Lyric FM is a national treasure, don’t dare kill it
IN 2017, the English broadcaster, journalist, author and violinist Clemency Burton-Hill published her first non-fiction book, ‘Year of Wonder: Classical Music for Every Day’. It is a rather brilliant and clever book, where Burton-Hill selects a piece of classical music for every day of the year, and champions the idea that this particular genre of music has the potential to be a powerful mental tonic.
By her own admission, Burton-Hill only became fully aware of the mental and physical benefits of listening to classical music quite recently. Despite playing the violin since a young girl in the 1980s and presenting numerous classical shows for BBC radio and TV – including Last Night at the Proms – for over a decade, it was only after a couple of tough years of juggling personal grief, a busy freelance career and an energetic toddler that she discovered the incredible benefits of classical music.
By her own admission she doesn’t have the patience for yoga or mindfulness, and could never keep up any proper fitness regime. For Burton-Hill, music has been her saviour, and in her book she describes how setting out a daily piece of music, and finding the short time to sit down and properly listen it, has done wonders for her mental wellbeing.
I thought of Clemency Burton-Hill recently when RTÉ’s Prime Time made the shocking admission that the broadcaster was considering wielding the axe on Lyric FM in a bid to rectify the perilous financial situation it finds itself in.
Tales of financial woes at Montrose are nothing new, we have been here all too often, especially over the turbulent past decade. But this time, the warnings are a little too stark and morale is believed to be at a low ebb among staff. A recent email circulated to all 1,820 staff in RTÉ by director-general Dee Forbes warned ‘it is no longer possible to continue as we are’. Clearly, something has to give.
The easy target of course is the salaries of its highest-paid broadcasters (the broadcaster’s top-10 earners make up €3m of the annual wage bill). Some hefty pay cuts at the top end may go some way to appeasing the many disgruntled licence fee holders who feel their money is being wasted on over-priced stars, but it is not going to solve RTÉ’s long-term problems.
RTÉ has already sold off nine acres of land in Donnybrook for €100m, and are actively looking at the possibility of selling off more land in Dublin, as well as their Cork studio, in an effort to raise more cash.
The sale of land is a no brainer, especially when their campus is located in such a valuable part of the Dublin market. But pulling the plug on Lyric FM? It makes no sense. In 2018, Lyric FM cost RTÉ €6.6m to run, a little under two per cent of the broadcaster’s annual income. It is by some distance the least funded of RTÉ’s four main stations. Pulling the plug on a station that is nothing short of a national treasure, despite it being such a small financial burden, seems short-sighted in the extreme.
Not surprisingly, the mere suggestion that Lyric FM could be facing the chop has roused a reaction from the station’s loyal 273,000 weekly listeners, and various campaigns are under way urging RTÉ to think long and hard before making its next move.
An organisation like RTÉ must be able to balance to books, but when it comes to Lyric FM, it shouldn’t be about the money. As the station’s slogan goes, it is ‘where life sounds better’. It is where we go to escape from the doom and gloom of the daily news cycles. Lyric FM has the ability to lift your soul like no other station in the land. From Marty Whelan’s absolutely joyful ‘Marty in the Morning’ to John Kelly’s ‘Mystery Train’ to the ‘Blue of the Night’, Lyric FM is public service broadcasting at its best.
For all its faults, when RTÉ is good, it is damn brilliant. And Lyric FM is consistantly brilliant. RTÉ should be celebrating and developing the station, not threatening it with a death sentence.