Sir, - I think the time has come for RTE TV to admit defeat, hang up its microphones, and advertise its cameras for sale in The Irish Times classified ads columns. I mean, in 42 years of existence, RTE TV's track record is hardly impressive. Apart from a handful of excellent home-produced programmes (the exceptions that go to prove the rule), the staple fare consists of re-runs of popular non-Irish sitcoms and dramas, reducing the company to a regurgitator of imported drivel, which renders its film-making equipment superfluous. And all this from a television station that not only, in its ill-defined role as public service provider, exacts licence fees from the populace, but is also, uniquely, allowed to punctuate its programmes with commercial breaks, and so collect levies from advertisers!
The final straw, in my opinion - and an accurate barometer of the mindset which appears to prevail in RTE - occurred only last week, when it became clear that the agreement between Granada and TV3 would mean the imminent loss of two pretty uninspiring imported programmes on which RTE had, to judge from the gnashing of teeth from Montrose, staked its entire future. And what was the first reaction from the Donnybrook doyens? Rise to the challenge, by researching and developing similar productions? Keep the best side out and bounce back by negotiating a deal with another station, on a like-for-like basis? Or throw in the towel by applying for a 57 per cent rise in licence fees?
A rhetorical question; we all know the answer, which calls to mind the old adage: "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach him to fish, feed him for a lifetime."
RTE has decidedly proved itself not to be a fisherman; and, this being the case, do you not agree that it would surely be better to sell off our national TV station and use the money to provide the necessary hardware to supply television signals to those faraway places which cannot, at the moment, receive their weekly diet of soporific soaps and cretinous quiz shows at first hand? - Yours, etc.,
D.K. Henderson, Castle Avenue, Clontarf, Dublin 3.