Some time last year, I happened on a BBC Radio 4 discussion where the talk was of broadcasting. One of the participants was RTE's director general, Mr Bob Collins, and it warmed the heart to hear him hold the line on a style of public service broadcasting which his fellow panellists could no longer imagine being supported by the BBC.
How is it then that Mr Collins is about to deliver in Lyric FM a music channel following not the public service ideals of BBC Radio 3 but rather those of the unashamedly commercial Classic FM? The volte face will have far-reaching consequences.
RTE is the only organisation in the State with the resources to have contemplated the public service route. By taking the commercial one, they have probably closed off the other for ever. Had RTE chosen the public service option, the commercial one would have remained open.
The facts about Lyric FM are clear. Daytime programming will operate on a computer-dependent playlist system. Some 4,000 selected CD tracks have been graded and ranked (under headings like popularity, familiarity, mood and duration) and the results compiled as a computer database.
The computer is then used to generate each week's programming, following set priorities for mixing the various categories while also distributing the material to avoid close repetition.
It's then up to the producers and presenters to fine-tune the computer's suggestions and get them on air with a personal touch and DJ "ownership". The computer selector system will govern roughly 12 hours daily broadcasting (early morning up to 7 p.m.) on Lyric FM.
The major evening survivors from the existing FM3 service are the Saturday night slots for opera and Irish music, the NSO Friday evening concert, Calling the Tune (prominent personalities choose favourite music), and Gloria (Tim Thurston's choral music programme).
However, even the evening strands (and everything on Lyric FM is stranded so that listeners will be able to know what to expect at any time on any day) have been infiltrated with the Classic FM style of dumbing-down.
The Third Wave is "a mix of relaxed classical, jazz and contemporary music". The Lyric Sunday Concert is "a selection on the lighter side from opera, ballet and symphonic music".
This is on top of a weekday three-hour, mid-morning programme "for you to relax", and a 2 1/2 - hour, weekday drive-time show which also promises "relaxing music".
This is all a far cry from public service broadcasting for music and the arts as even the much-criticised, dumbed-down BBC Radio 3 knows it.
And it's also well removed from RTE's own starting point for its music and arts service.
The Lyric FM section of RTE's website documents the genesis of the new station. The terms of Montrose's 1997 proposal to the then minister for arts, Mr Michael D. Higgins, make interesting reading.
"It is envisaged that the channel would be free of advertising." It won't.
"The new channel would offer arts and cultural programming . . . arts performance as well as arts news, analysis and interpretation of arts and cultural material in Ireland and abroad." If there's a play or a poem or a literature or visual arts programme I haven't been able to locate it in the supplied schedule.
"The channel would serve an important minority and would also do a great deal to expose Irish composers, whose work is greatly neglected." The weekly ghetto for Irish composers continues in exactly the same late-night slot on Saturdays, only now it is to be presented by Dr Anthony Clare.
"Programmes offered at night to small audiences could be repeated during the day on the new service." This will be virtually impossible given the different nature of daytime and evening "stranding". The 1997 proposal promised concert recordings from within and outside RTE and "a strong core of orchestral, choral and chamber music, as well as contemporary new music". What the opening 1999 schedule mostly offers is nightly CD sequences misleadingly billed as "concerts".
This is an invidious Classic FM-style deception which tears apart the aesthetic integrity of the concert experience.
I've nothing against CD sequences, which are an essential component of most broadcast music services (TV's Performance Channel a notable exception). But a sequence made up of four different orchestras with four different conductors (which Lyric FM is offering) is about as far from an actual concert as you can get.
The "important minority" which RTE envisaged its new channel serving appears to have been redefined as a somewhat larger but now commercially-significant minority with radically different tastes and muzak-like needs.
However successful Lyric FM may turn out to be in listenership terms, personally I feel a sense of loss when I look at the difference between RTE's promises and its actual delivery.
The new service is not primarily aimed at music lovers.
Whatever successes it may score in commercial or broadcasting terms, the minimum musical challenge facing it is to set about realigning at least its evening schedule towards the listeners and concerts-goers who, for over 50 years, have provided RTE's performing groups with their raison-d'etre. I wish it well.