We do generally try to stick to the medium whose name graces this column, but every now and again something turns up on telly that cries out its relevance. No, I'm not talking about BBC 2's "Radio 1 Night" on Saturday. I'm sure that was grand, but I had other plans.
What I saw last week was a repeat Simpsons episode on Sky. In it, two radio presenters found their jobs under threat from DJ3000, a computer capable of handling hundreds of CDs and producing inane patter at the touch of a button - "Can you believe this weather, huh?" "Hey, how `bout that whatshisname?" etc.
If any of people still left in Radio Ireland was watching The Simp- sons - and let's face it, we know they do - the gag must have had a certain afterburn. The current daytime diet on the station bears more than a little resemblance to DJ3000's output; the computer playlist operated by Paul Power and Declan Meehan has been stuck for weeks on Men In Black, perhaps a wry tribute to the suits who have so effectively rid the station of personnel of late.
Nine out of 10 people who bother to read a radio column in The Irish Times will agree with me: it's dreadful stuff. But I'd imagine by now, even before the launch of the station's new schedule, the men in suits are smiling at the punchline of this particular joke: you can now, for the first time, walk into shops and climb into taxis and not be shocked to hear Radio Ireland. It has become, I'll wager, the aural wallpaper of choice for a significant number of listeners.
Yesterday the morning flagship, Daybreak, shifted significantly in the same direction - with snippets of current affairs wedged between rubbish songs. The people - John Caden included - who earlier this year joined the staff of a station they thought would be different may now (rightly) feel shafted, but as we've often heard on Radio Ireland, a company's first responsibility is to its shareholders. Some of the more illiberal liberals on the IRTC might not agree, but surely if we are prepared, with all due ceremony, to turn over national airwaves to a commercial concern, we must be prepared to live with these "market-driven" consequences?
Ironically, the same illiberals were probably shocked at the way Eamon Dunphy flexed Radio Ireland's vestigial "public-service" muscle on Tuesday's Last Word. The programme's second hour was given over to an interview with Bernadette McAliskey, who Dunphy called "the conscience of the republican movement".
McAliskey came across as a profoundly intelligent and sensitive woman. Clearly, most people could not agree with the conclusions she reaches after due moral agonising; however, we are entitled to hear them. Since the end of section 31 censorship it seems most republicans have entered a tacit agreement with the State authorities: they won't abuse their newfound freedom of speech by uttering anything but banalities. McAliskey, who says she can oppose the peace process without opposing the peace, certainly never sounded like the Sinn Fein broken record; she spoke with feeling and meaning.
John Ryan on Sunday Supplement (Radio Ireland) managed to joke about his programme's "zany" remit under the new Ginger Radio regime. Still, the show had real content, including the tetchy Ireland On Sunday editor Liam Hayes slamming down the phone after getting dog's abuse from George Byrne (what else is new?) and hearing Eoghan Harris - ahem - slip out of polite mode when commenting on columnist Tim Pat Coogan's photo-byline.
Harris, very much a welcome radio regular these days, was actually more interested in having a go at Mary McAleese. Intriguingly, one line he took was to try to put some distance between her form of Catholicism and Dana's - to the advantage of the latter. Bible Belt Christianity, he'd read recently and told us repeatedly, had roots that were anti-slavery and anti-upperclass.
Is it any use telling Eoghan Harris that it's more complex than that? The populist, American, white Protestant churches he seemed to be citing have also, historically, been hotbeds of anti-immigrant, anti-semitic and - yes - anti-Catholic sentiment. And they sure didn't bathe in glory during the civil rights era.
Moreover, they have little to do with Dana, whose TV show went out on a distinctly Catholic, conservative network. Its US antecedents, a half-century old, are in the anti-liberal, anti-communist radio and TV sermons of Fulton Sheen; it shares that agenda, at least, with its Bible Belt brethren.
If we can choose our Southern comforts, I'll take Robert Johnson, king of the delta blues. Dixie Fried (Anna Livia FM, Thursday) paid revisionist tribute: presenter Shane Loftus - whose chat no computer could simulate - played brilliant recordings by Skip James and Son House that predated Johnson's late-1930s records and contained elements echoed by him. Indeed, Loftus virtually accused Johnson of plagiarising these songs. But given what the Johnson legend tells us (accurately, no?) about the vast unrecorded blues repertoire of that era, can we be sure of such musical lineages?
Anyway, if that sounds to you like public service, tune in - and support Anna Livia at a fundraising jazz evening in Dublin's Da Club tomorrow.
