Sir, – One aspect of the reduction of funding for arts and culture as a result of the recession that has not received much notice is RTÉ’s cutting of its budget for drama.
Thomas Dennigan (November 13th) described Love/Hate as a replacement for The Riordans, Bracken and Glenroe. It is of course the excellent Fair City that replaced those shows. Written by Irish writers and acted by Irish actors, each of the four episodes per week of Fair City are viewed by five or six times as many Irish people as buy tickets for the Abbey Theatre in an entire year. Love/Hate is more of a successor to On Home Ground, Pure Mule, Proof, Single Handed, The Clinic, Raw – to name just a few – short series which return over a number of years. Brilliantly written and garnering more than one million viewers for many of its episodes, Love/Hate is a credit to all involved, and caught the imagination of Irish people to an extraordinary extent as well as generating considerable advertising income for RTÉ.
In endeavouring to address its serious financial problems, RTÉ seems to have abandoned its policy on drama and has cut back on its spending in this area more than on any other aspect of its programming. Between 2008 and 2102, according to its annual reports, RTÉ’s spending on indigenous programming fell by 28 per cent, but its spending on drama fell by nearly 50 per cent.
This is short-sighted and has a negative impact on the creative infrastructure necessary for great Irish television drama in the future.
Broadcasting is a more important part of our arts and culture infrastructure than we tend to acknowledge but, despite the success of Love/Hate, original Irish television drama is not well served by RTÉ's current funding policies. – Yours, etc,
DAVID KAVANAGH,
Writers Guild of Ireland,
Temple Bar, Dublin 2.