It looks like back to the future for RTE, with the Irish edition of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? likely to put its presenter, Gay Byrne, back on top of the ratings. Should this occur, the pressure on Pat Kenny, Byrne's successor as presenter of The Late Late Show, will increase.
Aside from the parochial blood sport of a ratings battle between long-time rival millionaire broadcasters, there is not a great deal in the new autumn schedules, at least on paper, likely to grip the public imagination.
In fairness, the station's sports department - with the Olympics, the All-Ireland hurling and football finals and the English Premiership - should compete well against the opposition. But beyond real sport and the personality-based blood sport of Byrne v Kenny, there is little.
On the positive side, Vincent Browne may add bite to Prime Time and a revamped Questions And Answers, using opinion polls and e-mail, could enliven current affairs. But there is nothing radical here at a time when the electorate is enraged by revelations of sleaze and white-collar crime.
The principal drama for the coming season, Rebel Heart, written by Northerner Ronan Bennet, focuses on "the coming of age of an idealistic young Dubliner in the tumultuous years from 1916 to 1922". As it includes "a passionate love story", it's clearly broad-based. It could be Mills and Boon meets the IRA. We'll see. Among a raft of American imports, the second series of The Sopranos should be the TV drama high point.
Comedy, for decades RTE's weakest suit, has improved in recent years. The spoof documentary series Paths To Freedom, to be screened on Network 2, is at least promising in concept. But laughs in theory do not always translate into laughs in reality, even though Deirdre O'Kane, Gary Cooke and Michael McElhatton read like a formidable team.
Documentaries, as ever, will be a mixed bag. The True Lives series, all its programmes made by independent companies, returns. Eamon de Buitlear will provide his customary and engaging natural history documentaries but, by and large, the documentary season seems conservative.
The usual bind applies throughout the schedules, of course. Populist, ratings-assured programmes such as Gay Byrne's upcoming quiz show are understandably attractive to station executives, advertisers and large numbers of the public.
The more serious business of fulfilling a public service remit as the national broadcaster is still where deep problems lie. As entertainment programmes are available on dozens of other channels, it is the specifics of Irish life and culture which RTE must nurture.
It is not an easy task. New director of television Cathal Goan stressed the percentage of "peak time programming" which originates in Ireland. But lengthy news bulletins and inexpensive, though sometimes deft, magazine programmes continue to make up much of this home-produced material.
Overall, it is a conservative schedule and given the fact that Cathal Goan is a recent arrival, we ought not be surprised. Expect the sports department to fare well - it is an Olympic year, after all, and RTE punditry is generally strong. But after the shouting dies down in Sydney, there is little in RTE's autumn 2000 to get very excited about - unless you're the one in a million who wins a million quid from Gaybo.