Claire Byrne and Pat Kenny are top targets for complaints
...though THAT comedy skit about God is still the single most denounced on air
PAT KENNY and Claire Byrne were top of the audience complaints charts last year, with their shows accounting for more than a third of all complaints lodged with the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland.
The BAI said it had received 206 formal complaints last year, 44 of them relating to the Pat Kenny radio show and 23 about Claire Byrne Live… although none of those ones were upheld.
The only other broadcast that attracted more than a dozen complaints was a highly controversial RTÉ New Year’s Eve broadcast implicating God in a sexual abuse scandal.
The segment – which attracted 29 individual complaints to the BAI and hundreds more directly to RTÉ – resulted in a voluntary disclosure of non-compliance from the public service broadcaster.
An analysis of the 206 complaints reveals that 127 of them related to RTÉ’s TV channels or its radio stations.
Of those, a total of 75 concerned RTÉ One television with a further 44 about content that was broadcast on RTÉ Radio One.
Newstalk radio generated more than a quarter of all complaints to the BAI last year, accounting for 58 of the 206 in total, most of them relating to Pat Kenny’s radio show.
Broadcaster Claire Byrne – on both TV and radio – also attracted an outsized number of complaints, according to the data.
Her TV show, Claire Byrne Live, resulted in 23 complaints to the BAI, while her radio show, Today with Claire Byrne, generated another nine, though none were upheld either in full or in part.
Joe Duffy’s Liveline saw eight complaints to the BAI; with another six about Morning Ireland; five about RTÉ Prime Time; and four each concerning the Six One News and Lunchtime Live on Newstalk.
Not all of the cases related to current affairs or entertainment programmes, with one complaint lodged against RTÉ Archive Sales, although it was later deemed invalid.
Another came from Fine Gael about a programme called National Treasures which, in the run-up to the Dublin Bay South byelection, had featured Labour candidate Ivana Bacik, who went on to win.
RTÉ later blamed an ‘inadvertent error’ for its inclusion in its schedule and the complaint is listed as ‘rejected’ in the BAI log.
Complaints about advertisements from Kinder, a local butcher shop in Co. Meath, and the bookmaker Paddy Power were also lodged – though all were either deemed invalid or were rejected.
There were complaints logged about the Angelus, two about the US presidential inauguration ceremony, and one relating to a soccer match between Arsenal and Benfica.
The number of complaints made to the BAI was up sharply last year, by almost 90% according to the records that were released under FOI.
While in 2020, there were 109 formal complaints lodged – that jumped to 206 last year.
The outcome of last year’s cases resulted in 58 of them being declared invalid, another 61 rejected and 19 of them were classified as ‘resolved’.
There were eight complaints that were upheld, 10 upheld in part, while 50 cases are still being considered by the broadcasting authority. All eight of the fully upheld cases related to the controversial New Year’s Eve ‘God’ broadcast on RTÉ.
The cases that were upheld in part stemmed from a variety of programmes including three from Newstalk’s Breakfast Show and three from its Hard Shoulder programme.
Asked about the level of complaints against the station and, in particular, the Pat Kenny Show, a spokesman for Newstalk said it had no comment to make.
In a statement, a spokesman for RTÉ said: ‘[Our] programming continues to engage record audiences, year after year, across radio, television and online and sets consistently high standards.
‘In 2021, RTÉ was home to 44 of the 50 most-watched TV programmes in Ireland. In 2021, none of the complaints against Claire Byrne Live were upheld.
‘With regard to the New Year’s Eve Countdown programme, RTÉ publicly acknowledged a sketch on this show had breached statutory and regulatory provisions and RTÉ’s own guidelines and made a voluntary disclosure of non-compliance to the BAI.’
Of last year’s cases, 58 were declared invalid