Repeats on television

Sir, – There has been an 8 per cent year-on-year decline in adult television viewership (Business, August the 15th).

Us licence-payers are nurtured in the wiles of RTÉ television and its abandonment of any semblance of creativity or relevance during the “summer months”, which get more protracted annually, when repeats are repeated ad nauseam.

This year, however, it has surpassed itself and hit on the novel idea of repeating promotional ads for its own past programmes, by repeating them ad nauseam, between ad breaks during repeats. If I hear a treacly voice declaim one more time that “There’s something about local drama”, I’m taking an axe to my telly and creating some real local drama! And since RTÉ is in abeyance for four months, can I take my telly “off the road”, as it were, and suspend my licence fee until some semblance of intelligence or entertainment returns in the autumn? Or I might just give up watching TV, like more and more of the population. – Yours, etc,

TOMÁS FINN,