Changing the face of broadcasting?

THE Changing Face of Ireland, a pleasant if unremarkable new series beginning next Thursday on RTE 1, is the sort of harmless programme you might expect to see on Irish television at this time of year. The six part series reports' "from around the country on various community based projects designed to stimulate economic activity and employment.

This week, for example, presenter Alf McCarthy reports from two Gaeltacht based schemes a weaver's cottage in Donegal which has been renovated and turned into a heritage centre and a new facility in Connemara which provides a computer database for visitors to trace their roots. The participants in these initiatives are interesting and articulate about what they're doing, and, apart from a mild attack of arty camera work, the programme seems competently produced. But, in the closing credits of The Changing Face of Ireland we find that it is produced in association with FAS" the organisation which instigated and supported all the schemes featured in the series.

There seem to be more and more of these "produced in association with credits on RTE these days. Start Me Up, the recent series about starting your own small business, was produced in association with the Department of Enterprise and Employment and Allied Irish Banks. One might have thought there was a possible conflict of interest, given that Government policy and unsympathetic bank managers are often cited as major problems for struggling, would be entrepreneurs, but nobody in RTE seemed to think so.

Dawn to Dusk, a documentary about a day in the life of Dublin Airport which was screened last year, was produced in association with Aer Rianta. It looked more like a promotional video for that company than an independent documentary for a public service broadcaster.

What many of these programmes have in common is an uncritical positivism everything is rosy in the garden. Not every programme needs to adopt a critical approach to its subject, but objectivity should not lay itself open to the charge of being compromised by financial necessity.

Through its training programmes, employment schemes and other activities, FAS is one of this country's largest employers. As such, it might be considered a worthwhile subject for a television series which examined the pros and cons of its various activities, their effect on the overall employment situation, and the personal experiences, good and bad, of the hundreds of thousands of Irish people who have passed through its hands over the last decade. Instead, we get a feel good, summertime show about the great things happening around the country courtesy of FAS.

It's difficult at the best of times to make television programmes about the powerful institutions of this State, without entering into a Faustian pact with those institutions. Programme makers have enough problems gaining access and agreeing terms and rights without being forced by financial necessity into bringing their subjects on board as co-producers, with the editorial input which that implies.

The hospital series WRH, for instance, was criticised in some quarters for not being sufficiently critical of conditions within the health service, but that criticism would (rightly) have been more vociferous had the Department of Health been one of the producers.

If Donald Taylor Black's Hearts and Souls documentary had been produced "in association with the No Divorce Campaign", would it have been the same film, and would it have been viewed in the same way?

Not all these productions are entirely toothless. In particular, the two series produced with the European Commission which are showing at the moment, Midas Production's The Europe Debate and Coco Television's The Gap in The Mountain, provide an element of critical dialogue lacking from the productions backed by the Irish state and semi state sector.

But the tendency is for most of the new breed of co-produced to focus on seemingly "soft" subjects Who could object to the efforts of a rural community at self regeneration? And what's wrong with them getting some money and support to do it? Whether it's because RTE itself is a semi State body, or whether the ethical implications have just not been considered by the station, the reality is that bodies such as FAS and Aer Rianta are powerful organisations whose activities are the subject of political contention and who should not be given air time to promote themselves and their agendas.

The most worrying aspect in all this is the preponderance of independent producers involved in these kinds of deals. The requirement imposed three years ago on RTE that it should gradually increase its level of independent commissioning was primarily intended to increase employment in the independent production sector, but it was also supposed to promote greater diversity and new voices in Irish broadcasting.

If independent producers have to turn to other State bodies to make up shortfalls in the budges provided by RTE, or if RTE looks more favourably on programme proposals backed by semi States, what price diversity, much less new voices in the future for Irish broadcasting?