THERE are four candidates in the final process for nomination by the RTE Authority to the post of director-general and for approval by the minister of Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht.

They are all male and come from the upper echelons of RTE's management. Each in his own way is quite capable of carrying on with the role of DG in the RTE as we know it. The question is: who can break with the present laid-back wall-to-wall formula of programming and take the audience seriously?

Public service broadcasting is an attitude of mind and service about the relationship between broadcaster and audience. Information and entertainment are the twin tracks of a good broadcasting service. Programming and the management of its production resources including personnel are the hallmarks by which RTE must be judged.

Whether the Minister should have power of veto over the appointment of the chief executive of the national broadcasting organisation is questionable, but nonetheless it represents the culture of patronage and control which politicians have insisted on in the matter of Irish broadcasting culture.

It is a power which is singularly inappropriate in the circumstances in which the Minister as a result of his Green Paper on broadcasting - issued in April 1995, Active or Passive? Broadcasting in the Future Tense, has promised substantive legislation to reorder the broadcasting pitch, level or otherwise.

The RTE Authority and its new DG may well have to disagree, and profoundly so, with the Minister and the Government on the proposed legislation.

It has been said that the present chairman of the RTE Authority may have contributed to the formulation, of the Green Paper. It appears that draft legislative proposals will be brought to Government immediately after Christmas and introduced in the Oireachtas some time in the post-Budget period.

Essentially the Minister has only a couple of months before the general election in which to shepherd his legislation through both houses of the Oireachtas, and as this is likely to be the last occasion on which a detailed regulatory and legislative framework on broadcasting will be enacted by parliament, it will probably be a long process.

The legislation will provide members of the Oireachtas with an opportunity to express their views on broadcasting. Sonic will enter the debate with the salaries of Gay Byrne and Pat Kenny on their minds. RTE has certainly invited, that kind of vicarious interest.

Others hopefully will take the opportunity of looking forward to a European and world broadcasting order in which regulation as we know it will cease to be an element of broadcasting and in which ingenuity, courage and hard work will be necessary to sustain a national broadcast culture.

THE appointee as head of the broadcasting team and editor-in-chief of RTE has to establish the necessary creative tension between a board of public and lay trustees.

He will have to lead the creative workforce at RTE into the new millennium by reversing a series of policy decisions taken at various times by previous authorities, certainly, since 1980, who were underwhelming in their function of the mandate given to them.

The malaise at RTE derives to a considerable degree from the dismissal of an authority by Gerry Collins in 1972. Since that time the power and initiative of the office of DG have been exercised fitfully.

What the present authority, appointed by the Minister in June 1995, and the new director-general have to consider is how RTE is going to be best positioned in an environment of legislative change, a prospective deregulatory scenario (i.e. no rules and no protection for "national" broadcasters), a European context in which the EU Commission's policies in its "Television Without Frontiers" policy is ineffective and in shreds, and a broadcasting world in which GATT and free trade in airwaves give the United States and indeed South America a dominant market position.

In Ireland we are also facing the possible privatisation of RTE or part of it should there be a change in government and a reluctance to further increase the licence fee, which is now regarded as a regressive tax.

Facing the incoming director-general are a number of matters of which the legislative proposals by, the Minister will be one. In that regard the Minister may well introduce new structures for the administration of broadcasting, but he will hardly come up with any further financial support.

He is, like many of his predecessors, given to the notion of controlling broadcasting but not financially supporting it. This, as always, will be left to the taxpayer, through the licence fee and indirectly through advertising. The only real issue that, has to be determined is how Teilifis na Gaeilge is to be structured and paid for.

The other issues are related to the culture of broadcasting itself.

The Green Paper essentially asked what was wrong with RTE programming and answered that hostility "which has been directed at the public sector in general... has resulted in pressures on RTE to apply commercial criteria to its operations ...and these might not necessarily be the most appropriate means to ensure quality in programming ..."

