Former minister for communications Pat Rabbitte famously described Oireachtas Report, the now defunct RTÉ programme of the day’s proceedings in Leinster House, as one for “drunks and insomniacs”.
Its late-night billing and rather torpid reporting meant it became synonymous with small viewerships.
All Oireachtas proceedings, the Dáil, Seanad and committees, are now screened live on the Oireachtas website. In normal circumstances, a screening of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) would attract 29,000 minutes viewed. This equates to approximately 240 people watching a PAC hearing if it lasted two hours (120 minutes).
The figures for last week’s PAC and Oireachtas media committee hearings with Ryan Tubridy and Noel Kelly were completely off the charts.
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The total number of minutes watched on Oireachtas TV last Tuesday was 9.1 million - a 300-fold increase on normal. It is the equivalent of 150,000 hours, 6,250 days or 17 years of total viewing.
“It speaks for itself in terms of public engagement,” Oireachtas TV broadcast and channel manager Donnacha McKeon said on Saturday.
Those numbers are only for those who streamed from the internet. Thousands watched proceedings on the RTÉ News Now channels which also broadcast last Tuesday’s hearings live.
Mr McKeon said there were big numbers too when US president Joe Biden visited Leinster House but not on the same scale as the Tubridy/Kelly hearings.
He told RTÉ's The Business programme about preparing for those hearings. “I gave a lecture earlier this year at the parliamentary engagement network. In it, I said we shouldn’t kid ourselves. We are in a niche area of broadcasting.
“The vast majority of the population don’t interact with us but, when they do, we have to be ready. That’s what happened over the last week. I was proud of the team that we were able to show really comprehensive coverage.”
