Sir, - So RTE Radio 1 is to go back to music again, with the "lightening" of shows such as Pat Kenny and Gay Byrne and with "Morning Ireland" continuing its summer starting time of 8.00 am rather than 7.30 am (Michael Foley, Irish Times, August 23rd).
I grew up in a house which listened to BBC Radio 4 most of the time. There was a wide variety of programmes covering every topic but, good as it was, it was not Irish and did not reflect our issues or approach to life. In recent years, RTE has developed programming of equal and better quality in the areas of news, current affairs and the arts, such as Pat Kenny, "Morning Ireland", "Today at Five" and Mike Murphy's "Art Show" (how did it survive unscathed?). Much of this progress is now to be dumped in favour of more music output.
We need more music radio? Music channels are wall to wall on the dial, all identical in their output; I, for one, could not tell one from another if my very life depended on it. Within this enormous array of music output, is there not room for a single news and speech oriented channel?
Perhaps the most galling aspect of this issue is the attempt by the RTE administration to pretend that this is a progressive development rather than what it is, the discarding of years of hard work and programme development, of trial, error and success. I can guess why music programming is cheap to make; a presenter, an engineer, copyright charges and that's about it.
Speech programmes require researchers, interviews, legal check - all messy, hard work requiring time, money and effort, and RTE's professional staff do it very well. It would appear that this is something RTE administrators cannot or will not understand. Or is it that current. programming is getting in the way of their own pet projects?
This whole malaise is neatly summed up in their approach to "Morning Ireland", the excellent news programme running from 8.00 to 9.00 am. They fought its creation from the beginning, but they could not overcome the fact that, whether they liked it or not, there exists a demand for news and current affairs programming in the morning.
"Morning Ireland's" slot was increased to start at 7.30 am, but again dropped back to 8.0 am for RTE's extended summer holiday, and now we learn that it will not resume its earlier start. What is the administration's problem? Many people now start work at eight or shortly after, missing "Morning Ireland" completely while BBC Radio 4's equivalent morning news programme starts at 6.30 am. At the other end of the day, the evening news programme, "Today at Five", is to be turned into a music and chat show.
We are badly served by RTE Radio's administration. It is time for the station to be run by professional staff, not the short sighted administrators who are succeeding in running it into the ground. - Yours, etc.,
Aughrim Street,
Dublin 7.