The Cafe Season Grand Finale
Sometimes I sit at this keyboard and scream into my knuckles
RTE just don’t get it. I’ll go so far to say the national broadcaster is a bawling disappointment providing a lazy, uninspired schedule of programming failing straight across the board but particularly in its tacky corner of Youth Entertainment.
I realised this when our family returned to Ireland from a long spell in London. Raised on Jackanory, The Lowdown, Newsround, Knightmare, smArt, The Chart Show, TOTP and The Word (!!), I got a nasty shock that first afternoon jumping on to the couch for a slump’n’surf. Cartoons, cartoons, cartoons…imports, imports, imports. Whatever budget set aside for Irish entertainment appeared to extend to a turkey made of sacking and an occasional phone-in from Mona of Monaghan. DenTV’s for squares, twelve years later my two kids agree and refuse to watch anything but The Simpsons…and The Cafe. A show we watch together, I just about managed to get over standard cringeworthy-RTE presentation as it’s a chance for us to catch tunes from my desk and photos I’d be working on. I guess there was a special interest for me and the kids when they saw Noise Control giving it loads and we matched the animals to SEBP. That’s just us though and it’s lucky I have cool stories to spark genuine, early interest in home-grown music. What about the other kids? What’s making Irish music interesting and important to them?
Prime-time television is an accepted medium of presenting cultural entertainment of national interest and in the case of family audiences, there’s a responsibility to provide quality programmes with depth and originality. How many music moguls in the UK fell in love with music watching Tony Wilson or Slade at eight years old? How are our kids supposed to feel inspired when bands are shoved into a three-minute closer before Eastenders and Channel 6’s Night Shift lurks in the graveyard? Why do we continuously devalue homegrown talent in favour of substandard internationals (why the fuck are we allowing slapper-happy Ziggy another flog of his flagging career? Shouldn’t he really carry a health warning going into the studio with the Hollyoaks dolls?), what’s being done to mould new pillars of excellence for young people to look up to? Are we rearing children or Bratz?
Some sharp minds are evidently at work behind the scenes: a stunning selection of artists featured on The Cafe this year, work of someone with their finger on the pulse of a new Irish musical movement. On the other end of the scale it appears tawdry, conformative material is overiding the hard work in a desperate bid to ape a popculture existing only in the head of a jaded Nuts hack. Skins is so 2007!
RTE seems to set aside little funding and effort for Irish music despite the huge demand examplified in high figures for Other Voices, The Last Broadcast and even awful Podge&Rodge. The Cafe shared the same timeslot as TOTP and as a resource for new Irish bands, it was golden. Check out the archive of recent shows on the RTE website. Reads like the Choice Prize and more!
So while TOTP and The Cafe have entirely different motivation, the potential is there. Swathes of viewing figures can be attributed to fans of bands who work their arses off promoting an appearance of the show across blogs and boards, in chats and on the street. With no dedicated televised outlet for live music, The Cafe did at least hit the mark for some bands but as much, if not more, is being done on an independent basis with Balcony TV a prime example. Imagine a televised DownloadMusic.ie chart. Imagine RTE paying attention to what’s really going on.
Now the current series of The Cafe is drawing to a close. Accomodating Ash, Autamata, Dry County, The Flaws, Dave Geraghty, Jenny Lindfors, Juno Falls, MJEX, Declan O’Rourke, Republic of Loose, Duke Special, and The Radio over recent months and with the Meteors and Choice Prize gloriously blazing their winners and more soon to follow from the NSMAs, Murphys Live and IMRO, the time is right for a televised extravaganza of all the hard work afforded over the season and provides RTE the initiative to lay on a truly stellar effort of the best of Irish culture. But why should they bother? All the hard work’s being done elsewhere….
April 11th, 2008 at 9:58 am
WeTV have good bands on too. http://www.rte.ie/tv/wetv/index.html
April 11th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
you must have just misse dthe den at its zig & zag heights, it was brilliant then and probably the only thing i can think of that started on rte and they managed to export(well not so much rte exporting it, but still)
April 11th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
I don’t think you can make a straight comparison between the quality of BBC kids shows and that of RTE. The difference in budgets is huge.
Having watched TV in a few other countries i think that Irish TV stand up fairly well to our european neighbours. Its just that british TV, and the bbc in particular is miles ahead of everything else, and that with it being in the same language, a lot of stuff rte do just wont be as good.
id be more woried about the lack of any decent domestically produced drama or comedy to be honest with you.
April 13th, 2008 at 12:18 am
My proudest TV memory was when a panel of British media savvy teenagers poised a similar question the to Head of Yoof Programming at the Beeb in the early 90s.
The highlighted Blue Peter as being twee and encompassing everything that was great about Britian. In the 1950s. One bright spark cited Jo Maxi as the type of programming the BBC should consider for it teen audiences.
Where am I going with this? Well, the televisual grass, just like the real stuff always seems greener on the other side.
April 13th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Zig and Zag were on Golden Wonder packets and the Big Breakfast for me…
I’d mow lawns for a family-orientated music programme that didn’t go off air every few weeks, a respectable, watchable forum, an attempt to return to form. Even 2FM on Sundays and a crash trolley would be start. WETV does show Irish bands for two hours each weekend but it’s pretty corny.
We need an informed show that prides itself on depth. We have a lot of talent and creativity available who could venture fresh and dynamic perspective rather than sticking to autocue. Dan Hegarty is a saving grace of 2fm who’s actively aware of the immediate Irish music scene and the live School of Rock final featuring MJEX is exactly what we need to see more of from RTE. Expertise proves as important as budget in the long-term and someone at RTE is making the right choices of bands to feature on screen. There’s just not enough!
Budgets of course play a massive role and in terms of funding from license fees, the BBC is sorted by the populous British. With only one region of coverage, our national audience is tighter and condensed compared to the sprawl of BBC proper. RTE make revenue from advertising unlike the BBC. While both broadcasters make programs filling music through a schedule, there’s no flagship show for RTE.
We need a dedicated programme of live performances. videos, genuine, compelling charts, interviews and soundbytes at an accesible time presented with flair and panache.
It’s not supposed to be easy.
Television in other countries doesn’t seem much better, no :p