Musical chairs but not on a level playing field
Eilis O’Hanlon
NEWSTALK’S Jonathan Healy once had a goldfish named Hannibal after the infamous Dr Lecter from The Silence Of The Lambs. Sitting in on The Pat Kenny Show last week, he also told listeners that he used to own another who was “quite frankly an absolute jerk” and tried to kill other fish.
It’s always a surprise to be reminded that broadcasters have a life off air, but it was even more of a surprise hearing Healy hand over at the end of the show to Richard Chambers on Lunchtime.
Chambers proved to be an effective temporary anchor of the post-midday news slot, and Healy made for a genial stand-in for Pat, but one simply becomes used to hearing certain voices at certain times of the day, and it’s a shame to see Lunchtime pass out of Jonathan’s hands.
Hearing George Hook — who wound up The Right Hook last week after 14 years on air — at that time of day in future may make for some uncomfortable adjustment, as will the new voices on Breakfast.
Listeners are innately conservative, and the latest JNLR figures did show that the station is doing well. Only time will tell if the shake-up of the Newstalk schedule will represent too much change too quickly.
Healy is more comfortable with hard news than the lighter lifestyle features of a morning show, illustrating those strengths in a timely interview with Kate Shanahan, head of journalism at Dublin Institute of Technology, on whether media coverage of recent terrorist atrocities is merely adding to people’s panic rather than providing a proper understanding of relative risk.
As Shanahan rightly said, accessing news in real time through social media now makes us feel more intimately connected to events, so they feel personal even when they’re not. Of course, the same could be said about news reports of plane crashes or road accidents or foreign wars, and the media rarely questions its coverage of those; but it’s worth asking the question, however awkward. Tom Dunne, sitting in as host of Moncrieff in this traditional season of musical chairs, even dared to ask whether terrorism works.
Sometimes, came the answer from Troubles expert Professor Richard English, now of St Andrews University, but only partly, and the aims can generally be achieved by other means.
Finally, amid the usual brouhaha over the latest JNLR ratings, it's worth noting that RTÉ Radio One's The Business, which goes out at 10am on Saturday mornings, is the eighth most popular show in the whole country, beating Drivetime, Saturday with Claire Byrne, Sunday With Miriam, Tice Ray D'Arcy Show, This Week, The Ian Dempsey Breakfast Show...
Presented by Conor Brophy, it's a bit too dry and narrowly-focused for my tastes, but it goes to show what rivals are up against when trying to challenge RTE's dominance of the market.
Each edition of Morning Ireland gets more listeners than Newstalk does all day, and it's not even that interesting most mornings.