The RTE television producers/directors in a statement on the Green Paper stated "we believe that thee Irish viewing public are poorly served by RTE. The quality, diversity and independence of programming has been seriously damaged bye the policies pursued by RTE authorities and implemented by the station's management over the past 10 years .. ." (Jan 1996)

The authority in its response to the Green Paper avoided that issue and has continued to avoid the issue, in its latest annual report, just published. The essential justification for, the present programme policy is one, as RTE has seen it, of technological inevitability.

New technology means more channels: output means quantity. This RTE position is premised on the fear of the future. To be fearful of new technology in broadcasting is to misunderstand the pace of technological change and how the Irish' viewers will react to new technology in broadcasting choice.

There is an underlying suggestion by the RTE Authority in its reaction to the Green Paper and in its recent, annual report that the Irish audience might abandon RTE when faced with choice. Choice means Sky. To compete with Sky means Sky wins.

The idea that the Irish viewer will abandon RTE is not a very good basis on which to posit the relationship between the Irish audience and RTE 1. The audience might abandon RTE if its programming is of, poor standard. Technology will not be a defence. The combination of technological lust and "populist" scheduling deals a deadly hand.

In the world survey of television viewing 1995, One Television Year in the World, RTE 1 is one of the strongholds in the world holding its own against four of the best TV channels available and in Ireland's ease without linguistic or cultural impediments - BBC1/2, UTV/ HTV and Ch4.

It is the core of indigenous programming which has sustained RTE and will do so in the future unless RTE falls into the trap of replicating what others do. It is the quantity and quality of home-produced programming which are the ingredients of success in the Irish context: both are expensive and onerous.

THE problem for the incoming DG is that commitment and planning are already in place and certainly so for the next 18 months or so. The problem is how to overthrow the existing plans.

The reluctance to change is a noticeable feature of RTE, And the conservative streak of RTE middle management in administration and engineering is noteworthy. Of course, while there have been cut-backs and staff reductions, the survival ratio of administrators to programming staff is high.

Short-term contract programming staff in production does not breed confidence, and the training now provided for production staff including producers and directors is inadequate for the development of broadcasting talent in the long run. As one of my colleagues in RTE put it to me some year ago, raiding the granary and the seed shed empties both eventually.

Those viewers who have watched Raiders Of the Lost Archives will have cause to wonder why programming in candlelight is not being matched by much of the programming coming from computerised and digitalised technology.

The result is to have much programming relevant to the Irish audience made by broadcasting services outside the state - Granada TV and the beef tribunal, UTV and the Brendan Smyth case. Some of this may be accounted for by the libel laws, but much of it is by faint heart.

The recent anniversaries of the Treaty and the Famine are examples of events which touched at the heart of Irish culture and history. The RTE response to these and its role more generally in drama, fiction, considered documentaries and other programming dealing with aspects of contemporary culture are lacklustre.

There is a question of talent, experience and money. The financial question is one which the authority must address the talent is one for the executive led by the DG. The burden of Teiliffs na Gaeilge on RTE is a smart stroke by the Minister and one which the authority should have insisted on being discussed and placed in the public domain.

The post of DG as advertised did, for the first time in recent memory, include the description of the role as editor-in-chief, a role carried with distinction by T.P. Hardiman (1966-1974), the second DG. He saw his role as unitary, embracing all branches of the broadcasting discipline. Since Hardiman's time the editor-in-chiefs role has become secondary to the office. Taste, culture and standards might again be landed on the desk where the buck used to stop.

RTE tends to conduct its part in, the discourse about Irish broadcasting and its future in a very defensive way. It finds it difficult to change course or acknowledge mistakes.

The recent changes and tedious dallying in decisions about the radio schedule and the unedifying show of ambition in the matter of the necessary rescheduling to accommodate Gay Byrne show how much the service has become "star"- rather than programme- and content-led. It is when broadcasting can be conveniently placed within an entertainment slot that broadcasting loses out.

The political momentum necessary to support the national broadcaster on a cross-party basis is essential, and there is just about enough time left to put a significant case for a radical reform of the financing of public service broadcasting. That kind of broadcasting is a service for all the people of the State in all their moods and concerns, high and low, across the country.

It would be better for RTE if it escaped from the embrace of state control and the state-controlled collection and disbursement system of the licence fee. Public service broadcasting does not take its character from the source of its funding.