jim – he retired a few years ago.

Nicely put, Jim. It’s quite refreshing, isn’t it, that in this day and age (and Christ, that makes me sound like the right old git) a show can thrive that doesn’t talk down to its listeners. No bollocksology with ‘text us with your comments’, no facebook page fuck-aboutery, no Twitter twattery; rather it’s ‘here’s the news, and after that we’ll be eating some clueless political hack for your delectation’

What’s interesting is that their pre-eminent position has not induced complacency. Sure, the formula – news+sports+traffic+interviews+papers+analysis+occasional light fluffy stuff+business – does not really change, but that’s the meat and two veg of a show like this.

While I agree that it is the original and best show of its kind, I think there has been, over the last year or two, an editorial looseness and, at times, sloppiness, that makes me shake my fist at the radio. I know it’s a live show and items can run long but when it happening every day, every hour it looks bad.

In terms of presenters, like Liverpool, it still doesn’t seem to know its strongest line-up and can sometimes struggle when the fringe players are in: Aine Lawlor and Richard Downes are terrific broadcasters, Cathal Mac Coille can be quite brilliant when he is fully on it – like his skewering of Cathal Goan (IIRC) over RTE’s arts coverage – (the Dave Fanning reviewing sculpture question) – he just needs to focus the rage.

In terms of reporters, the business desk is rock solid; sport is more than adequate and, after a most uncertain start, they seem to have a bit of a gem in Cian McCormack.

Overall, for me it just needs a bit of tighter editing, a bit of refreshing the contacts book and more resources – they have a very small budget for a show of its influence – and could make a great programme even better.

p.s. Hanly was ill for a while but is much mended now.

remember them all well. Scariest thing is we have just come full cycle, economically. Found Mary a little cheasy though. I remember El Presidente climbing on the FF bandwagon just as corruption tribunals were about to begin with FF’s to the fore in them, hard to forgive.

david-davin power got a serious Dirk Diggler head on him

D P-P looks lke the love-child of Ron Burgundy and Brian O’Driscoll. Very Anchormanesque, that photo. Prefer Newstalk’s morning programme myself.

David Hanley with his serious approach and Satchmo-like voice added a new word to the English language……Graveltas.

Haven’t listened to that crap show for ages. It’s all sport, lightweight interviewing and promotion of other dead-end rte programmes. Overpaid, opinionated presenters plugging their own protectionist agenda. Time to radically shake up the organisation. Increase productivity and drastically reduce costs. Time to drag that finance sucking monster rte into 2009. And any bull about how many who listen or how difficult it is to get “good” broadcasters is purely that “utter crap”.

@ Joe

I work with business of all shapes and sizes from sales to finance to IT and I don’t think RTE is helped by the fact that in Radio especially people are not moved on much and that once you are in the stable and on the payroll they have to find something for you to do.

Newstalk has its faults but it has had a relatively high turnover not just because some presenters didn’t register with the public but because the 45’s plus don’t really fidget with the dial on the radio.

About 1/3 of MI listeners listen to it because it is MI – more power to them. Most of the rest only listen to bealach a h’aon.

At least with Ivan Yates who is getting better at the job he does understand business especially from a SME perspective, he understands farming and he also has an insiders knowledge of the political system. Notwithstanding all that if Yates figures go down he or his co-presenter or both will be replaced.

That is the free market, that is why RTE don’t get it and that is also why I and many others that work in business look at RTE in dismay but not with much surprise.

Incidentally, I complete agree with you about FF Pravda, but I don’t think unions are far off. The “interview” with Ahern was the nadir of “public sector broadcasting”.

Emily @ 16 – we’re talking about morning ireland here, not the Derek Mooney show

rarestreak @ 20 – spot on. That’s a huge weakness for so many other news/current affairs shows, the egospasm from the presenter to be the main focus. Enough, already. In many ways, this MI strength comes from the fact there is a formula which does not change week in or week out.

There does seem to have been a noticeable pro-Government and anti-union shift recently in the tone of the show. Just after RTE staff were targeted in the public pay ‘outrage’ the presenters started leading for the prosecution in all interviews with any union spokesperson or anyone one with non-government approved views. Structurally as well there have been changes; I’ve noticed that clips of interviews with people who speak against cutting public expenditure are replayed from earlier in the morning’s show in order to be ‘refuted’ down the phone by one of the usual tame pro-Government economists who appear on RTE radio all the time. The other day Professor David Blanchflower was on and said that the public sector was the saviour of the economy at the moment and that it would be madness to cut it. A while later a home-grown economist was rustled up to argue against the professor’s views, but of course without Professor Blanchflower being able to respond. The economist sneered that the professor was just giving us his ‘Economics 101′ course. The impression intended to be left was that the professor was a bit of a simpleton, an academic who didn’t undertsand ‘the real world’ and who didn’t understand how ’special’ Ireland’s economic problems are, whereas in reality he is a world-class economist trusted by many governments, and in particular was the only one of the seven members of the British Government’s Monetary Policy Committee to have foreseen the recession in 2007-8 and to have consistently voted for interest rate cuts, when all the other six members were voting to increase them, with the disastrous effects we can now see. His opinion was thus very valuable but he received very disrepectful treatment, verging on the dishonest. I imagine the show had received a call making them an offer they couldn’t refuse.