SO, the debate about the future shape of RTE continues. Good. On Thursday, the chairperson of the RTE Authority, Professor Farrel Corcoran, warned, in a letter to The Irish Times, that creeping right-wingery could "further casualise work and reduce job security" in media organisations. He's perfectly right. Many privately-owned newspapers and radio stations are clearly in it just for the money and their blatant propaganda reflects this.
Professor Corcoran writes about the "ideological thrust... to promote the stereotype of the public company as always and inevitably inefficient, bureaucratic, overstaffed, arteriosclerotic - in effect, `tired' - in contrast to the assumed vibrancy of the private company". This thrust is very real and is most clearly evident in the output of Independent Newspapers. Nobody should doubt this, despite the fact that there is an unwise timidity across much of the rest of the media to say so.
Whether it is paralysing politeness, fear, hypocrisy or whatever, which underpins the general reluctance to discuss openly the political projects of our media organisations, that reluctance is real. For that reason, Professor Corcoran's defence of public service broadcasting is timely and important, indeed essential. But it would be wrong to assume that just because RTE is still, significantly (albeit with a growing proportion of contract workers), a public service employer, that it is an ideal public service broadcasting organisation.
The two are not necessarily synonymous and some of the reasons are obvious. Financed by both licence fee and advertising, RTE is kept afloat (indeed, in profit) by public and private money. The public money is guaranteed - under threat of legal action - but the advertising revenue must be competed for. RTE does well in winning ad loot but knows that to do so, it must cater to the values of private money. Fair enough, that's commercial reality.
But it's not right to ignore the fact that RTE has become increasingly slack in fulfilling its public service remit. The general shift to the right in party politics - which has seen the Labour parties here and in Britain abandon much of what they stood for has, naturally, blown not just RTE, but most media organisations, in the direction of the prevailing political wind. But, of all companies, media organisations must be held particularly responsible for their complicity in shaping the politics of the present.
With rare exceptions Professor Corcoran's letter among them - RTE has appeared to embrace the New Right agenda with a fervour not in keeping with the spirit of public service broadcasting. It's all very well to make the argument that commercial realities must be recognised and licence fees kept down, but such an argument harbours a degree of disingenuity too. We approach the "this hurts me more than it hurts you" school of dissembling.
Was it public service broadcasting which saw RTE enforce Section 31 with more vigour than even the legislators expected? Was it public service broadcasting which practically wrecked current affairs television? Was it public service broadcasting - remembering that independent film makers, while using private money, are still members of the public - which decreed that RTE would exert vice-like control on the independent sector? Is it public service broadcasting to allow a small group of broadcasters (some excellent, others no better than moderate) to dominate the schedules on TV and radio to the extent that they do?
We can continue. Is it public service broadcasting that makes RTE producers recycle the same small band of talking head guests on so much of its talk TV and talk radio? Is it public service broadcasting to see RTE regularly behave as though it were an arm of government (Section 31; the missed scandals and coverage of the North which British television screened; the largely uncritical acceptance of John Major's and John Bruton's bumbling on the peace process)?
It would be unfair to ignore the fact that the people who run RTE are in a difficult position. Squeezed by a prevailing right-wing political ideology, by the pressure to make money, by competition from big terrestrial and satellite outfits, by looking over its shoulder at government, at the private sector and at the press, compromises must be made. Fair-minded people recognise this, Indeed, all but the most deluded in RTE know the score.
So, inevitably, there is grubbiness in trying to please and placate everybody. The difficulties of RTE are not a tale of arch-villains, even though much reaction to criticism suggests a siege-mentality at the top of the organisation. Of course, RTE executives should fight back and defend themselves. But there is an impenetrability in many high-level areas - not the Authority - which can be explained only by fear or arrogance (or, perhaps, a blend of both). Of the two, arrogance strongly suggests itself as the more likely.
Farrel Corcoran's letter was in response to a TV column written by Nuala O'Faolain in which she, suggested that "RTE has a real problem with job-for-life tiredness." It seems to me that both Professor Corcoran and Ms O'Faolain are correct in their arguments. He is right to defend vigorously the principle of secure jobs and the potential these give for quality programme-making in the national broadcasting organisation. She is right in recognising that a hierarchical, timid-to-power and arrogant-to-weakness organisation has left many among its workforce (and its public) dispirited and disillusioned. Ask them.
