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Ball is out at TV3

Sport is the biggest casualty in the latest round of send-offs at the station, writes Claire O'Mahony

Trevor Welch, anchor of Sports Tonight which has been axed

Sinead Desmond and Mark Cagney of Ireland AM

One of the station's success stories, The Apprentice

Chief executive David McRedmond with Xpose's Lorraine Keane and newsreader Colette Fitzpatrick

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It was a black Monday in Ballymount last week. Staff at the TV3 studios there were informed that 12 people were to be made compulsorily redundant with remaining staff facing a 10% pay cut and executive pay being reduced by 15%, as of April.

Sports Tonight, which has been broadcast for 10 years and aired from Monday to Thursday, is gone, although its two anchors Trevor Welch and Sinead Kissane will remain with the station.

None of the imminent departures include any of TV3's high-profile presenters, such as Lorraine Keane or Mark Cagney, and a TV3 spokesperson would only confirm that the redundancies have come from across the board. They are said to include sports anchor Dave Kelly and sports presenter Nathaniel Cope. The merging of TV3's marketing and publicity functions has also resulted in job losses for head of PR and publicity Deirdre Walsh, as well as press officer Tamara Somers.

Unsurprisingly, the economic climate is being blamed, with chief executive David McRedmond stating that TV3 deeply regretted the redundancies and pay cuts but that the station has no choice. While TV3 had been outperforming in the TV ad market, it was not immune to the global downturn in advertising, which was exacerbated in Ireland by the market failure from RTE's dual-funding model, according to McRedmond.

So what's next for Ireland's first independent television station? While their RTE counterparts are reeling in the hundreds of thousands, the top-earning TV3 presenters earn significantly less, said to be in the region of €100,000. "It's no secret that they operate on the tightest budgets there," says a former freelancer who didn't want to named. "Certainly they're big fans of multi-tasking."

TV3 hopes the latest cuts will result in annual savings of €2m. Last Monday's announcements marked the second round of redundancies, following 15 voluntary redundancies last October which included director Niall McDermott, fiancé of news anchor Colette Fitzpatrick, and director of operations Peter Ennis. Last year, it cut its weekend news coverage, reducing its half-hour news bulletins on Saturday and Sunday at 5.30pm to mini-bulletins lasting five minutes.

While a TV3 spokesperson said that, in the future, the station would be concentrating on its live sport coverage, having recently acquired GAA and UEFA Champions' League rights, callers to The Ian Dempsey Breakfast Show on Today FM expressed dissatisfaction that Sports Tonight was being chopped while its lifestyle and entertainment show, Xposé, presented by Lorraine Keane and Lisa Cannon amongst others, was being kept on air. However, this show, initially dismissed by critics as lightweight, has steadily garnered a core audience. In the main, imported programmes such as Coronation Street and Dancing on Ice are the station's biggest attractions for audiences but the Irish remake of The Apprentice proved hugely popular, drawing audiences of over half a million every week, and the station is hoping and planning for a second series. TV3 maintains it will continue to focus on such homegrown entertainment over the coming months.

Paul McCabe, managing director of advertising agency MCM Communications, says that from an advertising viewpoint, TV3 is still a strong player in the market and its programming is very much aimed at specific audiences. "For the audiences it targets, namely housekeepers with children and adults aged 25-44, it performs very well and we would use it accordingly, as would most TV advertisers," he says. TV is as affected as any other sector by reduced advertising budgets and TV3 is no different in this regard but McCabe says the real issue facing TV3 is RTE's advantage as a result of dual funding. 'RTE is less exposed to the economic downturn because it is partially funded by the license fee. Over the mid-term this will manifest itself in RTE being in a much stronger position for buying programming rights – particularly sporting rights which tend to draw huge audiences and in particular amongst young males who may not watch a lot of other TV' said McCabe

Perhaps more than anything, it is the Xposé staff who serve as a metaphor for TV3.

The station, just like the girls, likes to convey a slick and cool image. But the Xposé team, belying their supposedly glamorous existence, work hard, writing their own scripts, editing the Xposé website, editing their footage and doing a quick clothes change for camera, pre-red carpet appearance, in hotel toilets. It's an effort, like the station, held up by hard work, scant staffing and low wages.