Dumb & dumber - how Irish talk radio declines with 2 national stations...

ODS

Is this just me or do others notice it too; I used to think Newstalk going national would be a good thing, but since that happened, imo both it and RTE 1 have gone down the tubes. Think of it - 2 or 3 years ago on 106 there was McWilliams in the morning, Kiberd on at lunch, etc - all now gone, and replaced by tabloid-lite...Where once there was a station that had news stories with local focus (thus of interest to me as its my locality), there is now the same national blah-blah that is everywhere else.

Meanwhile RTE has dropped (p)rattlebag, which although dusty, was still a committment to culture; current affairs on 5 - 7 live has been given short shrift to make way for sports, and its hardly as if - nice fellow that he is - Ryan chirpy's show upped the high brow stakes. There is of course Vincent Browne - if you want senile discussions about Haughey in the 80's. And as for Derek Mooney -oh RTE, why do you always take someone who is fine in one slot and then try to apply them all over the schedule? The type of people interviewed in the quizzes, did you ever hear such stupid... *back shivers in embarassment at the thought of visitors to the country believing such rubbish to be indicative of natives IQ levels*

Where I had hoped that with Newstalk going national, each station would try to up the game on the other, imo the opposite is the case...A race to the bottom and the l.c.d. (Just as well as Eddie Holt is gone from the I Times - its hardly as if hes needed anymore in such a dumbed down environment.)

So now I find the wireless almost always tuned to Radio 4... Im barely 30, yet so alienated by the declining standards of Irish radio that listening to OAPs banging on in Bristol about council charges there is almost preferable :eek:

So I guess what Im asking is

1) What do people think; anybody in agreement with me - and if so, is the logical thing to get rid of one of the national licenses?

and/or

2) Is R4 the last refuge for now and for evermore?

FlutterinBantam

I don't think its quite as bad as you make out.
RTE from 0700 to 1200 is reasonable.
Where RTE have failed is ,in my opinion, is after the 1300 news.

From then until close is ,again in my opinion ,gratuitous litterus.

You have Duffy milking stories and playing the class card constantly,Mooney= total disaster,then what was a good show 5-7 Live ,gives way to a mish mash of tepid crud that has about as much life in it as three week tea.

Interspersed in all this are utterly stuuuupid competitions whose sole objective is to embarrass the crap out of everybody and whose questions are so puerile that its obvious that a phone company are the only gainers.

other than that I agree with you 100%

Sponge Bob

I'm afraid 5-7 is now unlistenable, its a sort of evening court report instead.

crap utter crap . bring back Rachel and apologise to her on yeer knees RTÉ

sudzs

Sponge Bob wrote:

I'm afraid 5-7 is now unlistenable, its a sort of evening court report instead.

crap utter crap . bring back Rachel and apologise to her on yeer knees RTÉ

Agree totally!

The minute that Mary whatshername starts roaring at me I switch over.

And as for Mooney... don't get me started, he seems to spend most of the show tittering at his own jokes. :mad:

Sponge Bob

Mary is a reporter not a presenter/interviewer . when she has to handle a delicate interview she ummm and humms and haws and emmms and stammers . She is over her head and knows it The only people she has any chemistry with are other court reporters, her old job.

Matt Cooper, on the other hand, is a presenter. He can discuss oil futures or politics or didier drogbas hind leg in equal measure. Rachel was as able as Matt is anyday and then there was her oul fella and his cheltenham tips one year, now that was funny ( he was the best tipster in Ireland for 3 days ) but thats the kind of thing a good presenter can bring into the mix .

The thing I find amazing is not that Rachel was moved on, presenters can be reshuffled and thats a fact.

What I found amazing was that RTE had no PRESENTER to take over such an important slot , instead handing it to a reporter with no previous record as a presenter .

I would have though that they should have added a second presenter (a la morning ireland which has 2 teams of 2) to create a bit of competition and keep the program lively .

Dunno about rachel/philip boucher hayes team , he was her roving reporter and holiday stand in ( no disrespect to either) but they could have tried guests or semi permanent guests as a foil . Thats how ray darcy and matt cooper do it and they are successful . A good presenter gets the very most out of what they have in front of them, way it is and always was.

emmm ummmm ehmmmm mmmmm Yes!

mike65

Thats a pretty fair summary I think, Coopers' background as a newspaper editor has held him in good stead, whereas Mary Wilson is a specialist reporter in the wrong job. Trouble is they are stuck with her until she can be dropped without it looking like a panicky change of tack. Who would replace her?

As for Newstalks changes, well I never heard the old version, but Kilberd would'nt be on anyway due to his illness, he's writing again but I'm guessing he's got to take it easy. The morning news on the other hand is pretty damned bad, Ger Gilroy is...well, lets just say I have a mental image of him slouched over the desk proped up with his elbows on the surface and a fag in hand. Its flippant, lightweight stuff for the most part. Hooky I now quite like, its taken a while but I got there.