Similar models operate in most media organisations these days as the relationships between power and programme-makers (or journalists, or whatever) become increasingly unequal. It may well sound revoltingly saccharine - given the spats of recent weeks - but most critics, who support public service broadcasting, genuinely care for RTE. After all, it's supposed to belong to all of us and it has the power to shape and mould much of what we construe as our Irish identity.
But, with fewer and fewer exceptions (yes, Gay Byrne has had a few excellent Late Late Shows - the Liam Gallagher gig, in particular - since a recent column here criticised it) RTE has gone much softer and safer than the lives of thousands of the public who pay their licence fees. By all means, entertain us, but there's much more to public service broadcasting than that. Telling the truth about our society - and our media - would be a good place to start.
ANYWAY, after the sermon, a few truncated reviews. A vision in a shocking-pink power suit, Anthea turner presented British television's most repulsive-ever orgy of emotional pornography. All You Need Is Love, with Ms Turner acting the hybrid role of simpering, coquettish social worker, made you wonder where all that renowned British reserve has gone.
Instead of a stiff upper lip, this outrage was characterised by Ms Turner pinching up her nose, in a Felicity Kendall-style affectation. Every time she did it, the urge to snap a clothes-peg on her pert hooter became irresistible. Then she would simper with a whine - a sort of punctuating "aaaaww" which demanded that a gobstopper be added to the clothes peg.
"Anthea Turner shares extraordinary stories of love," said the programme note. But the unfolding horror was not signalled by such brevity. She was the conductor of a "Love Bus" which scoured England looking for victims. "When you are dealing with love and emotion, you have to be subtle and sensitive," cooed Ms Turner. As lovers, parted by distance (or dispute, were reunited, the awful Anthea invited them - and us voyeurs - to have "a good blub". Please!
Sitting outside the "Love Lounge" which looked like a brothel in pastel shades, the sort of place where Laura Ashley might get her rocks off Anthea looked like she might emulate that other leggy flasher, Sharon Stone. She didn't, but the emotional pornography of making the private public was more vulgar than your common-or-garden meat porn, which, while crude and tasteless, is less hypocritically invasive than this awful television circus of exhibitionism and schmaltzy cannibalism. A truly vile programme.
IN contrast, Modern Times: Flatmates, though it had its circus elements, was a compulsive documentary. It followed the guests of three households to find suitable house-sharers and was, expectedly, laced with urban anthropology, poorly-disguised sexual longing and enough over-confident young people to make an IDA "Young Europeans" poster.
Made by Lucy Blakstad, a person-watcher of riveting sharpness (who, in the past, gave us Lido and Weekenders), the programme's observations confirmed worst suspicions: house-sharing is best-suited to extrovert predators. Three young Christian women were seeking a young Christian man with male friends. But they insisted that there could be no debauchery at all. They wanted a pray-mate of the month.
Three Oxbridge lads (This Life efforts without the angst) took polaroid snaps of the women who sought to share their house. Two girls in Fulham - Tara and Helen - were looking for "Australian crumpet with tight buns". One of them asked a prospective house-sharer what he looked like "in a towel in the morning". Without either humour of self consciousness, the idiot frowned and assured the oestrogen-charged duo that he looked "pretty damn good". Next!
One interviewee for the Christian household seemed to be doing well until he requested, just as he was leaving, "to set the basement". Whoa! Even the Christians whose rules were culling the field at an alarming rate, felt the frisson and backed off the mole quicker than you could say Amen! But, overall, this was great stuff But why are all these young brutes and sirens so confident? Like British reserve, British self-effacement seems dead.
AS a one-off documentary, James Gandon - A Life was a fine example of biography, enhanced by historical context and, most of all, by splendid photography. The script was, perhaps, a little busy, but it did bring to lift Ireland's most famous architect. Like a fine building, it was functional, but it was the visuals which really made it.
Of the new series on RTE, Alar Gilsenan's Home Movie Nights had most to recommend it. Putting music to home movies and turning up the symbolism to full volume cast the past as a mix of nostalgia, naturalism and certainties.
This being Gilsenan, there were head-stones and Corpus Christi processions and papal flags and Dev and Jackie Kennedy and the Pope at Shannon and, of course, the staple of all home movies - seaside holidays.
Sure, the music nudged us towards a way of remembering, but it was the lost certainties of Irish life which lingered. The church was in its pomp, the powerful were unquestioned and the people were processing along the streets of Ennis and along a path of history which, falsely. seemed predictable. Television was the main-instrument of change, of course, and RTE, though it seemed frighteningly glamorous in its early years, had the goodwill of most Irish people. It can have it again but only if it halts the slide towards tabloid TV.