Questions only just beginning

PRESENT TENSE:AT THE END of June, the last Question will be asked by a member of the audience and the last Answer evaded by a politician. Unless, as will probably be the case, it is a jokey final question or something a little self-referential.

Then, Questions and Answers will end after 21 years – and Willie O’Dea will finally be able to make plans for his Monday nights.The show’s high ratings have propped up a format that grew mouldy many years ago. It had become predictable, with its weekly panel of two politicians, a journalist, a lawyer and someone from a topical interest group, each of whom had been briefed about the questions well before they needed to deliver the answers. Its audience, as the show acknowledges every week, is loaded with members of political parties and interest groups. I remember when researchers used to run over from Montrose to the UCD bar in the hope of encouraging a few students to go along and fill seats. I’m not sure if that still happens, but the director’s weekly insistence on seeking out a good-looking audience member betrays its desperation for touches of youthful glamour.

John Bowman had become the show’s only asset, carrying his intellect without loading it with pomposity. Without him the show would have been all but moribund, and his departure is a good enough reason to can it. But there is another one. The programme is part of a rare equation in which two similar programmes go out on TV3 and RTÉ at the same time – but the TV3 programme is better.

Nightly News with Vincent Browne has been livelier and more elucidating than Questions and Answers. It goes out later at night, and carries on through the week, but by overlapping it has provided useful comparisons. For instance, although there may be room for audience participation in some way or other on a current affairs show, Browne’s programme shows that you don’t need “ordinary” people present to reflect the public mood.

Even if it won’t win the ratings war, Nightly News offers the sort of head-on competition that Irish television needs. Until now, RTÉ’s main challenge has come from British channels. And even where TV3 punches above its weight, as it did when it used The X Factor to pinch viewers from Tubridy Tonight, it was only bringing in yet another ITV show as a ringer in its match with RTÉ. Anyway, what makes this somewhat piquant is that TV3’s moment of glory comes at a time when television – as with most media – is suffering badly from the collapse in advertising revenue. The focus of late may have been on the earnings of some of RTÉ’s ridiculously overpaid presenters, but within the wider industry the fears are about how much money will be left to make programmes. And at some point very soon, those problems within the television industry will affect what lands on your television.

In small ways, it already has. Colm Murray didn’t go to Cheltenham this year; RTÉ’s rugby coverage has been scaled back so that reporters are not sent abroad alongside commentators; on news bulletins, you will notice fewer reporters doing reassuring but pointless live broadcasts from outside the Four Courts long after every judge and lawyer has left the building. RTÉ faces a €68 million deficit in 2009, but at least it has the licence fee money to help protect much of its programme-making. Nevertheless, many in the independent sector are getting nervous as work drops off and jobs are lost. There are some at RTÉ who feel that it might be a necessary shake-up. As one told me: “If it means fewer programmes which follow drunk students around, will that be a bad thing?”

In appointing Steve Carson as its new director of programmes (with Mint Productions, he made the documentary series about Bertie Ahern and Charles Haughey), RTÉ has made a surprise choice, largely because he was an outsider. He is a programme-maker, but time will tell how much he can improve Irish television during a difficult time; whether diminishing resources will somehow be offset by greater quality

TV3, though, doesn’t have the security blanket of the licence fee. In some respects, it hasn’t been a bad spell for the station – The Apprentice and Xposé have been successes, and Channel 6 has been bought and rebranded – but last year it let 15 people go and cut news bulletins.

It is not alone in being hit by the slump. Setanta’s debts are causing jitters. In Britain, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 are in so much trouble that there has been serious talk about a merger between the three. ITV has cut 600 jobs and closed the studio that made Heartbeat and The Royal (although you may not necessarily agree that this is bad news). It is cutting its drama output significantly over the next year, and because TV3 relies heavily on ITV’s programmes it will be hit by this too.

Irish television is taking a deep breath at the moment, and what happens to British television also has an impact on what we watch here. The unfortunate irony is that there may be more people at home watching the television. The question is: what will they get to see?

shegarty@irishtimes.com