Radio Review:There was an item about the challenge of covering an election and of keeping the electorate engaged on The Tubridy Show (RTÉ Radio 1) on Wednesday, and the panel discussion quickly veered off into colourful reminiscences from veteran political commentator Rodney Rice, talk of number crunching and references to politics as a sport.
It's too bad, though, that a great deal of the coverage of the upcoming election outside the news bulletins has taken this sporting analogy to heart, because it's simply boring for all but the most enthusiastic political anorak.
A main offender is Pat Kenny in his regular "snapshots of the constituencies" slot (Today with Pat Kenny, RTÉ Radio 1), where the various candidates are discussed mainly in terms of their performances in a recent poll. It sounds like a leftover script from last week's Grand National, with breathless talk of front runners, odds, and dark horses. Surely all that speculative number crunching can only be of interest to those involved in the business of the election - from political correspondents who thrive on that stuff to the various candidates' mammies. Could the ordinary voter who maybe needs to know more about an individual candidate's policies and personality really be that interested whether so-and-so is up or down two points in the latest poll?
It's been the same on Drivetime (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays) where for months now Nick Coffey has been grinding out the statistics on the constituencies, complete with speculation on the various winners delivered with all the intensity of a bloke from Paddy Power. While Coffey is undoubtedly knowledgeable and sounds personally very excited by the whole thing, it's fairly meaningless to the rest of us ordinary folk who don't get all flushed at the thought of the tally.
Rachael English's The Constituency (RTÉ Radio 1, Saturday), has at least managed to avoid getting bogged down in statistics and instead has tried to vent the issues in a more rounded way, taking the points of view of the voters she meets on the street and those of the candidates.
She's been slogging around the country since September for her specialist election run-up series, and she finished this week in Donegal West, where Jim McDaid was one of the candidates interviewed. The Fianna Fáil man sounds "suspiciously like a member of the Opposition" quipped English, having heard his criticism of the Government's health policy. Considering the carnage on Donegal roads, she commented that his conviction for drink-driving must rankle with the voters.
"That was a terrible thing to do at that time," McDaid said (or, indeed, at any time, English could have interjected, but I think she was mesmerised into silence by his hard neck). "I believe that people up here see a different side to Jim McDaid than the Jim McDaid seen in the tabloids."
Maol Muire Tynan (The Tubridy Show, RTÉ Radio 1, Wednesday), a former political editor of the Sunday Business Post, gave some insight into how difficult it is for a national broadcaster to get it right when it comes to pre-election coverage - and incidentally helped make some sense of McDaid's audible disengagement with his interviewer on the national airwaves. "The growth of local radio is of enormous importance to political candidates," said Tynan. "The bread and butter is at local level, that's where they're getting their votes."
I listened to The Constituency online, via RTÉ's normally excellent playback service, and heard only McDaid's interview, because just 10 minutes of the programme was available. RTÉ's newly designed website, and particularly its attention to archiving its programmes, is streets ahead of anything on offer by its rivals - Newstalk's online offering is particularly basic - but in this case one technical snafu begged another. On Saturday, The Constituency's broadcast night, there was an unexplained technical glitch and a continuity announcer - chosen presumably for her calm neutral tones, her grace under pressure and her box of dodgy LPs - had to step in. So instead of a half-hour of politics, online listeners can now hear what live listeners heard, nearly 20 minutes of muzak. (Could RTÉ really have had such a major meltdown that it was knocked off schedule for 20 minutes?)
Where else this side of a time warp would you hear Pearl's a Singer segue into the theme from Star Wars followed by a horror worse than any amount of political anoraking - an elevator-friendly version of Je t'aime?
