In the extended twilight of his years, Howard Hughes, lying naked and filthy with 12-inch long fingernails in a darkened Las Vegas hotel, would phone up the local TV station (which he happened to own) and instruct them to junk the schedule in favour of whatever movie he wanted to watch that evening. In a way, therefore, Hughes was the first exponent of pay-per-view, 40 years before it became an option for the rest of us.
Fans of digital TV say it will enable us all to become our own schedulers, but if the digital revolution means you can watch any episode of Friends you want at any time of the evening, well we're half way there already. In such a situation, the whole idea of a TV channel - an identifiable menu of programmes under the umbrella of some editorial vision - becomes more and more irrelevant, and we may find ourselves using our zappers like Web browsers.
But, if I were Howard Hughes in Ireland today, with an unlimited budget and no editorial constraints, I could have a lot more fun than the reclusive billionaire (while adopting a more conservative attitude to personal hygiene and trying to get out once in a while).
My priorities would be clear. With an unlimited budget, and the cream of the country's talent at my disposal, it should surely be possible to devise an Irish sitcom that actually makes people laugh (for the right reasons), and why not an epic Irish drama series running from the 1960s to the present day? It should only cost a meagre £15 million or so.
I would insist on documentaries that aren't as toe-curlingly PC or sycophantic as the current crop, and my more malevolent instincts would be satisfied by Begrudgery, an investigative programme that would find out how prominent Irish people really made their money. Neither of these principles would be applied to me, of course - why be a media mogul if you can't indulge in a little megalomania?
The weather forecast would be broadcast in suitably apologetic tones, as would Oireachtas Report (my licence-fulfilling public service contribution, broadcast at the niche marketing hour of five a.m.). A new open-ended chat show hosted by Eamon Dunphy would fill the hours leading up to Oireachtas Report.
My acquisitions department would immediately buy rights to all past and future episodes of ER, Frasier, The Simpsons, The Larry Sanders Show and NYPD Blue, but would turn its nose up at Ellen, Cybill, or anything else with someone's first name as its title.
To avoid domestic friction, Friends and Ally McBeal would have to be added to the schedule, but these would be cunningly used as bargaining chips for my extensive live coverage of Italian Serie A football. Other sports-related programming would include Golf: Why?, a hardhitting look at this festering sore on Irish society (to be presented, perhaps, by Paddy O'Gorman), while GAA coverage would feature lighweight ScrapCams to cover off-the-ball incidents. A crucial part of overall sports policy would be my purchase of the Republic of Ireland soccer team (for the purest motives possible, of course).
As a generally benign TV magnate, I would be only too happy to sit back and let my minions' creative talents bloom, but there would have to be a few basic ground rules - no more drama series set in bleak, repressed de Valera's Ireland, no telethons and no themed nights - those excuses for jamming together every piece of old recycled rubbish and slapping a self-congratulatory label on it. There would certainly be no more Celtic mists guff (especially anything with Liam O Maonlai) and definitely no bloody Boyzone. Oh, and no Gay, no Pat, no Marian . . . Come to think of it, this TV mogul thing is easier than it looks . . .