THE ghostly voice of Gay Byrne has been echoing inside my head as I listened to the first week's broadcasting from Radio Ireland.
"That's what happens in live broadcasting," Gaybo's voice has been saying, as he has said many times over the years when technology has let him down or a guest has "failed to appear.
He hasn't needed the phrase quite as often in any given week as Radio Ireland has in the past five days.
Firstly, there was the "launch party from hell". This featured the broadcasters promoting each other - whenever they could find each other - which wasn't easy given that some of them were in something called a pod, the main impact of which seems to have been visual. (This approach to radio has a fine precedent in Din Joe's old programmes where the listeners could "watch" Irish dancing).
The opening night for me was notable for an interview with one of the investors, introduced with over-the-top enthusiasm as a live encounter with someone who never gives interviews.
But that's just a party, we said to ourselves, wait until the real programmes go on air. In effect, that meant we had to afford St Patrick's Day's programmes a general absolution - or so the broadcasters claimed. They never stopped telling us how untypical the programming was. Not all listeners were able to make the distinction between a "typical" Daybreak, the station's flagship current affairs programme, and the laid-back St Patrick's Day version.
This floored some listeners who thought Bertie Ahern had demanded a soft bank holiday interview and that tough interviews must be exclusive to Morning Ireland. But then, as a later programme revealed, Emily O'Reilly thought she was on Morning Ireland anyway.
I do not apologise to my friends at Radio Ireland for any of these comments for two reasons. Firstly, comments about the entertaining disasters of the first week's broadcasting are probably the best free advertising the station can get, drawing more people to listen next week than tuned in this week.
Those new listeners are likely to find themselves listening to a station which has found its feet and got its act together. The principle here would be that a bad rehearsal always precedes a great show - and what we were hearing, this last week, was the rehearsal.
WHICH brings me to the second reason I believe it's important to be ruthless in our criticisms of his station's first week. Airline pilots should do their first crashes in flight simulators, not with real planes and live passengers. Similarly, broadcasters should learn to read clocks and cope with technical disasters in rehearsal, unheard in their private time, and not on air.
No doubt, as they lick their wounds this weekend, Cliona, Emily, Gavin and the rest will feel resentful that the headlines are about them, when it is the lack of adequate back-up and preparation by others that is responsible.
It may be that the technology in the studios from which Daybreak and The Last Word are transmitted has too heavy a bias towards music. A studio built for music programming is less than user-friendly to talk broadcasters, and so the frontliners may resent criticism of performances diminished by a less than perfect setting. But that comes with the territory - broadcasters have to take the pain with the fame.
And the pain is mitigated by a number of factors. There is a determination and a confidence about Radio Ireland which I don't recall in its predecessor, Century. There is also widespread goodwill towards the station. People want it to succeed. Many people in RTE this week, even while gleefully retelling the funnier debacles from individual programmes, were sorry the first week was not flawless. They were genuinely hopeful the new station would get into gear and were dispirited by the fumbles.
They should remember that six weeks after Morning Ireland took to the airwaves, it was seen as so hamfisted a failure that the then chairman of RTE was quoted to the effect that the station had made a serious error in moving away from music first in the morning and the sooner it did away with this disastrous innovation the better. Six months later and 10 years on it's top of the ratings.
What I would regard as potentially more serious than first-week stumbles by the new station is that its schedule suggests it sees itself as involved in a marking exercise: providing similar programming as RTE in the same slots at the same times. In marketing terms, that is a crucial error. You never attack the brand leader with a product based on the brand leader's product. You compete by offering something different.
A neighbour of mine in Galway who personifies the target audience of Radio Ireland told me during the week that while Daybreak should be pleased by the direct comparison with the long-established Morning Ireland, Radio Ireland's real competition was not RTE at all but his local radio station.
IT gave him traffic news, data on deaths and on business - all he needed as a local businessman. He did admit that he didn't mind getting an overview on the wider world before he went local and Daybreak's 7 a.m. start just might persuade him to tune to Radio Ireland on his car radio on his way to work.
It remains to be seen whether Daybreak and the programmes which follow it can woo listeners away from local radio in substantial numbers.
I'm not sure that, whatever the schedule may suggest, Radio Ireland is planning direct head-to-head competition between Morning Ireland and Daybreak. The latter sounds closer to BBC Radio's Five Live, a busy, constantly updated current affairs/ news mix, where a serious item can be followed by a report about a cat obtaining a mail-order ordination.
If this is the aim, when the programme settles down it should carve a niche market, appealing to listeners who like pace, hate predictable topics and appreciate the emphasis on location sounds or "actuality".
That said, there is a serious gap between the official plans for this station, which won it the licence from the IRTC, when compared to the schedules and the first week's product. The market may not yearn for drama. However, if drama was part of the deal, drama there should be. If documentaries were part of the deal, documentaries there should be.
If the award of a licence was predicated on the inclusion of particular "public service" elements, the IRTCs should put deadlines on Radio Ireland's promoters to ensure those elements manifest themselves without too much delay.
The challenge and the opportunity for Radio Ireland are huge. The station's attitude to its first week seems to be an embarrassed, amused but ultimately confident shrug. We survived, says the shrug. Maybe we shouldn't have done our rehearsals on air but we survived.
The task is now to move beyond survival to success. The success of the new station would benefit the nation, not least in refreshing RTE and offering a second home base for the talent with which this country overflows.