Some years ago a BBC executive was asked to justify, as a public-service broadcaster, poaching the comedy duo Morecambe and Wise from the independent television network. Easy, he is reported to have said, they will be better on the BBC.
Morecambe and Wise were better. The BBC put resources into the show, developed the talent, brought in writers and producers. The Morecambe and Wise Show on the BBC was one of those classics of British comedy that can be repeated time and again, much like Fawlty Towers.
It was public-service broadcasting at its best. The BBC took a talent, developed that talent and made it the best. That is what public-service broadcasting is meant to be about and that is what the people in the UK pay a licence fee for.
It is this that makes RTE's plan to introduce its version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? so depressing. This is not to suggest that RTE should not show good, well-produced popular programmes; or that public-service broadcasting is only about discussion programmes with talking heads, meaningful documentaries or programmes about the mating habits of the dolphin.
Far from it. Public-service broadcasting should be about taking an idea and developing it, developing and managing talent, putting in place high production values, giving a lead and showing the rest what is possible.
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? is highly successful format television. On UTV it was as addictive as peanuts on a bar; you just could not help but watch. It was vulgar and trashy, but you always watched for one more question and answer. Chris Tarrant has made famous his catchphrases and inscrutability. Happy? Confident? Do you want to phone a friend? 50-50?
Wherever the show is broadcast it gets huge audiences. The US version has brought ABC from third among the networks to No 1 in the ratings. Celador Production Ltd has sold its show to 70 countries and rising.
It is not the show that is the problem but the deal that has been struck between RTE, Tyrone Productions, which owns the Irish rights, and Celador Productions.
RTE will not be allowed to apply its creativity and imagination to a good idea. It will present Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? in exactly the same format as in the UK. The only difference is that it will be Gay Byrne saying "Confident? Happy? Do you want to phone a friend?" and some of the questions will reflect this country. "For one hundred pounds, when was the 1916 Rising? Was it 1922, 1798, 1916, or never."
Gay and the contestants will sit on the same kind of high chairs, looking at similar questions coming up on the same type of screens. The set will look the same, the audience will sit in the same type of seats and even the camera angles will be the same, with the hallmark wide-angle shot zooming in fast to the contestants. There will be nothing for the production team to do other than read the instruction manual.
This is McDonalds television, franchised for the Irish market on the assumption that there is little difference between people and cultures. We all love hamburgers and we all love greed. It is all so depressing.
For RTE there is no creativity, no originality, no serendipity. There is only predictability, especially since so many of us have seen the original programme on UTV.
Which brings us to Gay Byrne. There were some news stories speculating as to who might front the show, but it was always going to be Gay Byrne. If you buy something as predictable as Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? you are hardly going to give new talent a chance. This show is about audience and generating advertising revenue, and Gay Byrne does that. In this context he is safe and predictable.
There is another issue, that of sponsorship. RTE has said that this show is being produced within the guidelines for sponsored programmes. I have no doubt that it is. That does not mean, however, that we cannot ask some questions.
Just how involved was Eircell? Would Eircell have accepted a lesser being than Gay Byrne as presenter, for instance? Unlike advertisers, sponsors are in at the beginning. Advertisers wait to see if a show works before committing any money: sponsors have a commitment from the start and are involved in protecting their investment.
In this case the investment will be protected as long as the show generates the sort of excitement that gets lots of us phoning up to answer the question that is the start of the process towards having a shot at becoming a millionaire, and we will phone a premium-rate number. And guess who gets the money?
Buying Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? was short-sighted. RTE felt it had to have this show rather than TV3. It was a decision taken by an increasingly commercially-minded broadcaster which now earns more from its commercial income than from the licence fee. The present Government's decision not to go ahead with the index-linking of the licence fee is partly to blame for this.
In the long term, when digital television fragments the audience further and people are viewing RTE far less than they do at the moment, you do not have to be a soothsayer to predict that there will be debate about the licence fee. Why pay a licence fee for a station that fewer and fewer of us are watching?
The argument is that the licence fee pays for excellence, for creativity and originality and that RTE as the public service broadcaster has an important place in the culture of the country. RTE gets the licence fee in order to provide an alternative in terms of taste and quality in an otherwise commercially driven globalised television environment.
All arguments that are increasingly hard to make in the light of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
Michael Foley is a lecturer in journalism at the Dublin Institute of Technology and a media commentator