This is a suicide note: with these words I end my televisual career, such as it was. For I here confess that I loathe RT╔, not least for personal reasons, which are as follows.
It has dropped my series Challenging Times. It did so without ever formally notifying me or this newspaper, which had created the title and the format in 1990, and had sponsored it ever since (hence my involvement).
I was merely told one day in the recording studio that there was no budget allocation for the series next year.
That was it. No formal notification, no thanks, no acknowledgments, no farewells, just an unmannerly and uninterested twist of a remote fiscal tap. Though the end came as no real surprise; we had been graveyard scheduled for much of the season, appearing at different times over the week once even at the same time as Who wants to be a Millionaire.
It takes ineptness of Montrosian proportions to broadcast two televised quizzes simultaneously on the two national networks, never mind bouncing a programme around the schedules like a shuttlecock in a millrace.
Out of sequence
But that ineptness was Lilliputian compared with what followed. RT╔ broadcast the first semi-final of Challenging Times one week, and the following week broadcast, not the second semi-final, but the final out of sequence.
The following week, which should have seen the transmission of the final, RT╔ instead showed a cartoon, but without explaining why the final of Challenging Times was not being transmitted as publicised, both in the RT╔ Guide and the national newspapers, including this one which, after all, paid for the bloody thing.
If anything was worth an apology, an explanation or the merest expression of regret, this was it, with one semi-final apparently still unbroadcast: so far as I know, no-one from The Irish Times involved in making Challenging Times has heard a word from the national broadcaster. I certainly haven't.
How arrogant and lost to personal realities do you have to be to behave like that? I know lots of people in RT╔, and they're not in the least surprised at such appalling conduct. Bad manners, arrogance and ineptitude are the hallmarks of the organisation.
Its other characteristic seems to be a culture of non-productive politicking in which entire careers are spent defending internal empires and going to enormous lengths not to make programmes even relatively inexpensive ones such as Challenging Times.
Flagship programme
You need no inside knowledge to discover the straits RT╔ is in. Any television station which has the pitiful Late Late Show as its flagship programme has quite clearly gone bonkers.
It's not poor Pat Kenny's fault that he's hopelessly out of his depth. He has many talents, but they do not include a capacity for self-mockery, or a sense of humour of any kind; nor does he seem to possess a banality detector "We've got another great show for you this evening, folks,"(the "folks" bit does it for me every time, even as his hands are performing nervous little Andy Pandy circles above an inane, unmoving grin).
These things happen because RT╔ resembles the Department of Agriculture circa 1962. The Department was meant to eradicate TB; RT╔ was meant to make good programmes.
Far from doing either, each did the opposite. Each reeks with the evil smell of putrefying bureaucracy, and it's almost impossible for those trapped in their respective buildings to do anything about the smell, except open the windows and howl.
And like the Department, RT╔'s problems go back to its ultimate stewardship: the Government. RT╔ has become the stooge for whatever wheeze enters a minister's head.
Want to save the Irish language? Invent a new channel and make RT╔ pay for it, even though the existing channels are catastrophically under-resourced.
Want a symphony orchestra? Make RT╔ pay for it. Want to smash the IRA? Introduce a vague broadcasting ban and then make RT╔ define and police it.
RT╔ might have had a chance if it had been free of government interference; but it never was. It was a plaything of politicians in which programming played distinctly second fiddle to keeping different ministers happy.
That sort of carry-on was possible in the old days of large RT╔ regional monopoly, but it is not now, with satellite and deflectors providing all sorts of viewing options which never existed before.
So what is the purpose of RT╔? What essential national function is it performing that can't be done commercially? Provided the price is right, why shouldn't commercial broadcasters manage to do a good job? Is ITN worse than BBC News?
Value for money
We know the answers to these questions; we also know that we are not getting value for money from our huge licence fees, which is a particular delight for me: I can receive RT╔ 1 in only one room in my house and Network in none, and with an asinity worthy of the Department of Agriculture of 1962, my local deflector service is by law not allowed to retransmit RT╔ networks.
And so, as my television career finally sinks beneath the waves, with my last breath, I gurgle: Go on, S∅le, my dear. Have your car-boot sale. Nothing could be worse than the present owners; for who are they but us?
A hand waves from the brine; and then it is gone, its owner never to be seen again on Irish screens.
kmyers@irish-times.ie