The words up there notwithstanding, the column begins today with a radio preview, and a slightly parochial one at that. This week's shortlisting by the Independent Radio and Television Commission leaves Dublin listeners with an extraordinary prospect: the promise of broadcasting diversity and niche marketing in the capital could actually mean, essentially, three more pop-music stations.
Snobbery about popular music is verboten in your bright, new-look Weekend supplement, so don't come looking for it here. And it is undeniably the case that the diverse sounds that can be classified broadly as "pop" are not adequately reflected even in the four big licensed pop stations already available in Dublin - 2FM, Today FM, 98FM and FM104.
Moreover, it's possible (possible, I say) that some of the oft-missing sounds will turn up on the new services. If the fierce competition among four bidders for the "youth-oriented" licence really does produce a "dance" station, that would fill one gap (albeit one already nicely stuffed with pirate operators).
Similarly, the indie service formerly provided by Phantom FM, if it returns in licensed "special interest" form as Spirit FM, would genuinely represent stuff you don't often hear on the radio (except that there's got to be an awful lot of it in the evenings nowadays). No, not one would-be jazz or classical broadcaster applied for a licence. There is no countrymusic applicant left - the most notable, Radio Dublin, perhaps did itself no favours by continuing to broadcast past the IRTC "decontamination" deadline for bidders with a pirate past. The remaining applicants for the over-35 music licence bear the deeply depressing monikers of Easy FM, Lite FM, Gold FM and Sunshine FM. (I kid you not.)
The only speech-based bidders left are the heavyweight newshounds of News Talk 106FM and, strangely, Radio France Internationale. Dropped before they could get a hearing are two would-be Christian services, including one Northern-based company with rather impressive ecumenical and "socially concerned" credentials. The IRTC isn't commenting on individual applications, but some observers might regard such culling as risky for a board chaired by that notorious seculariser Niall Stokes. (They - we - might also comment on how a process overseen by a musicmagazine publisher has resulted in a potentially lucrative new array of outlets for record-industry product.)
But, hey, we don't need conspiracy theories. A mystery or two apart, what has happened on the basis of the applications received, and - we can be reasonably sure - scrupulously fair consideration of them, is simply another failure of the commercial marketplace to deliver real diversity. The consortia behind the main bids are obviously businesses and, sheep-like, they follow the money.
I just hope the IRTC, having failed now to come up with the hoped-for range of stations, doesn't go ahead and mess with the existing pirates, which are genuinely filling minority niches and needs.
They're not the only ones. Although I confess I am far more likely to listen to the naughty buccaneers at Jazz FM than to Lyric FM, I've spent much of the last few months admiring, from a distance, RTE's attractive new classical service - a station which, the figures tell us, has already found an ample niche, particularly in the capital.
When I move closer to Lyric I am rarely disappointed. Even speech programming such as the uneven but often innovative Artzone (Lyric FM, Sunday and Monday) has been impressive, but it's where words and music intersect that the station has provided a particularly engaging, even educational sort of public service.
Countdown: Sampling the 20th Century (Lyric FM, Sunday to Friday) is the latest example. Critic Michael Dervan, whose brilliance in print verges on intimidating (and sometimes crosses the verge), turns out to be a wonderful presenter of a programme with a great concept and dead-on execution: every night, we dip into a single year's serious music, starting with 1900 and finishing on New Year's Eve with 1999. Along the way, we hear a bit about the year's politics, culture and what Saint-Saens really thought of Debussy. I don't know what Michael Dervan really thinks of Liberace, but I can guess that the latter won't figure in the former's century survey. Nonetheless, Dave McHugh's archive compilation, Don't Laugh - It's Liberace! (RTE Radio 1, Sun- day) was a sweet remembrance of this popular, populist pianist. It featured interview material - including Liberace's memories of Mayor Briscoe leading a sing-song for him at Dublin's Theatre Royal - and concert snippets where audiences could be heard lapping up his cutesy musical pastiches and show-biz flourishes. The gold jackets? Oh, that was just so he could be seen when he was playing in these football-stadium venues. The candelabra? Oh, he saw that in a movie about Chopin. The sexuality? The what? The only, heavily veiled references to it, by this man who showed America what it meant to be a confirmed bachelor, were a few sad swipes at the press.
The press generally deserves it. But this week's events in East Timor found the Irish media considerably better informed and more useful than that of other countries (apart from a few RTE news bulletins that parroted the Indonesian government line rather too readily; presumably these were based on foreign wire-service reports). The reason our newspapers and broadcasters are so well up on East Timor can be summed up in two words: Tom Hyland.
This national treasure, this campaigner without peer, turned up with Joe Duffy on Liveline (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday) for something of a Ballyfermot reunion. In fact, few things could have brought home the sad obscenity of what is taking place than Hyland reminding Duffy of a Timorese chap he once gave a lift to in Ballyer. The same man, we heard, had been on the phone from the UN compound in Dili, saying his goodbyes.