Mike.

Sponge Bob

mike65 wrote:

Trouble is they are stuck with her until she can be dropped without it looking like a panicky change of tack. Who would replace her?

Rachel English, but with some fluff regular guests to chew the cud or else Rachel with some serious guests to chew the cud. She used to have segments from derek davis and olivia o leary on occasion. They were fine in themselves but a bit old fashioned sort of radio essay stuff , dated in my opinion .

Why not have Olivia or Derek in the studio instead to chat about an issue of the day or week , same persons different format and usage of same persons . Anyway I am not going back to to rte and their 5-7 slot unless they change it back to what it was , and refresh as one must always.

If there was a fault with the program it was not fast moving enough and lacked a sort of bustle. give it to Joe duffy maybe , Joe does bustle

the controller of radio 1 should also as walk they obviously have no clue of scheduling dynamics.

jack24

I must agree re the declining standards of Newstalk. They have moved from a sometimes insightful morning program with Dunphy (albeit centered on some of his former contributors on the Last Word) which gave reasonable times to the topics it covered (Middle East/Norther Ireland etc) to what I can only describe as sub Sky news style approach. Completely unimportant items are given their 3-4 minutes - this morning the lack of polling booths for an election in 4-5 months time was trumpeted as a breaking story - the journalist who broke the story described the booths as 3 pieces of wood with a shelf - hardly Watergate. It reminds me now of that episode in the Simpsons where Bart and Lisa presented a kids news show, Bart had the Fox news style delivery on 'nothing stories'.

The business correspondent's 'Exclusives' seem to consist mainly of snippets fed to him by the companys involved and his deadpan 'r e a d i n g f r o m a s c r i p t' delivery is sometimes unbearable.

I cant speak for most of the other shows on newstalk with the exception of Off the Ball which I think is still of the same high standards as before the nationwide move. I do think the move to a more tabloid style is Newstalks bid to win listeners but for me it dilutes what made it different in the 1st place.

Jack

kmick

Radio is basically a vehicle for advertising as far as I can see. I liked 5-7 live with Rachel she was lively, intelligent and diverse. IMHO the characters that RTE choose to run their flagship shows are unbelieveable. Pat Kenny(TV), Joe Duffy (Anywhere), Derek 'not out' Mooney (TV), Gerry Ryan (specifically TV - radio is just about bearable), Ryan 'Golden Boy' Tuberdy (TV) etc. Marian Finucane also got booted to the weekend - what was that about - she was brilliant. Replced her with Tubridy who is not fit to lick her boots even tho Id say he would like it. They should just put the bird from Prime Time on everything. She could wear a low top and purr a lot.

spank_inferno

I agree with Jack, "Off the ball" has maintained a very high standard.
I used to be a fan of Ger Gilroy on that show. But I'd say he might regret the move to the morning slot now. Credit to Eoin McDevitt who has very sucessfully made that slot his own.

Hook's show is much the same, strengthened by good contributors (travel & movie slots) They tried to mix it up with outside broadcasts. A good idea but the audio quality was sometimes poor.

I dont think moncrief has changed much from what I can tell.

The tone before that is a lot more tabloidy, its what 2fm would be like without the music

FlutterinBantam

kmick wrote:

Radio is basically a vehicle for advertising as far as I can see. I liked 5-7 live with Rachel she was lively, intelligent and diverse. IMHO the characters that RTE choose to run their flagship shows are unbelieveable. Pat Kenny(TV), Joe Duffy (Anywhere), Derek 'not out' Mooney (TV), Gerry Ryan (specifically TV - radio is just about bearable), Ryan 'Golden Boy' Tuberdy (TV) etc. Marian Finucane also got booted to the weekend - what was that about - she was brilliant. Replced her with Tubridy who is not fit to lick her boots even tho Id say he would like it. They should just put the bird from Prime Time on everything. She could wear a low top and purr a lot.

:eek: :eek: Please!!! Teach her to pronounce the letter"T" first.

Sponge Bob

OMFG :eek: HER !??!! thank God she is not on radio , nuff said now move on .

FlutterinBantam

kmick wrote:

Radio is basically a vehicle for advertising as far as I can see. I liked 5-7 live with Rachel she was lively, intelligent and diverse. IMHO the characters that RTE choose to run their flagship shows are unbelieveable. Pat Kenny(TV), Joe Duffy (Anywhere), Derek 'not out' Mooney (TV), Gerry Ryan (specifically TV - radio is just about bearable), Ryan 'Golden Boy' Tuberdy (TV) etc. Marian Finucane also got booted to the weekend - what was that about - she was brilliant. Replced her with Tubridy who is not fit to lick her boots even tho Id say he would like it. They should just put the bird from Prime Time on everything. She could wear a low top and purr a lot.

Phrase of the year!!!!