The year ahead
Meejit looks ahead to 2005 when public broadcasting will be in the frame and Iraq will be a big story again.
The new year promises to be a fateful one for public service broadcasting. That shlurping sound you've been hearing is commercial broadcasters salivating at the prospect of feeding on a licence-payer-provided subsidy for them to do public-spirited programming.
The diversion of 5 per cent of the licence fee to a new fund that's open to all (or most) comers actually started in 2004. But none of the money has been handed out yet, amid confusion and argument about how and by whom, the decisions about its recipients will be made. (The scheme is, by law, under the control of the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland.) Already the fund is pushing toward €20 million, more licence-fee income than, say, RTÉ Radio 1 gets in a year.
The cash, according to the legislation, can't be used simply for news and current affairs, nor can it be used to fill off-peak hours – except, rather ambiguously, "in the case of programmes for children or educational programmes". So it remains to be seen whether it will really tempt TV3 into a multi-part documentary series on Irish architecture, or get Today FM to devote an afternoon programme to traditional music and folklore.
And while other broadcasters get money to sound more like RTÉ Radio 1, Radio 1 will almost certainly come further to resemble a commercial broadcaster, at least in its own peak-listening hours.
Media coverage of changes at Montrose tends to focus on the fates of various personalities: whither Marian, the rise of Ryan, Gerry's itchy feet, etc. Less attention is paid to the steady process that underlies such issues: the gradual dumbing-down of daytime programming, with, eg, more competitions and less international coverage.
The listener's mobile-phone text may well be a great boon to accessibility, but it's not exactly a spur to sophisticated argument. Its ascendancy in Radio 1 typifies the tabloid infatuations of much radio: youth, smartarsery, celebrity, crude caricature.
The importing of what you might call "2FMism" into Radio 1 will be personified in 2005 by Ryan Tubridy, but – in an adorable twist of demographic fate – there is suspicion abroad that the populist trend is being encouraged by none other than Gay Byrne, keen to dispense free advice while he collects his €200,000 annual retainer.
One international story that will continue to get plenty of attention in 2005 is likely to be Iraq, not least because it offers the potential for some soap-opera personal drama.
The media drama will not, of course, focus on Iraqis, with the possible exception of a few pols and mullahs – Allawi, Chalabi, al-Sistani – at election time.
No, what's the fate of a few million Arabs and Kurds compared to the fall of, say, Donald Rumsfeld? The US defense secretary faced a rolling wintry snowball of humiliating attacks as 2004 ended, and (if he doesn't go soon) it's likely to turn into a spring feeding frenzy once Iraqi elections fail to bring peace 'n' stability, and Colin Powell finally comes out of the closet.
But attacking Rumsfeld as America's instrument of self-destruction is more or less as stupid as was praising him as America's instrument of "spreading freedom", a common line from an adoring media about 18 or 20 months ago.
The personalisation may be entertaining, but it's dopey analysis. Do we really believe Iraqis would be happier, and imperialism more justified, if there were, say, 100,000 more GIs on the ground?