TALK TELEVISION

FOR many years now, too much of RTE television's output has been little more than radio with cameras. Talk shows are cheap, requiring just a presenter, a studio and a few performing guests. Understandably, talk TV is attractive to accountants who run television channels. But in RTE, it is more than a lazy, commercially safe option it is a modus operandi which reveals much about the way station executives view their audiences.

With a well known presenter ("personality" in RTE argot), brand identification is assured and there's always a glut of "celebrities" and wannabees relentlessly seeking a free plug for a new book, record, film or TV series. But, on most channels, the traditional, mega audience chat show is dead (where it's not, it's usually jaded) and the quasi freak shows which have supplanted it are, with few exceptions, marginal orgies of onanism, ephemera and embarrassing gimmickry. Think of Oprah, The Brains Trust, The Girlie Show Think of David Letterman, Jay Leno and Selina Scott. Think, if you dare, of Liam O Murchu.

As with other programme genres, audience fragmentation encouraged by more channels and more hours of broadcasting has seen the disintegration of prime time chat shows. Not so on RTE, of course, but the anti creative conservatism of what we can only call Miller TV, suggests that, sooner than take a risk, RTE TV will invariably opt for a successful off the peg radio programme and put it on screen.

On Thursday, April 18th, RTE radio's Livelline presenter, Marian Finucane, will host a new live TV talk show. Ms Finucane with talk, in studio and via satellite, to a variety of guests. Viewers can then free phone in with questions and comments. This is Liveline a deservedly popular radio programme, with pictures. In terms of innovation or originality, the idea is Boyzone TV safely commercial, derivative and utterly unimaginative.

Television, taking its lead from the cinema's star system, has always promoted personalities. Fair enough, there's a strong demand for the values of Hello magazine on the small screen. But the colt of the personality (even the term RTE personality has very specific, frequently patronising, under tones) within RTE assumes that an uncritical audience will, naturally, agree with RTE's PR for its own high profile performers.

A few years ago, just as some of the more awful independent studios were beginning to attract listeners, RTE radio ran a poster campaign. Giant billboards carried the names of RTE radio presenters just their first names. So we got Pat. Joe, Gerry maybe Marian (presumably Gay though I did not see it) in a campaign clearly designed to capitalise on the familiarity of Pat, Joe, Gerry, Marian and (presumably) Gay. But it was insultingly presumptuous the arrogant bonhomie of first names only, assumed that a largely passive listener ship enjoys a totally trusting relationship with RTE's heavily promoted personalities".

This was the State broadcaster acting a kind of nanny knows best" role. Be nice to your lovely radio uncles and aunts who bring you such goodies every day. Appreciate them, you ungrateful little wretches. Of course, some advertising company dreamt up the wheeze and to be fair to the first names involved, it was hardly their fault. But the tone and the presumption, for all its designer friendliness, had a schoolmarmish quality.

BBC too promotes its presenters and ITV calls almost any creature who appears in its schedules more than once a celebrity. But the terms BBC personality or ITV celebrity are not culturally loaded in the way that RTE personality is. It has got to do with scale, of course, but it's also a reflection of the fact that both BBC and ITV are flogging a much greater variety of TV product.

For 11 years (1971 to 1982), Michael My show Parkinson hosted what was, for most of its run, the leading chat show on British television. The late Russell "You have, have you not?" Harty was, for a time, a rival to Parkinson. But, accurately described in Alan Bennett's memorable phrase, untouched by expertise", Harty's show inevitably ran aground when his initially quirky habit of interrupting guests at tee wrong moment became a guaranteed trust ration too great to bear.

Terry Wogan, in what became a tailed attempt to get a radio star to reproduce his waggish gig on television, was given a thrice weekly chat show on BBC in 1985. He pulled faces, made a few smart remarks, let the guests know who the deal star was, and produced shows which, for the most part, tell between Titbits and Hello magazines in terms of information and intelligence.

