RTE weathers the storm of irate people power

Now that viewers have exercised a bit more muscle than it takes to change channels on the remote control, it will be interesting to see what influence People Power has on future RTE decisions.

This week the station conceded that public opposition to its new weather format had forced it to make a U-Turn and enter negotiations with Met Eireann to bring back qualified meteorologists to our screens. Plain People of Ireland 1, RTE 0.

Unfortunately, the prospect of an army of armchair commentators rising up to root out other deficiencies in RTE scheduling is unlikely, considering what they have put up with in the past.

Spectacularly dire programmes such as Hot Milk and Pepper and Talkabout (both perfectly valid defences to use when charged with non-payment of the television licence fee), continued to be aired and watched week after week with barely a murmur from viewers.

Another example of the usually passive relationship between RTE and the licence payers is the shameless borrowing from British television prototypes - think Questions and Answers, Don't Feed the Gondolas and Pot Luck - which has never raised more than a ripple of protest from the public.

And where were the pressure groups and incensed correspondents to this newspaper when one of the best and certainly the most original radio programmes ever produced by RTE, Scrap Saturday, was, well, scrapped?

In fact the only other time RTE has backed down on such a grand scale in the face of such an overwhelming tide of public opposition, was in relation to, yes you've guessed it, the weather.

It seems to have been largely forgotten, but almost four years ago, RTE decided that radio weather forecasts should no longer be read by Met Eireann personnel but by RTE editorial staff. No sooner had Morning Ireland's David Hanly announced his first warm front than the RTE radio audience mounted a protest rather like the recent one and the decision was reversed.

Operation Weather 99 was a monster in comparison. It saw a broad range of dissatisfied punters writing, phoning and e-mailing RTE in unprecedented numbers. The campaign was also fought in the letters pages of this newspaper where it soon transpired people knew a lot more about the weather than RTE had given them credit for. RTE radio programmes such as Liveline and Soundbite repeatedly returned to the issue logging up to 50 disgruntled calls a week.

Brendan McWilliams, author of this newspaper's Weather Eye column and a director of the European Meteorological Satellite Organisation (Eumetsat), believes there are few things that motivate people in Ireland as much as the weather. "It is so volatile and changeable that people pay much more attention to it," he says, adding that it is the one issue which affects everyone.

EVEN the founder of the Met Eireann Support Group, Noel Carroll from Long Island off the coast of Cork, says he would not have bothered being so vocal about any other issue. "When I heard the Met Eireann presenters were gone, I rang RTE and sent e-mails out to various friends and organisations asking them to voice their disapproval to the station," he says. "I have never done anything like that before in my life."

Carroll says he thought that his was only a small voice, but it was loud enough to be heard according to RTE's Director of Public Affairs Kevin Healy. "We do listen to the public, it is very important for us to know what the people thinks. The fact that we are looking again at the weather proves that," he says. Mr Healy adds that while letters to this newspaper on the subject were noted, the most influential factor had been the calls to the station itself.

The timing of Wednesday's weather announcement by RTE's managing director of television, Joe Mulholland, was interesting. The following night, RTE had organised one of its regular public meetings, which was due to be attended by the director general, Bob Collins.

The thought of hundreds of people attacking the station's top dog over its weather strategy must have been too embarrassing to contemplate. RTE denies there was any link between the meeting and the climbdown the day before, saying the announcement was made because it was feared the news was about to leak.

In the end, only one of the 450 people - the largest number recorded for one of RTE's public meetings - who gathered in the RDS on Thursday night brought up the subject. A man stood up to say that RTE should remember that it was a public servant and that the customers of the station owned RTE. His remarks were greeted with applause.

In light of RTE's climbdown, members of the weather lobby may be basking in the warm glow of success but complacency shouldn't set in. In fact they would be well advised to keep their indignation and their pencils sharpened.

Already RTE has received letters from a new public lobby group begging the station not to bring back the qualified meteorologists. "Don't back down," these people are pleading, "We like the new presentation."

We could just be in the eye of this particular storm.