So the oracular Tiger has spoken, and through the medium of the IRTC it declares that Dublin is at last ready for commercial, niche-market radio.
Having yearned for such pluralism since the day I left New York, I could hardly be so churlish now as to criticise last week's commencement of a process which should end with five new licences for the capital. And that wearisome death-knell for the RTE cultural monopoly keeps ringing, louder than ever.
I could, of course, worry about the prospects for pluralist freedom under the auspices of an organisation, the IRTC, which imposed that ludicrous ban on a radio ad for the Irish Catholic. But while that pulls a few of my libertarian strings, I find that I'm still more concerned about what sort of pluralism this "regulated free market" can deliver.
The suggestions as to what the new niches might include - a country-music station, a Christian station - are not particularly inspiring. It's hard to see how any market-led station could hope to offer the sort of minority-interest, high-quality music that - for example - RTE's new Lyric FM, a public-service broadcaster, will provide later this year.
We'll see. Country music is already a low-cost, high-audience format for many local stations. A Christian station might, if permitted, seek financial support from devout, devoted listeners. Other possible niches, far less served at present - jazz/blues, say, or an around-the-clock news service - may make less commercial sense. One niche I'd be happy to sponsor would be an all-BP, all-the-time station. BP Fallon was in Donal Dineen's Today FM slot last week, where his track selection was, appropriately, less back-catalog than when he filled in for John Kelly in December (though he did get me up and popping to Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel's old White Lines); in fact, for such an old soldier of rock 'n' roll this man's musical taste and knowledge is scarily up-to-the-minute. His persona is equally appealing. He's heard some of Sinead O'Connor's forthcoming album, he told us. "Will I be injuncted if I say that it sounds absolutely brilliant?" If it's pluralism you're after, you might think you should avoid a programme called The Godline (RTE Radio 1, Sunday). But in fairness, Teri Garvey generally hosts a wide-ranging, broad-based conversation.
So Sunday's chat about Relationship and Sexuality Education was especially depressing. A pluralist debate about sex education apparently ranges all the way from Angela MacNamara's "just tell them the Catholic church teaching" to Carmel Wynne's "bring them around, gently and respectfully, to the Catholic church teaching". The fact that a huge and growing number of non- and post-Catholic families have children in church-controlled schools seems to have escaped notice, yet again. Maybe we need an atheist radio station.
An annual IRTC success story has been the two-week licence for students at Griffith College. Griff FM was excellent again this year, though each year it moves further away from student brashness and toward pre-professionalism - aided by all the politicians and journalists who are only-too-happy to be interviewed. I was impressed by shows such as Simon Tierney's evening News Review, but Kathleen Murphy's technically iffy but original and heartfelt documentaries, Dublin Stories, will stay with me longer.
It's the sort of aspiring-professionalism that has usually characterised the output - insofar as I've heard it - of Limerick's year-round, campus-based community station, Wired FM. Unfortunately, the latest cassette to reach this column from there, A Trip to Paradise (Monday), clearly was brought to my attention on the basis of my established interest in its subject matter, Celtic Football Club, rather than because of its own quality as a programme.
This fly-on-the-bus/at-the-bar/in-the-East-Stand documentary follows the University of Limerick Celtic Supporters Club on the drink-soaked pilgrimage to a match in Glasgow last October. The unpromising start sees the young presenter tell us that he's marking the 100th anniversary of Celtic's founding with this programme; which, apart from being presumptuous, is about 10 years late - as he tells us a minute or two later, Glasgow's Irish community established the club in 1888.
It didn't get better, though I'm sure these students have room for improvement.
Tonight with Vincent Browne (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Thursday) has generally delivered the most fun and highest drama of recent weeks with its re-enactments of tribunal testimony. However, last week it had to yield pride of place to News at One (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday), because no actor could have captured the agitation of the normally silken Senator Fergal Quinn.
Charlie Bird's Friday report, which started with the "support money" case against Superquinn before moving on to Bird's supermarket-side interview, was simply superb. And whatever prove to be the merits of the case, Quinn's frantic-sounding "it's legal because I'm saying it's legal" defence sounded like classic backfoot pol-speak - and great radio.
