The muzzling of Gay Byrne

THE DROPPING of the 'shopping basket' feature from RTE's "Gay Byrne Hour", highlights the diffiiculty of putting almost any kind of consumer informaation over the airwaves, except advertisements. By Dermot Kelly

The reasons for the deciision are flimsy enough.largely due to the criticism by small . traders of the publicity addvantage it gave the Big Five supermarkets. According to the Federation of Trade Asssociations, the 'basket' denied other traders a look-in on a programme which was popuular with the housewives who have the spending of a lot of grocery money at their disscretion. There was the addiitional factor that the Broaddcasting Complaints Commisssion upheld the small traders' complaint - all of which was enough to make RTE have second thoughts.

So long as the content is innocuous and generalised (like the old RTF, programme "Making and Mending" ø'obtain a suitable solution from a reputable dealer"), a consumer advice programme can have a long run. The 'basket' survived for a long time considering how speciific and sometimes hurtful it was to powerful interests. RTE's television programme "Alert" had become quite specific about the names and makes of products when it was quickly pushed on to giving lectures about the social welfare system. The programme was soon dropped and has not been replaced. Consumer advice programmes are under constant review according to RTE, and a teleevision series is promised for this summer to replace "Alert", but its exact 'format remains to be decided.

Gay Byrne's 'shopping basket' may not have been statistically ideal, but it was a usefu I piece of consumer journalism. Its fault iay in the medium rather than the conntent (who can grasp the deetails of a prices survey being read out while one is bent over the kitchen sink?)

Print would have been a better medium for it. The absence of such consumer journalism in print, however, is a measure of the diffiiculty facing RTE. Even withhout the stranglehold of a statute and a requirement to provide balance, the newsspapers are reluctant to beecome involved in the messy business of naming shops and products. Sometimes it is a fear of complications and of the laws of libel, but more often, it is a reluctance to annoy the advertisers, who enjoy a virtual monopoly over the field of consumer information,

The recently passed Connsumer Information Act may prevent flagrant abuses and result in more carefully wordded advertisements but its effect will be negative rather than positive - the Director of Consumer Affairs will have no function in the dissemination of critical connsumer information,

One of the daily newsspaper features which does name names is" Action Call", the Irish Independent's letsshelp-solve-your-problem collumn. The motoring columns, which have been running much longer, provide a connsumer. 'service of sorts. But their value as a source of publicity was quickly recoggnised by the motor commpanies who now so heavily subsidise them (fares paid to Monte Carlo, for instance, to test the Ford Fiesta), that the consumer information that emerges is thin and necesssarily suspect. RTE Radio runs "Friday Farc " with Erner O'Kelly interspersing music with shopping hints, and on Thursdays, Rodney Rice's "Consumer View" answers queries from lissteners. Like the Indeependent's consumer column he depends heavily on this format rather than initiating programmes about topics of his choice.

One RTE man said, indeed, that answering audience queries may be the only satissfactory way to devise connsumer programmes in future as other formats simply leave the station open to too much pressure. Irish consumers, it seems, must speak up or settle for being ignored. Their Ralph Nader has not yet arrived.