COMPLAIN all you like a bout the poverty of that campaign, but you must admit there are few games as entertaining as the count itself - though the anti blood sports lobby might object.
However, loath as I am to admit any inferiority for this column's chosen medium television Was a big winner in Saturday's main macho pursuit: forecasting the outcome.
It's all very well for Bertie Ahern to say "I haven't really put my mind to the numbers - to know the result in a few hours anyway", but this is a realm in which John Bowman accuses Vincent Browne of an incorrect prediction, and Browne knows his reputation rides on his defence.
While Richard Sinnott, in his nifty little nest, was telling the TV nation that the FF-PD combination was going to have more than 80 seats - and while Bowman was pressing P.J. Mara about Jackie Healy Rae on that basis - all the pundits on RTE Radio 1 and Radio Ireland had those parties stuck on several seats fewer. Was it wishful thinking by Rainbow partisans, or neutrals looking for the more exciting story of a very hung Dail?
Still and all, it was a fine day and night's listening.
RTE had impressive resources at its disposal - including an excellent, underused Joe Duffy - but Radio Ireland's modest team was no less effective. They started two hours earlier, at 9 a.m. on Saturday. At the start, Mark Costigan garbled the Irish Times poll figures; later in the morning, Conor Kavanagh read, at length, some rather undigested counts. Perhaps, too, we didn't really need so much "light relief" from Paddy Murray and Liam Mackey - though I loved when they played John Lennon's Give Me Some Truth, with its lines about "neurotic, psychotic, pinheaded politicians".
Emily O'Reilly was more isolated than her RTE counterparts, but with Ted Nealon as her numbers cruncher there was no harm in that. She got Bertie and Mary Harney on air before RTE and, in general, kept things moving superbly. The only disappointment was that her marathon ended at midnight.
RTE's proliferation of voices from county centres didn't convey any advantage; indeed, all the handing over from studio to countryside and back again was time consuming and occasionally fraught. However, there were exceptions, notably Emer Woodfull, whose reports were full of personality and straight talk - i.e. "I haven't a clue what's going to happen here" - just like her excellent pre poll profiles of party leader's for Today With Pat Kenny (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday).
Woodfull's extended profiles, which drew on archive material and often sharp reflections from colleagues, were the most informative pieces of journalism over the past two or three weeks. Nowhere else in the broadcast media did the listener get a sense, for example, of the angles of Dick Spring's character.
We got first hand evidence on Saturday evening when, in an interview with Sean O'Rourke, Spring shared his feelings about Independent Newspapers. At first his complaints about the Irish Independent's front page editorial were fairly measured, but that changed when that newspaper's Brian Dowling, a panelist, stepped in: "I think I understand how a Labour candidate might feel.."
"No, Brian, I don't think you do," the Tanaiste interrupted angrily. He proceeded to excoriate the Indo and even seemed to question whether it should have the right to run such an editorial. How furious was he? He referred to "Mister Tony O'Reilly" rather than "Doctor" etc. That furious.
The Indo debate continued on Sunday morning. Having opened the Sunday Show (RTE, Radio 1) with Credence Clearwater Revival's Bad Moon Rising - an ungracious comment on the election result, I would have thought - Andy O'Mahony led a discussion in which Mairin de Burca took up the questioning.
Sunday Supplement (Radio Ireland) wasn't having it - hardly surprising, given its panel's provenance: Sam Smyth, Katie Hannon, George Byrne and Declan Lynch plus Eamon Dunphy sounded satisfied by the electorate's judgment. The exception was Eoghan Harris, who in five minutes on the phone lashed the Independent, The Irish Times, RTE and most of the people in the studio by name.
Not to worry, balance was achieved: after he hung up, Harris's character was duly abused by the panel and the Indo's good name restored.
