No new drama series. Few fresh faces. A bare arts schedule
YOU WILL have doubted this during the very worst sequences of Charity ICA Bootcamp– and there will be at least one moment during The Rose of Tralee, as a young lady strangles one your most cherished tunes, when you will know this not to be true – but for a while Ireland has been just about the best country on Earth to watch television.
Lower those eyebrows, take your cynicism down a notch or 10, because by living next door to the greatest television nation of all, much of the Irish population has enjoyed the benefits of the British television licence fee, and its commercial broadcasters, without once having to put their hands in their pockets and contribute to it. Every major event, drama, documentary – made at someone else’s expense, in English. In fact, British television is so often presented by someone with an Irish accent that it even allows the occasional modicum of proprietorial pride.
What’s more, living next door to the greatest television nation of all has posed enough of a challenge to Irish television that it has had an impact on its standards. Many in the industry here have worked in the UK, while the high quality of the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV set a bar to be aimed for even if it hasn’t always been reached. Actually, the contrast has often been unflattering to RTÉ, opening it up to accusations of shabbiness that a television station of one of Europe’s smallest countries would not otherwise face.
The past decade, in particular, can be seen as a golden age of Irish television. Helped by drawing in independent companies, there was a confidence in its drama, documentaries and even, finally, its comedies that had not existed before. And it was backed up by money. Lots of money – in 2008 it had €200 million to spend on television. The results were schedules brimming with home-produced programmes where once they had been bolstered by imports and repeats.
Meanwhile, even the sporadic competition offered by TV3 has brought some moments of genuine choice and quality ( Tonight with Vincent Brownetaking on RTÉ on its strongest turf) even if Channel Six/3e has not. TG4 may have been more talked about than watched, but it too contributed to a certain effective low-budget aesthetic, while also feeding the parent channel with new personalities. This week, that golden age ended. While RTÉ's new season did not show itself to be in collapse, it might as well have been accompanied by the sound of squealing brakes.
It wasn’t a bad schedule as such – there are a lot of potentially good things in there – but it was the absences that stood out as much. No new drama series. Few fresh faces. A bare arts schedule (although there are promises this will change). A glut of Hibernicised British formats. A reduced lifestyle roster. And the promise that things are not about to get better any year soon.
By the way, in the same week – on the same day, conspiracy fans – TV3 announced job cuts, citing the “stock market falls in recent days” as among the reasons. At least it can never again be accused of not being reactive enough to world events.
So, is that as good as television will ever get here? Were the late 1990s and first decade of the 21st century the peak of the medium in Ireland? It says much about its unhealthy dominance of the medium even now, that the question is almost entirely focused on RTÉ. Its new season is considered major news in a way that TV3’s (launched next Thursday) cannot hope to be.
As it heads into a financial trough, inevitably followed by creative costs, its television output will, presumably, retreat to its core public-service mission. But even the value of that will shrink. RTÉ was founded, and its core principles established, in an era when it was in isolation. It was the broadcast media. Even as it constantly updates that mission, and while Irish television remains very much monopolised by RTÉ, its challenge is not simply from the few competitors that arose during the past decade, but from the even smaller screen.
It’s in its infancy still, but already web TV’s speed, cost, energy and accessibility challenges traditional television on a local and global scale. It has already eroded audiences; it can be strong, terrible, technically impressive, shabby, insightful, entertaining, irritating, enlightening, hard-hitting and reflective of your country, county, town, street, life; it is many of the things, in fact, that RTÉ television is about.
Plus, much of it is done on a non-commercial basis. Which is what, of course, public service broadcasting is about. It doesn’t announce a new season every few months, but the web will become the broadcaster RTÉ should fear most.
Twitter: @shanehegarty
