Followers of fashion were greatly disappointed last month by the ruling which forbade newspapers from commenting on or photo graphing Mrs Catherine Nevin for the duration of her trial in the Central Criminal Court. Ms Justice Carroll's order banned comment on Mrs Nevin's hairstyle, dress, jewellery, nail varnish, reading matter or demeanour in court, and the judge took particular exception to "colour pieces" - descriptive articles - in the Evening Herald and Irish Independent, though she was also unimpressed by the colour reporting of The Irish Times.
Court fashion followers were relieved however that the ruling applied only in this case, so that when former model Samantha Blandford Hutton was sentenced on Monday to six months' jail for supplying cocaine, the Irish Independent felt free to provide the important details about "glamour queen" Ms Hutton: "Elegantly dressed for her court appearance in an expensive light grey suit with a short skirt and sheer tights, matched with grey suede high heels, she kept her cool as she was led away."
It pains me to admit that The Irish Times fell down badly here, though in fairness the Independent had two reporters on the job while we had only one. This paper supplied all the dreary details of the court case, but not a word about the accused's dress or demeanour. Readers might easily have got the impression from our report that the former model was not dressed at all.
On the plus side, however, The Irish Times provided an excellent picture of Ms Hutton leaving the courthouse, so that we could admire the expensive light grey suit, short skirt etc.
Had the picture only been in colour, this paper would have won hands down this battle in the cut-throat world of courthouse fashion journalism.
Right. Now to more weighty matters. The BBC has stood by a political programme which according to official figures is watched by nobody at all. The Point, shown only in Wales, is believed to be the first BBC programme to score zero viewership in the ratings compiled by BARB, the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board. The half-hour weekly programme (cruelly nicknamed What's the Point? by a Welsh MP) is being watched by fewer than the 2,500 people needed for it to register on the ratings scale. Nevertheless, the BBC says the programme is in no danger of being axed. Huw Rossiter, for the BBC, said: "This is public service broadcasting and we're not in a ratings war."
There may be a lesson here for our own beleaguered RTE, savagely torn as it is between its own public service broadcasting conscience, its self-enforced participation in the ratings war and its throbbing, suppressed but ultimately unrealistic desire to draw global audiences of many millions.
I have no doubt that the "non-viewers" of The Point (who may number as many as 2,499) must feel blessed beyond belief at their non-recognition by BARB. Existing beyond the reach of a research board of any kind, but particularly any of the multitudinous boards in the ever-nosey broadcasting industry, whose tentacles stretch further and further across the globe, is a privilege to be carefully guarded.
Accordingly, the time may have come for RTE to look into its own soul and realise that it is at its best when it engages viewers on a personal level, when so few are watching a particular programme that they feel they belong to a tiny, exclusive club, well beyond the reach of creepy broadcasting data organisations and audience measurement techniques.
BBC Wales may have inadvertently hit on the way forward but RTE is well poised to seize this baton and carve out a pioneering route. To start with, it is not unlikely that certain RTE programmes already fall into the zero viewership category, as measured by BARB, and allowing for the substantial differences in potential audience size between Britain and Ireland, the zero viewership figure in this State is probably closer to 250 than 2,500.
That puts viewers of certain RTE programmes in very close-knit, exclusive clubs, but there is no reason why the station should not make programmes which are even more exclusive, gradually narrowing the focus from international affairs to national to local, then homing in on small communities, villages, eventually on individuals, and finally on nobody at all. The trick then will be to proceed beyond zero viewership to the exciting philosophical concept of negative viewership. That is for another day, but the technology and skills are already there, and all it will take is vision and the courage of our convictions.