Pointedly, Michael Parkinson's, Russell Harty's and Terry Wogan's chat shows were titled Parkinson, Harty and Wogan. Likewise, Michael Aspel's 1980s smoothathons for ITV were titled Aspel. Designed to maximise the presenter as brand name or sellable product, they at least avoided the pushy familiarity of Michael, Russell and Terry. But the main point about these chat shows is that they are all long gone and the cull of the TV personality has undergone dramatic changes on British television.

TO be fair to RTE, in recognition of the last that the standard chat show format has become jaded (even though the station retains The Late Late Show and Kenny Live as weekend fixtures), Gerry Ryan was given a talk show last year which attempted to be different. Perhaps, in principle there was little wrong with this, but in practice the results were horrific. Again, the old formula if he can do a gig on the radio he can do a similar gig on the television was used. But he couldn't (nobody could, given the running around he had to do) and the show was a flop.

It may well be that there is not quite enough reverence among TV audiences any more for the old fashioned, star centred, mega chat show to work. Certainly, in its newer incarnations, guests can expect to be sent up and parodied (although reassuring fawning invariably preserves the status quo) as, for instance, on Clive Anderson's shows.

The idea here is that the presenter and, by extension, the audience are much too sophisticated to prostrate themselves in front of the guest. It's an illusion, of course (few guests really get a hard time on chat shows) but nonetheless, it does show a change in relationship between chat shows and their audiences since the days of Parkinson, Harty and Wogan. On RTE though, the traditional formula continues to dominate.

No doubt, this is partly because Gay Byrne has been so good at it. As RTE's most prized asset his ability and longevity have inevitably, become woven into the station's identity and sense of itself to a greater degree than any individual performer could hope to achieve on British television. In that sense, talk TV has been good to RTE and, in fairness, it has regularly been good for its viewers too.

But it has been grossly overused. A couple of years ago, Clare McKeon and Cynthia Ni Mhurchu were given a chat show. Let's be succinct and just say that it was not a success. Gerry Ryan was given another go this year but even regular visits to the Internet have not been able to disguise the fact that, as a chat show, it has been http://www.a.big.mistake.

IT'S a pity, really, and television executives can be forgiven for pointing out that critics and carpers object to traditional chat shows and also to innovation. They have a point (although what's crucial is the kind of innovation ideally, it should be intrinsic rather than a tacked on gimmick). But the principal problem with RTE's embracement of talk television is that there's far too much of it on a visual medium. If dancing on the radio was the butt of jokes in an earlier generation, then making video versions of so many radio programmes is its contemporary equivalent.

Nobody expects RATE to be able to compete with US television, where visual expertise in programmes such as NYPD Blue, Murder One and American Gothic pushes television close to cinema. That sort of television is prohibitively expensive and is being made for a world market. But the refusal to accept that television is more than radio with pictures is a threat to RTE's future.

Chat shows will continue to be staples on most TV channels. Perhaps sadly, but inevitably, they will seek more and more niche markets with, from time to time, the more spectacularly successful ones, buoyed up by PR engineered hype and controversy, briefly attracting a mass audience. The powerful and the wealthy will, as ever, continue to use them for major public relations pushes. Remember that, last year, Britain's Princess Diana managed to turn BBC's flagship current affairs programme, Panorama, into a chat show cum propaganda vehicle for her own purposes.

But the great days of traditional chat shows are over. Familiarity has bred what familiarity breeds and the huge, huxter-driven PR industry has added to viewers' cynicism about the appearances of "celebrities" on such shows. In the meantime, RTE remains in love with the fact that talk is cheap and a half dozen or so individuals are allowed to dominate both the radio and television schedules of the State broadcasting organisation.

Some of these broadcasters are first rate on both media. Others are accomplished on radio but not on television. Some are accomplished on neither. But there is a need for a few new names on RTE radio and a few new television programmes on RTE TV. Other wise, RTE could rationalise even further just bring a few cameras over to the radio cent re, synchronise the schedules and let the same gigs go out simultaneously on radio and TV.

But teleaudition is not television and it's high time that RTE realised this.