I normally avoid RTE like the plague, both their radio and their TV programs... Not because they're particularly crap or anything, but mostly out of a sense of resentment for the way they get away with running their business. They have the comfort of, not only their TV Licence revenues, which seems to be enough for the BBC in the UK, but also their advertising revenues. Now, I don't have a huge issue with that extra revenue in itself. Fair play to them that they've managed to get that one over on the public for so long without being held to judgement for the crap that they put out on the air.
But you've got to wonder if we're really getting value for our Euro when you see them just taking an idea from the Beeb or any of the other stations, and changing the name, the set and the people on it, making a 2nd rate job of re-hashing an imitation and then broadcasting it... I mean, who watches that crap? It can only be those poor bog warriors who have no choice but to watch these programs because they've fallen out of the reach of satelite and cable coverage...
I recently had first hand experience of how well run the place was when I was with a friend going over to the studios in Donnybrook to drop off something for the Late Late Show. We got to the security gate - and I use the term extremely loosely here - got to the barrier only to be subjected to the most rigorous of screening...
We opened the window in the car and told their Rottweiler of a guard - fierce, he looked! - that we had a parcel to be dropped off at Studio 1 for the Late Late. 'Grand' he said and promptly lifted the barrier to let us in...!!
Surely in this day and age of terrorism - to which Ireland is not immune - a little more caution should be exercised by the national TV broadcaster?! He had no idea what was in the parcel, he never asked who we were... And, Studio 1 itself, was fully open and accessible. I hardly need to highlight the potential of a situation like that...
But I digress... The main reason I hate RTE at the moment is for taking Marty Wheelan off the air on the 2FM Morning Show. I'd never really been into Marty until I heard the morning show... Then, soon after I got hooked to it, they got rid of him and replaced him, not with another of their homegrown talents, but with the Strawberry Alarm Clock crew from FM104. I can't listen to them.... I've been aimlessly wandering the airwaves now for months and still haven't found anything remotely as good... Every radio show in the morning seems to be obsessed with making skin-crawlingly cringeable crank calls....
There is one thing I like in RTE though... Marian Finnucan :-)
