`A journey of immense diversity, highlighting our cultural differences whilst emphasising our common destiny in a spirit of joy and optimism . . . a once in a lifetime experience that will be unforgettable, compelling and life-enhancing, a lasting legacy, a collective inheritance."

That's the purple prose with which RTE announced its upcoming millennium programming for New Year's Eve. To which you might reasonably reply: "Oh come on - it's only television".

But the disjunction between RTE's presentation of itself as a pearl in the nation's crown and the rather grimmer reality of slashed budgets, axed programmes and falling standards is becoming increasingly apparent.

Turn to the TV pages of this newspaper today, and you'll find that Network 2 this evening offers us Classic Friends and ER: The Clooney Years - mutton-dressed-as-lamb titles for creaky re-runs of well-worn imported shows.

Over on RTE 1 there's Saturday Live, the channel's latest, disastrous attempt to buck every accepted rule of broadcasting by producing a chat show with a rotating roster of hosts.

It's not surprising that audiences and critics alike are holding their noses. Both channels' schedules point up the serious problems facing our national broadcaster - a failure of programming nerve when it comes to in-house productions, and an increasing reliance on acquired, foreign-produced material, particularly on the second channel.

When RTE's director-general, Bob Collins, stood up in front of staff on Monday to announce at least 270 redundancies in the next two years, he wasn't telling them anything they didn't know already.

The figures tally almost exactly with those laid out in the Review of RTE's Structures and Objectives produced by the broadcaster last year. The review identified weaknesses and challenges that needed to be addressed if the broadcaster's financial position was not to become untenable.

"A `no change' position will result in forecast group deficit of between £10 million and £20 million by 2001," according to the report.

What's notable, though, is that there is no suggestion that cutting staff numbers by more than 10 per cent will have any effect at all on the quality or quantity of the broadcaster's output. It would seem that there are currently hundreds of people in RTE whose contribution to the station's output is negligible to non-existent.

But RTE's financial situation is not quite as parlous as it would have us believe. The £130 million which it gained from the sale of its 25 per cent share of Cablelink was a massive windfall, considerably higher than had been projected.

It leaves the broadcaster in a far stronger position to finance acceptable redundancy packages and to invest in essential new digital technologies. Past experience and present conditions offer cause for concern about how well the money will be spent.

The current short-termism in Montrose doesn't bode well. Why, for example, was it necessary to axe the Network 2 programmes, Later with Finlay and Gallagher and Later with John Kelly in mid-series "for budgetary reasons"? Both programmes were relatively cheap, studio-bound productions; both appealed to the sort of constituencies which a public-service broadcaster should be obliged to address.

Some staff in Montrose mutter darkly about the amount of money devoted to one-off millennium programming this year, and the knock-on effect on other productions. Others are frustrated by the way in which programme-making is the only area which can be cut at times of financial difficulty. The overall impression is of management winging it. Similarly, from a position at the start of the year where it could get by without any breakfast TV service, the national broadcaster now apparently believes that we need two - hardly the best use of limited resources.

Finally, though, it comes back to what the viewer sees on his or her screen. "We are still proving, no matter what the begrudgers say, that we are providing a good service," Mr Mulholland told this newspaper at the millennium launch this week.

For the average viewer, though, all the evidence is that the begrudgers are right. The shabby treatment of John Kelly, one of the channel's real finds of the 1990s, is just the latest example of the cavalier way in which front-of-camera talent is treated.

With the two later shows gone, where is the public service ethos on Network 2? Increasingly, the output of the two RTE channels seems schizophrenic, with worthy (but often rather po-faced), factual programming on RTE 1, and wall-to-wall bimbos on Network 2.

With this kind of programming, RTE risks losing an entire generation of viewers - and, with digital TV looming, it's unlikely ever to get them back.