America has been multicultural, in some meaningfully modern sense of the word, for perhaps half-a-millennium. But this century's broadcasting culture took a long, long time to acknowledge the country's non-white reality. Apart from Tonto, Amos 'n' Andy and assorted musicians, listeners to the major US radio networks - and viewers of their TV outcroppings - could enjoy, right into the 1960s, a version of their nation that virtually ignored its immigrant patchwork and native-American origins. So it's hardly surprising that RTE, in spite of an honourable record of attention to the world beyond these shores, has only moved fitfully away from the dominant picture of a monocultural Ireland; the picture was, after all, passably accurate until recent years. However, as RTE Radio 1 introduces a weekly series that reflects this country's increasing integration into Europe - From Brussels to Belmullet (can that title last?), to be presented by Roisin Boyd, starting in January - the continuing absence of any local multicultural programming is a mark of our isolation from common European media practice.
What might be called the "multicultural community" here has been estimated at between 5,000 and 7,000 people. That's those who have full legal status; throw in the asylum-seekers and you can more than double that figure. (I doubt it includes mongrel Yanks like me.)
Such is the community's size and vigour that an Indian fashion show and entertainment evening in Ranelagh, Dublin, this month attracted 500 people, with only a handful of native Irish people among the crowd. (And no, I didn't hear about it on the radio.)
That evening's event was produced by Siraj Zaidi, an Indian-born film and theatre producer who has also directed and presented documentaries for RTE television. More than two years ago, Zaidi proposed to RTE that he would work with Montrose to develop a radio programme that would both "reach out" to these growing communities in Ireland and inform Irish people about developments in this area. Such programmes are a commonplace in other European jurisdictions; indeed, a network of broadcasters exists that could provide relevant material from across the continent. However, in spite of the sympathy of many people in high places in RTE, and several months after Zaidi conferred with a senior producer there to develop an outline for a programme, there's no sign yet of anything stirring in the scheduling pot at Radio 1.
Meanwhile, discussion of these issues carries on in the pressurecooker of Dublin's commercial, late-night talk shows. RTE can't single-handedly counter the prejudice and provocation in which such programmes specialise; but hopefully it won't be long before publicservice broadcasting takes some small responsibility in this area.
Alastair Cooke, what with turning 90 and having all sorts of honours dumped on him, spent the week being credited with fostering understanding between nations and all sorts of other high-minded achievements.
Me, I can't shake the image of Cooke as another piece of polished pastiche furniture in a book-lined PBS studio introducing Masterpiece Theatre to impressionable young Americans like me. Though I'm certainly not immune to the intelligent, musing charms of Letter from America, that picture immortalises him for me as chairman of the Anglo-US Mutual Admiration Society - a smug current in both cultures that fosters facile misunderstanding more than anything else.
Last week's serial, Alastair Cooke - A Celebration (BBC Radio 4, Monday to Friday) was a little sad: it told us how this quintessential English gentleman was an artisan's son from Salford; his upward mobility was greased by a crucial spell in a Blackpool secondary school full of London-bred teachers who knocked the North out of him.
B.P. Fallon's talent for whetting the appetite was evident again recently on The Arts Show (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday), where he motor-mouthed brilliantly about his beloved John Lennon. At last we may be sated - for a week anyway - in mid-December, when Fallon fills in the 7 to 9 p.m. slot on Today FM in the wake of John Kelly's departure.
