Fame, fortune and outrage

On Friday (2 June) Pat Kenny accounted on his programme he was going to be away for the remainder of June, July and August. Seemingly, the start of the exodus from RTÉ of the main presenters, with changes to the schedules and formats. How anyone ever agreed to allow presenters the same time off work as teachers enjoy (hardly a coincidence!) is incomprehensible. What is the rationale for this?

Listeners like sameness. They don't like changes to the schedules, nor changes of presenters. And if they like programmes at all, they don't like them dropped for the summer – for instance Tonight with Vincent Browne goes off air entirely for three months, with music replacing the programme.

Ana Leddy, the new head of Radio 1 can take decisions. This is another decision she has to take: presenters get six weeks off, maximum, and schedules don't change.

Actually, Pat Kenny's final programme of the season was a good one and his panel discussion with Diarmuid MacDiarmada, Terry Prone and Harry McGee was spirited, flowing and intelligent. Good radio.

More good radio on News at One with Sean O'Rourke, where he dissected the crisis over sex offenders. One caveat. He seemed to think the courts should make up the law to suit the popular mood. That seemed absurd until later in the day the Supreme Court did just that with the order for the release of "Mr A".

But the week's radio award goes to Liveline. No balance, no coherence, no analysis, just outrage, and it was magnificent. The decision of the producers to visit every one of the venues around the country where demonstrations were taking place over the release of a sex offender was inspired. The popular mood came in torrents over the airwaves. A powerful party-political broadcast against the Government.

Yes it is surely one of the functions of our public broadcasting station to reflect the public mood but is there also not an obligation to calmly address the issues involved?

The belief that Ireland was a safe haven for sex predators because an act in 1935 was found to be unconstitutional was absurd, for it ignored the plethora of other laws there are to protect children. The belief that the release of seven or eight predators would appreciably endanger children more than they are already endangered concealed the more important point that there was far, far more than seven child sex predators in our midst.

George Hook was first with the news that the Supreme Court had ordered the re-arrest of "Mr A" but none of those drivetime programmes explored the possible reasoning of the court for this unexpected decision – the senor de la casa is a member of the evil profession, sorry, the legal profession, and is of the view that the Supreme Court has lost whatever marbles it had.

There was a fascinating and disturbing programme on the rescheduled Radio 1 at 11am on Monday, the start of a series, Fame, with Geri Maye. It explored the craving among our young for fame and celebrity. I am not sure it was always that – in my days it wasn't fame we were after it was boys! Isn't there something weird that our young people seemingly don't want to do anything with their lives, or achieve anything, but simply want to be famous and it doesn't matter for what they may become famous? But then some of our radio presenters have fame, fortune and three months off over the summer. For what? p