last weekend, Leddy called in 20 backroom staff, consisting of researchers and reporters, and told them they would no longer be working on their shows. The building was left in turmoil as staff and presenters attempted to come to terms with the comprehensive changes that came without the slightest warning. The loss of Tubridy's entire staff was a major blow, but Pat Kenny, Marian Finucane and Joe Duffy were all said to be extremely annoyed by the changes made to their teams.

A spokesman for RTE may have claimed the shake-ups were "just part of the normal process" in the station, but it didn't take long for word of anger among staff to leak out. "It was brutal, " one staff member said. "Two members of management walked around and told people they were out of shows. It was totally out of the blue and it was cold and clinical."

Leddy's toughness was demonstrated earlier on this year when John Kelly was summoned to her office and told his popular Mystery Trainwas being axed. Myles Dungan's Rattlebag received similar treatment, causing the station to be accused of dumbing down its arts coverage. The Arts Council met with Leddy to discuss the arts programme schedule in RTE, but the issue remains unresolved.

Last week, theSunday Tribune revealed there was strong speculation that Ronan Collins could be squeezed out of the autumn radio schedule in order to make way for an extended Tubridy show. As of yet, Collins' future hangs in the balance.

"When you're a manager you have a duty to tell people what's going on. The fact that staff are finding out what's happening in newspapers seems to me to be poor management, " the former RTE employee said. "But Ana Leddy doesn't want bitty programmes like Ronan Collins and Rattlebag. She wants chunks of programmes where there's a consistency in listenership so people won't just tune in for an hour and then switch to something else."

Dunphy's impending move has increased the likelihood that more staff from RTE and Newstalk will switch allegiances in the coming weeks and months.

Since Newstalk announced it was going to apply for a national licence, positions in the station have become hugely sought after with staff from many media outlets considering the move.

'Audio version of the Irish Times' And RTE is not immune to defections. The most likely target is Marian Finucane, in whom Newstalk has previously expressed interest. The station needs a big name, particularly since disquiet within the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland will have increased following the Dunphy move. The commission is said to be furious that Newstalk will not fulfil its promise of including Dunphy and Damien Kiberd's lunchtime slot in their autumn line-up.

The format they proposed to the BCI is falling apart, and they need to control the damage before they haemorrhage listeners and lose the BCI's trust. One strategy to win listeners will be to convert listeners who have grown tired of RTE 's Dublin-centric output.

"There's a saying amongst radio reporters that when there's snow in Donnybrook, the world comes to a halt, " the former RTE employee said. "Ana Leddy is on record as saying that she wants to see less copies of the Irish Times on the desks of producers. Radio 1 has become an audio version of the Irish Times and is very D4 in its team. They live in a Donnybrook goldfish bowl. A mudslide in Mayo gets a mere mention, but when the Tolka flooded, it was as if the world had ended."

Success for Newstalk would be highly lucrative. When it comes to advertising revenue, RTE predictably brings in the most cash. Rates per advertising spot on weekday Radio 1 range from 130 for night-time segments to 1,950 for the peak listening hours of 7.30-9am.

Newstalk charges a mere 250 to advertise during the Dunphy show from 7am9am and just 150 for anytime between 9am and 4.30pm. These prices will undoubtedly shoot up when they go nationwide. Advertisements on the Ryan Tubridy, Pat Kenny and Ronan Collins shows, meanwhile, cost a whopping 980.

This goes to 1,000 for the News At One.

But with the steady stream of bad publicity coming from RTE in recent weeks, staff axings and morale plummeting, could RTE 's lucrative advertising revenue be at risk? Not at all, according to Stuart Fogarty, managing director of AFA O'Meara Advertising. "There's a very simple, old adage in advertising, " he said, "and that is that money chases the audience. If a programme has enough ears, it will get the advertising."

Fogarty believes the changes at RTE are in fact a positive step that could lead to even more revenue. "RTE have to keep refreshing their schedule to keep up with their audience and that's a good thing, " he said. "Certainly the changes may be causing grief in there now, but that's inevitable and quite frankly, as an advertiser, we don't care. Once they deliver an audience, they will continue to get the advertising. It's as simple as that."

Now that Newstalk is going nationwide, the advertising wars are just about to kick off. "Newstalk is a massive threat to RTE, " said Fogarty. "They've done a tremendous job in recent years; they have brilliant people in Damien Kiberd, Sean Moncrieff and Orla Barry; they won Best Radio Station last year. They're a talking radio station and now that they are going nationwide it's going to be an obvious head-to-head with RTE."