RADIO REVIEW/Harry Browne: The beat fades for a few moments, and up rises a flippant young female voice: "Because other radio stations suck. - This is Spin 103.8." Oooo, that's so attitudinal. Or would you call that vibey? Edgy? Whatever you call it, obviously it delights me to hear the vernacular of my native New Jersey thus validated, apotheosised, in one of the promos for Dublin's new youth radio station. Ah, yes, when in 1978 my long-haired white-boy peers were chanting "Disco sucks" at the high-school dance, we may have been
As the dateline on that reminiscence indicates, I'm not the target audience for Spin, and so I'm hesitant to pass judgment on the station. (Let's be honest: I'm hesitant even to listen to a station that won't play any music released before the year 2000 - reactionary that I remain, I'm amazed they can fill 20 minutes with that policy.) Sure, I could snigger at the first-names-only "newsroom". ("Gerry is on the story." "Trish, the alarm was raised . . .") But that's marginal, somewhat beside the point for a station that focuses very specifically on music.
So what I do is, I consult carefully and systematically (or randomly and impressionistically) with people whose tastes and birth certs make them more qualified to comment. And so far they're saying, well, Spin kinda sucks.
Too bad, because other radio stations also suck. (Yeah, okay, I'll stop with that word now.) It was one of those weeks when the interpretation of events on the streets of Dublin and Holland, and in the ballot boxes of France, would set your teeth on edge, as the political limits of broadcasters were all too obvious.
It was the wonderful Maol Mhuire Tynan on the David McWilliams Breakfast Show (NewsTalk 106, Monday to Friday) who asserted that Reclaim the Streets, and its official bludgeoning, constituted "real politics", as compared to the election sham; but this level of insight, which should hardly be startling, was rare indeed this week. OK, it's all very well to focus on Garda over-reaction to the minor blocking of city-centre traffic on a Bank Holiday evening. However, the point of Reclaim the Streets, internationally, in relation to wider political and environmental issues, and in opposition to repressive legislation such as the Public Order Act, was largely missed in the easy "anti-globalisation" labelling. Which means the essence of the argument, and indeed of such "provocation" as may have come from some protesters, was missed too.
Such journalistic substance as there was on this story, up to midweek anyway, was essentially visual. Radio's job should have been to set the newspaper and TV pictures in context. Instead, on, for example, Wednesday's Morning Ireland (RTÉ Radio 1, Monday to Friday), the interview by Cathal Mac Coille with RTÉ Interactive's Claire Connolly essentially talked us through the pictures.
What more can we expect from a political culture in which it is possible for a "20/20 News" headline (NewsTalk 106) to state, without apparent irony: "Meanwhile, Labour will unveil its plans to end poverty and deprivation later today." Yeah, heh heh, nice one Labour - but did you really have to hold out on us until "later today"? There was more political comedy on the Sunday Supplement (Today FM). Pat Shortt of D'Unbelievables (does he hate that designation?) was on doing his Maurice Hickey candidate-character from TV's Xit Poll, and I'm not exactly sure Shortt wasn't taking the piss out of the panel. The latter (typically great and good, political hacks etc) were, of course, fully cognisant of the fact that when Sam Smyth started talking to "Hickey", it was their cue to be right royally amused, and the studio filled with their uproarious laughter at virtually every breath he took. But the (un)funny thing was that Shortt/Hickey's litany of "the issues on the doorstep" was all too true to life; when he started to describe the appalling physical conditions at his local national school, he could nearly have been lifting the details from a recent story in this newspaper's EL supplement. Thus the programme offered the edifying spectacle of this State's political/media establishment splitting their sides at an account of a primary-classroom window that was ready to fall out of its frame on to the children below.
Clearly I'm missing some Irish sense-of-humour chromosome. I hope Sam Smyth still has his in place tomorrow when he comes to review his own analysis of the French presidential election. Like many others, Smyth predicted confidently that Le Pen was going to grow his vote considerably; and really, we were made to understand, it would be one in the eye for all (us) politically correct types who try to shut down debate when issues about immigration and the like are so reasonably raised by the likes of Noel O'Flynn.
Le Pen's relatively miserable showing (lower than the total percentage for all far-right candidates in round one) had an incongruous effect on commentators this week. The media had been virtually united in battering anyone on the French left who might fail to turn out for Chirac, but after most lefties held their noses and did just that, they were treated to an interpretation of the ballot - all over Irish radio anyway, most obviously on Monday's Morning Ireland - that said Chirac had to listen carefully and respond to the Le Pen line on immigration. With Pim Fortuyn also being turned into a martyr for common-sense all around the dial, it was a very bad week indeed for multicultural Europe.
A very bored-sounding birdwatcher turned up on 5 Live Breakfast (BBC Radio 5 Live, Sunday) to tell us that, yeah, it was "Dawn Chorus Day" in Britain and all over the world, and, yeah, you know, he'd heard the standard predictable birds when he went out at first light. (Pity the poor presenter who had to make this interview last until the news headlines.) But hark! Last Sunday wasn't "Dawn Chorus Day" all over the world, or even all over the time zone. In laggardly Ireland, the action only happens tonight/tomorrow morning, and Mooney Goes Wild on One (RTÉ Radio 1) starts at midnight tonight with an overnight programme that has been so charming and engaging and even exciting in years gone by that not only will I stay up listening, but I'll go so far as to recommend you do the same. Many years ago the programme turned me into a partisan for radio-birdwatching (no, really), and not just as a more creature-comfortable alternative to the binoculared version, but as a joy in itself.
Concern about birdlife in Ireland is not, of course, limited to learning to distinguish a chaffinch from a greenfinch on the basis of their FM-transmitted songs. (That's certainly an easier task than distinguishing a Fine Gael blue tit from a Labour redpoll, for example.) The RTÉ Radio 1 documentary this Wednesday was a repeat from the Derek Mooney stable: The Golden Eagle Project, produced by Mooney and presented by Dr Richard Collins - who I imagine will be helping us through the birdsong tonight - tells the story of a bird species that essentially vanished from Ireland about a century ago.
The golden eagle was partly driven out, we were told, because it was a despised human-carrion-eater during the Famine years - so that disgusted survivors were moved to burn out its eyries. This intriguing documentary was partly the story of how the descendents of those eagle-haters have come to view the bird's recent reintroduction in Donegal, from imported Scottish chicks, as a welcome boon for the local tourist trade. As a true tale of the social and natural history of this island, it made a lot more sense than the desperate cries on the electoral wind of the political vultures who continue to fill our airwaves. I was enrapt.