Behind the famous faces

BROADCASTING: Window and Mirror - RTÉ Television: 1961-2011,By John Bowman, The Collins Press, 256pp. €25

AT FIRST GLANCE this history of RTÉ television might be assumed to fall into the coffee-table category, but it becomes quickly apparent that the book is in a different league and is actually quite extraordinary because of the sheer quality of the content. It is a layered, sophisticated, provocative and honest book. Especially in relation to the earlier years of Irish television, as this is the period for which most archival material is available, it reveals a multitude of ambitions thwarted and realised, turf wars won and lost and frank expressions of disgust and resentment as well as pride and satisfaction.

That it is such a richly textured and original book is a tribute to the many talents of John Bowman, including his individuality and confidence; as he puts it, “this book does not follow particularly conventional rules”. It might not seem a good idea to have an RTÉ insider tell this television story, but Bowman is more than that. An outstanding broadcaster, he is also an accomplished historian who realises that any credible history of RTÉ must be one documented from the archives. He has created a marvellous tapestry. Quite rightly, with a few exceptions that may not have pleased Pat Kenny or Eoghan Harris, as he quotes from the RTÉ Authority minutes from the 1990s, he concentrates mainly on the 1960s and 1970s. An abundance of archival material exists for these decades, including state papers, the RTÉ archive, Bowman’s own interviews over many years and the many private collections of key players in the RTÉ story, such as Ernest Blythe, Hilton Edwards, Edward Roth, Denis Johnston and John Irvine.

The narrative arc of the book is occasionally frustrating. Because of the huge range of themes to be addressed, some stories are parked and returned to, or left hanging, and some readers might feel that too much is going on in individual pages. In introducing the book, Bowman’s tone is slightly regretful that it is not a bigger book, pointing out that Asa Briggs’s history of British broadcasting, assisted by a full BBC archive and team of researchers, runs to five volumes, and that “such a history of RTÉ remains to be written”.

But in the meantime this book is to be savoured for the light it sheds on the dominant themes of early Irish television, and characters such as León Ó Broin, the indefatigable secretary of the department of posts and telegraphs and the “most tireless advocate of public service television”. He had to convince contrary politicians (Lemass was “somewhat wary” of television) to pursue it and then was not even invited to the opening of the new service. (“The world and his wife was there. I wasn’t.”)

One of the character references for Roth, the first director general, emphasised that he had “that indefinable quality of being a moral and thinking Christian”, but he proved to be more multidimensional and was joined by a fascinating cast in the 1960s, including Edwards as head of drama, whose spiky correspondence catalogues his trawl for scripts and kindred spirits.

In the early days there was a lack of awareness of television's potential in the newsroom and complaints about the intrusion of advertisements. In relation to the sponsoring of television awards by Jacob's, Roth insisted it was improper for him "to intimately participate" in what was "basically an undertaking to sell biscuits". Janet Moody, a 7 Daysresearcher, referred to RTÉ as "a great place, we could do anything we wanted", but politicians thought otherwise about its current-affairs reach, and Irish-language activists were continually furious that the station was not doing enough for the language. Eamonn Andrews, the first chairman of the new television authority, sought to bat them away, but their zeal and persistence eventually prompted his resignation in 1966.

Kevin McCourt, the second DG, and Gunnar Rugheimer, as controller of programmes, seemed to be a good combination. With others, they combined in the 1960s to design the template for public-service broadcasting; Rugheimer believed current affairs should be the “thumping heart beat of the station”. But the political-party whips wanted to shape programmes to stop politicians embarrassing themselves, and Charles Haughey’s attitude was one of “truculent irascibility”.

The cancellation of trips to Biafra and Vietnam and a tribunal into a programme on money lending underlined tensions over current-affairs coverage, but this book is strong in bringing out the point that undue focus on what was censored prevents enough focus on what was created. Tibor Paul as conductor and director of music was a disgraceful bully, but creative forces were strong overall. By the mid 1960s there was an average of a new home play produced every fortnight, and the soap operas The Riordansand Brackentackled taboo subjects and generated passion. Wesley Burrowes from the drama department complained of the tendency to denigrate the serials by "quasi- literary column-writing smart ass pub-poets" (who haven't gone away, you know). Muiris Mac Conghail as controller of programmes did not want the moral purists and censors to win; there was, he believed "a high anti-porn and slightly hysterical note" in the public controversy over The Spike, a series set in working-class Dublin, but it was axed in 1978.

Bowman also highlights the station’s own inadequacies and misguided directives, including one that the 1966 programmes commemorating the 1916 Rising should be “idealistic and emotional” rather than “interpretative and analytical”. Later, the station lost its nerve in not broadcasting a programme on the corruption of the sweepstakes and, in 1980, an independent drama critical of the violence of some Christian Brothers.

TP Hardiman, the third DG, had, according to Todd Andrews, the second chairman of the RTÉ Authority, “all the qualities of a perfect prig”, but Hardiman also grabbed Haughey by the lapels and told him that as DG he would be answerable to the RTÉ Authority, not to Haughey. He protected RTÉ’s independence by insisting that any exercise of the government’s reserved powers to intervene should be done in public. RTÉ lost outstanding people, such as Bob Quinn and Lelia Doolan – “by far the greatest loss” – as the station entered a fractious period of soul searching and bickering in the late 1960s, but the Trojan work of the cameraman Gay O’Brien in Derry in October 1968 was seminal and internationalised the civil-rights issue. The blatant attempt to circumvent section 31 of the Broadcasting Act by Kevin O’Kelly’s broadcast of the opinions of the Seán Mac Stiofáin of the Provisional IRA in November 1972 led to the “awesome moment” of the sacking of the RTÉ Authority. (“F*** them” was Jack Lynch’s succinct response.)

As with other broadcasters, RTÉ recruited its share of politically motivated broadcasters. Eoghan Harris was “manifestly breaking the rules” in engaging with politics, and by the mid 1970s Oliver Maloney, appointed DG in 1975, believed that too many producers lacked accountability and that “small groups of strategically placed staff exercised inordinate influence”.

Homage is paid to The Late Late Show,but not in a fawning way, while Mike Murphy is lionised – "his virtuosity and curiosity about the medium and its limits made him one of the most successful broadcasters".

For more recent decades, Bowman gives a selective overview and includes such issues as Gay Byrne's salary, a divided RTÉ Authority on the merits of the Late Latetoy show, the success of Today Tonightand Prime Time,election coverage, lack of comedy success, the evolution of sport coverage to world-class standard and the Eurovision Song Contest, which Bob Quinn, who was appointed to the 13th authority, rightly described as "a hymn to the banality of non-music and an absurd insult to the most important expression of human culture".

Bowman embraces a variety of viewpoints and criticisms, places Irish television in an international context, gives generous recognition to other historians and has unearthed and showcased many archival gems and photographs. This is a book that is a wonderful monument to public-service broadcasters who designed a service that got it more right than wrong, was at times sufficiently confident and subversive to take on governments and win, and, ironically, given his grumpiness about it, accelerated Lemass’s modernising agenda.

Diarmaid Ferriter is professor of modern Irish history at University College Dublin