This column has been a roost for regular crowing about the inevitable decline of RTE radio as a State-broadcasting monolith, about the disappearance of this uncontested medium of a highly contested "nation". Pluralism, my words called out to the Saturday-morning skies, pluralism is with us, and RTE must accept its modest place among equals in a brave new world of a dozen or more pre-sets.
Well, it's time to put that particular rooster out of its misery. Shut up with yer crowing, cock, and read the ratings. Sure, local stations still attract plenty of listeners, but the trend is stable, and RTE radio gets numbers that even Bertie Ahern would envy.
Marian Finucane has 413,000 listeners, a 6 per cent increase. Pat Kenny has grown even more dramatically to 358,000; it's risin' time for John Creedon; Liveline is still jumpin' with Joe Duffy; Rattlebag is respectable; 5-7 Live is more than holding its own against the only serious currentaffairs competition - as bearla - on the national airwaves (Today FM's erratic but, for me, unmissable Last Word); and this guy Gerry Ryan is apparently a bit popular. There are even 188,000 people out there listening to Tony Fenton doing 2FM's evening drivetime.
In all, of the top 12 programmes on Irish radio, a dozen are on RTE stations. The number-one programme is Morning Ireland (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday) - in which, this week, the familiar stentorian tones of David Hanly tried to persuade John O'Donoghue and the rest of us that he gets asked for ID in Boston bars.
Grind of gears as I shift metaphors: I recall once the historian Simon Schama quipping about how, in a certain mode of writing about the history of modern societies, the middle class was always "rising", like some sort of ever-baking souffle. Around this page, the souffle - look at it rising! - has been multiplicity of choice in radio listening. Well, let's stick a fork in it, then leave it on the rack until there's sound evidence that it's not actually a crepe.
More commercial radio? I'll believe it when I hear it. In Cork a new licence-award is imminent, but three similar awards in Dublin a couple of years ago have resulted in exactly one new station so far (Lite FM, which has thrived big time and even taken a small chunk out of Radio 1), and this column won't start parroting start-up dates for the next set of licensees until the test signals are on the air.
This column doesn't want to get dragged into reflexive bashing of RTE Radio 1. There's good reason it's in the position it's in: the quality of its programming doesn't always send us into raptures, but it's generally solid, and has got solider in recent years. While there's no doubt a few eggs have been broken to make that particular souffle, its rise is a welcome thing.
But there needs to be another model, doesn't there? Local commercial stations, with a few exceptions around their schedules, aren't really showing the way. (An accelerated slide into obscurity for Dublin's Chris Barry and Adrian Kennedy wouldn't go amiss.) And do you get the feeling that Today FM is settling into a sort of TV3 role?
Is a new model to be found in community radio? The Independent Radio and Television Commission (IRTC) seems to think so, and the expressions of interest from "communities" (perhaps better understood as particular interested parties in certain communities) seem to bear that out. Recently the IRTC announced an application procedure for six more community licences, with applications due on April 20th.
Of course, this could be just a cosmetically attractive way to fill up frequencies, but in at least a couple of the relevant communities there's plenty of pirate activity doing that already, notably in the culturally deprived "community" of south-east Dublin. Community licences are also potentially on offer in Celbridge, Co Kildare; north Cork city; Cashel, Co Tipperary; and, intriguingly, in Knock, Co Mayo. These licences will all be defined by their service to these geographic communities; a "community of interest" licence is also in store for the students of Waterford city.
THIS sort of relatively low-power, highly local, easily accessible radio should offer an interesting alternative to State and commercial broadcasters. All the same, listening to actually existing community radio doesn't often make for much encouragement. The amateurism of much of the output can be a problem, but not an insurmountable one for a listener with a ear for the novel. However, when I listen to a community station's ambitious morning team do a watered-down "zoo format" trawl through the tabloids, that's when the spirits really start to sink. It's not only the way that they say it (like their professional betters, only badly), it's also what they say (nothing).
It's hardly surprising that these are voices without distinction, like audition tapes for the Strawberry Alarm Clock. After all, this is an era when popular music's most vaunted and controversial "counter-cultural" figure, Eminem, spouts the sort of sexism and homophobia that his corporate masters would never permit themselves to speak in public. Of course there are other, more humane forms of alternative speech and thought out there in the world, but they're very hard to hear and rarely seem to manifest themselves in those hungry for media exposure.
Perhaps that's just a generational thing, and we need to break the synonymous link between "young" and "worth hearing". That's probably a remote possibility in commercial radio, where - at least in the Dublin region - no radio station would dare to admit that it appeals to anyone over 54. It can be a different story in community radio, as Golden Years Pioneers (Anna Livia FM, Wednesday) demonstrates.
This documentary series also illustrates one potentially useful dimension of community radio: frank and enriching links between particular programmes and particular groups in the civic or voluntary sector of society. In the low-budget world of stations such as Anna Livia, organisations such as Age and Opportunity, for this series, provide the basic contacts and resources that make it possible to put a programme together without bankrupting its producers and presenters.
The presenter in this case is Bill Mealy, possessor of a mellow old voice that makes even sleepy-time Donal Dineen sound like Ian Dempsey rousing us out of bed. That's definitely not a complaint, even from this thirtysomething, and these documentary/ interviews are definitely impassioned about their message of positive attitudes toward ageing and the inspirational qualities of their six terrific subjects, mainly seventysomethings who are still excited about the new directions in their lives. I wish there was as much excitement elsewhere on the radio.