Help Keep Boards Alive. Support us by going ad free today. See here: https://subscriptions.boards.ie/.
If we do not hit our goal we will be forced to close the site.

Current status: https://keepboardsalive.com/

Annual subs are best for most impact. If you are still undecided on going Ad Free - you can also donate using the Paypal Donate option. All contribution helps. Thank you.

https://www.boards.ie/group/1878-subscribers-forum

Private Group for paid up members of Boards.ie. Join the club.

Is Matt losing his edge ?

Liam Byrne · 2008-09-22 23:59:31

One of the things I've always admired about Matt Cooper is his ability to ask awkward questions of both sides, as if he didn't have an actual stance / opinion himself - drag out the interviewees' opinions and let the listener decide. And no-one's perfect, and we all have an off day or pet subject where we can't. But…

23-09-2008 12:59AM

#1

Liam Byrne

Closed Accounts Posts: 18,163 ✭✭✭✭

Join Date: October 2006

Posts: 17464

One of the things I've always admired about Matt Cooper is his ability to ask awkward questions of both sides, as if he didn't have an actual stance / opinion himself - drag out the interviewees' opinions and let the listener decide.

And no-one's perfect, and we all have an off day or pet subject where we can't.

But listening today he missed a few, which didn't seem like him.

Firstly, some guy who was trying to claim that Ireland was "like" the Republican party in America dropped in a reference to September 11th when it was pointed out that while Ireland might be similar on abortion and gay marraige, we're not warmongers; facts and history have proven that Saddam
Hussein and Iraq had nothing to do with September 11th.

And then, in a discussion about RTE paying for prime TV shows and not really "using" them, with TV3 crying about it, he missed two important points:

1) TV3 had access to European matches that ITV had last year and TV3 annoyingly chose not to show them
2) TV3 spends money on irrelevant UK TV shows (UK Z-celebrities, UK interactive shows overlaid with with "entries not available in ROI") because it's part of the ITV stable - if they didn't do that maybe they would have some more cash to spend on worthwhile stuff

While I'm no huge defender of RTE, there definitely being some things they do that I don't like (cross-pollination - PK ending the Late Late saying "join me Monday" - should be a paid-for advert, and even the very practice of improving their radio presenters profiles by putting them on TV while avoiding listing Sam Smyth, etc, as Today FM broadcasters, listing them as just "broadcasters") the second issue above seemed to be a fairly un-objective TV3 joins Today FM to try the same thing while taking a pot at RTE, and without mentioning their own elephants in the room.

0