A chara, - Regarding Michael Foley's important article, "UTV threatens legal action" (June 12th), I would like to remind your readers that, in effect, the Irish Government of the late Fifties and early Sixties was responsible for the fact that RTE has only a 30 per cent coverage of the North today.
They appointed the first Television Commission in 1958, to invite and consider applications for the television franchise. They got only one proposal from a wholly Irish-controlled applicant - that from Gael-Linn. Its detailed submission (prepared with some technical advice from NBC of the USA, purely on a fee basis) proposed that, to ensure national coverage, we would erect six major transmitters, two of which would be somewhat nearer to the Border than Kippure.
The Commission rejected all applications and the government decided to establish a state-owned body, RTE.
The initial mistake of the many made by the first RTE Authority was to appoint an Englishman as Head of Engineering - a decent foreigner who presumed that his remit included building a transmission network for "Eire." Hence the Kippure transmitter and the three others, leaving RTE with a mere 30 per cent overspill into the North. (Theoretically this percentage could be increased overnight if householders in the North erected suitable roof-top aerials but, in reality, this would be the equivalent of placing the Tricolour on chimney tops there - an ill-foreboding act even today).
During 1960 to 1962, when the transmitters etc, were being built, UTV did not exist and the British authorities indicated no real interest in interfering in RTE's technical plans. All that, however, was to change later.
When I became Chairman of the RTE Authority in 1970 I found it easy to persuade the then Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, Mr Gerard Collins, to seek British agreement to allow RTE to build a booster facility in Co Louth, which would, of course, increase RTE's "overspill" immensely - and that into the most densely populated part of the North. His enthusiastic bid was rejected out of hand by the British authorities, no doubt egged on by UTV, by then well into business.
To add to the contrariness of all this, Mr Collins's successor, Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien, who insisted on the famous provisions of Section 31 of the 1960 Broadcasting Act being strictly implemented by RTE, started a campaign to have BBC1 broadcast in its entirety by RTE - a campaign which had the good wishes of the British Government and the active connivance of the then Director General of the BBC (a man born in Ireland but of the Wellington tradition).
If the Minister had succeeded, the RTE Authority would have had to continue to censor its own programmes while being obliged to re-broadcast all BBC1 material, including, for instance, IRA statements etc!
The deal between the Irish and British Ministers and the BBC was within hours of being concluded when I spoke by telephone to Sir Michael Swan (the then Chairman of the BBC Governors, with whom I had a good personal relationship) and explained our predicament - and what RTE's future negative attitude would be to any BBC proposal coming before the European Broadcasting Union, including an RTE-led campaign to block his Director General's well known overwhelming ambition to become President of the Union. (In fact I jocosely reminded him of Lloyd George's famous threat of "immediate and terrible war").
Within 20 minutes he rang back to tell us that we need have no further worries in the matter. And so ended another example of broadcasting madness in this part of the world. - Is mise, Donall O Morain,
An Charraig Dubh, Co Baile Atha Cliath.