First They take NOdisco - Now Here Comes the night. Lets do something !

national | arts and media | opinion/analysis Sunday April 04, 2004 15:45 by Conor - SAucd/Not relavant for this post conor at ziplip dot com

From this week coming, the only space for alternative tunes on the radio will be between 12am & 2am

As you may or may not have heard, TodayFM are cutting/Have cut Donal Dineen’s fabulous “Here Comes the Night” Show. The reason given (according to yesterdays Times) was that “the numbers didn’t add up” so predictably enough the commercial Station cut it.

I think it time we did something here on indymedia for slightly off centre culture in Ireland.

JazzFM is on and off air like a yo-yo (ive given up on my analogue dial), other pirates seem to be shut down, the new licences have all been awarded to the more commercially orientated “PhantomFM” (surely the worst pirate since Jack Sparrow) “Spin1038”(98fm for kids) “Q102” (ditto), and Another country music station of sorts. We shouldn’t have to rely on unsupported pirates for radio anyhow!

For me, the cutting of “here comes the night” is the last straw. We obviously can’t rely on commercial stations to supply our ears with avant garde music, arts or media. “Radio Ireland” was set up under certain guidelines (if I remember), which im sure didn’t involve it employing 3rd rate, failed Irish Musicians to play “the Thrills” “Franz Ferdinand” and “Mic Christopher” all night every night. Regulation of the radio waves seems to go as far as “were under some financial pressure, so were going to revert to commercial pap”. I don’t remember where, or what the exact figures were, but TodayFM did seem to be making a lot of money for its investors the last time I checked.

So what about the stations we supposedly do control via our licence fee? What about RTE?

Around 2 years ago, its only credible music show (namely “NOdisco”) was cut, presumably for similar financial reasons. With RTE radio and Television1 overrun with Joe Duffy’s, Pat Kenny’s, poor current affairs and biased media (see other sections of this site), and 2fm/network 2 overrun with poor to worse imported sitcoms / dramas and mid-Atlantic dj’s, where is the “Public Service” output?

Are Gerry Ryan, Dave Fanning, and Larry Gogan REALLY doing anything to improve the quality of life, and cultural well being of the Irish “punter”. Is there ANYTHING on RTE that couldn’t be done on commercial Radio / Television? The age old argument of having to import programmes for the masses outside NTL/Cablelink land is surely dead with TV3 showing plenty of “Diagnosis Murder” “Coronation Street”, etc, and Today Fm / Local Radio playing plenty of Britney, Beyonce, etc. Anyone lucky enough to get BBC4 television, or digital radio will know how cheap, and fantastic the mediums of Radio and TV can actually be.

Shouldn’t we at least ask that a programme along the lines of Nodisco be shown twice a week on one of RTE’s stations, or maybe we could be daring enough to demand quality output along the lines of “here comes the night” for 3 hours a night, when were not either in clubs, or in bed?

This Kind of programming is very very cheap, epically alongside the kind of output RTE throws money into . No Disco was one man, a small studio, a cameraman, and some great music.

If anyone is interested in trying to do something about this, then please post here indicating support. I would be willing to put a reasonable amount of time into such a non authoritarian, non affiliated campaign. Please post all suggestions, or feel free to email me. I am not related to, or have any interest in any persons in the media. It just annoys me that each night my radio choice is mainstream music vs politics vs radio phone – ins. All because someone like John Mc Colgan isn’t making enough money, or RTE producers don’t look beyond the economics of their programmes.

Please also feel free to copy and post this on any related music forums.