Irish Media Blog

Is RTE Radio 1 being dumbed down?

gallarus1 — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 14:41:00 +0000

If the Irish Times is the newspaper of record for Ireland then RTE Radio 1 may be considered the radio station of record for Ireland. There was a time when that would have meant something that listeners could identify easily. It meant a certain amount of seriousness, probably more talk than music and a platform where national and or serious issues would be debated.

Listening to RTE Radio 1 over the last few weeks it is clear that it is losing the plot. The powers that be clearly have no notion what kind of station they want it to be. For the last few years every time there has been a change in the Radio 1 schedule the management of the station have been at pains to state that there is no dumbing down at the station but if you look back cumulatively over the years it is clear that there has been a serious dumbing down. Just as an example I do not recall hearing a proper obituary of the former President Patrick Hillery. The last straw for me was the recent decision to broadcast sport from 2.00pm until 9.00pm each Saturday and Sunday casting such wonderful programmes such as ‘Off the Shelf’ to the outer limits of the schedule on a weekday night when most sensible people with jobs are heading off to bed. All serious ‘talky’ programmes are now confined to the margins of the schedule and instead we have a diet of magazine type programmes from 9.00 am to 10.00pm with the exception of Joe Duffy and the news programmes.

I know the summer is a time for sport and particularly this year with the Olympics in Beijing. However there are some, yours truly amongst them, who are bored to distraction by sport. Manchester United and Chelsea are really big multinational businesses and we don’t devote half the day to the competition between Google and Yahoo. As for the Olympics it would be more appropriate if they were sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline or Pfiezer. Yet Radio 1 seems to think that as the number 1 national radio station sport is worth most of its week-end broadcast time and those who want serious radio can bugger off and listen to one of the interminable music stations that were supposed to give us choice when the independent sector was licensed.

In a way you cannot blame RTE Radio 1 management. In the broadcasting climate of the market audience share is the measure. No one in RTE has had the courage to challenge the Government and say that Radio 1 is about national identity and culture and not about making a buck so we are going to broadcast drama, documentaries, poetry and reviews. We are going to have religious, education, science and health programmes and all these programmes will be broadcast at a time when people can listen.

There are many fine programmes on Radio 1 but they are becoming fewer and fewer and I fear that if the management of RTE 1 do not take ten steps backwards and look at what the station has become many of them might vanish altogether as has already happened to other programmes. Now back to the Saturday afternoon play on Radio 4.

Kevin Myers Views

gallarus1 — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:53:16 +0000

Well back to Kevin Myers. Complaints have been lodged against him by a number of organisations complaining about incitement to hatred etc. This raises the issue of free speech. While Myers was wrong, incoherent and just plain silly taking judicial proceedings against him threatens the whole concept of free debate. In a free and open society such as Ireland (republic of) the institutions of the country both state and civil are strong enough to deal with a diatribe such as the Myers column without resorting to the law. It is a slippery slope to start upon. Unfortunately the guardians of our moral conscience always want to resort to coercion in some form to make us all think straight. This applies both to the right and the left. A free and open society has nothing to fear from someone exercising the right to express a view because if it is view that expresses prejudice or hatred their will always be enough good citizens to counter that view.

A good example of this are those communities who resisted the Dept of Justice’s efforts to place asylum seekers amongst them. They expressed all kinds of irrational fears about epidemics and crime etc. Once the people arrived almost without exception these communities welcomed them in the end and in some cases came to defend their rights to remain in Ireland.

We don’t need to prosecute Kevin Myers for his views. We just need to treat them with the contempt they deserve (don’t read them) and trust the good sense of ordinary people to see them for what they are. The sad ramblings of a poor individual who seems to think that the whole world is trying to get one up on him.

Kevin Myers Column

gallarus1 — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:52:50 +0000

Once again we have been treated this morning to another rant by Kevin Myers. This time it was about the poor of Africa. Myers seems to be obsessed by the poor, underprivileged and vulnerable, blaming them for their own condition. Regretfully when he launches forth other sections of the media engage with him or his views debating how valid his arguments are. An example was this morning when Myles Dungan, filling in for Pat Kenny, brought on John O’Shea to repudiate Myers views. O’Shea, not of one of my favourite commentators on world affairs, did a good job in demolishing Myers views in a few sentences. But that is not the point. Myers is probably the best example of the columnists who increasingly fill our newspaper pages with the sole purpose of sharing with us their half baked theories about the state of the country or the world.

Myers in his article this morning attacks the poor of Africa for becoming poor and remaining poor and for compounding their problem by having lots of children. He then like many of his columnist colleagues proposes simple solutions to complex problems. It is the kind of argument you could hear any night in a pub or at a bus stop. What Myles Dungan should have done this morning was to raise issues about the quality of Myers views rather than their validity. Indeed there is an argument that such half baked views should be ignored entirely. By engaging with his arguments suggests that there might be some value or worth in them when there clearly is not.

Myers views raises the wider issue of what the point or purpose of these columns is. Myles Dungan made the point this morning that at least it raised a debate. Maybe so but if it does it is a false debate because the premise on which it is raised is weak. Much better to have a debate based on serious research and tight argument. In fairness to columnists Vincent Brown and Fintan O’Toole are two columnists who do this and like them or loath them at least they do the work. Myers and many other columnists simply give us the benefit of their own views without considering any pros or cons. For example Myers ignored this morning centuries of exploitation, the history of colonialism, trade relations, corruption by westerns companies and the use by the US and the former USSR to fight proxy wars in Africa. He also ignored the progress that has been made in many African countries never mind the whole idea of talking about Africa as one great homogenous whole. After all it stretches from Egypt to South African. I am sure the Norwegians would be upset by being blamed for the Irish making a mess of the Celtic Tiger

The solution to the problem of underdevelopment and poverty in Africa is complex and difficult. Feeding the prejudice of sections of the Irish public in no way contributes to that solution or what we Irish might contribute to it. Let us have more real debate and less columns