RTÉ transmits misleading Radio Ads again

In my opinion there is generally way too much advertisement in this world, but especially here in Ireland, which is highly over-commercialised in every possible way.

This goes so far that public service vehicles used by Waterford City Council carry stickers advertising the private company they are leased from. Ornamental standing stones with the names of town lands and housing estates always carry the name of a private company that paid for it, and there are - believe it or not - even public rubbish bins in our parks and on the streets that sport a small plaque, saying "sponsored by..." followed by the name of a local business.

One of my regular annoyances is that Radio Telefis Éireann (RTÉ), which is the sole recipient of the compulsory national TV licence money (currently € 160 per household per annum), also fills its programmes on both Radio and TV with a large amount of advertisement.
The whole purpose of having a TV licence is to give a broadcaster financial independence from vested interests, in order to make proper and independent programmes free of advertisement.

The BBC does that very well, but RTÉ does not. It takes the licence money, whose payment is actually enforced with drastic measures, including the arcane and almost Dickensian 'TV Licence Inspectors' who apparently "visit 18,000 premises every month". (That alone is a ridiculous and outrageous waste of money, energy and resources and deserves a separate article at some other time.) Watching TV in Ireland without having a TV licence is actually a criminal offence, and each month there are numerous people dragged into court rooms and fined for it. And a few, who do simply not have the money to pay either the licence or the fine, end up in prison, for nothing else than watching television.

Despite all this, the complete output of RTÉ - on both Radio and TV - is heavily commercialised and filled with constant advertisements. On top of that many programmes are also specifically sponsored by a company or product which is mentioned in extra trailers several time throughout the transmission of this programme.

I have turned my back on TV many years ago and only listen to Radio, so I cannot say in detail how much worse it is with RTÉ's TV programmes. But the advertisement content on RTÉ Radio is bad enough and higher than that of some commercial stations, which have no other income than advertisement.

Not enough that listeners are constantly bombarded with unwanted commercials which are even used to interrupt news bulletins, many of the ads transmitted by RTÉ are strictly speaking in breach of broadcasting rules as they are peddling clear lies or make incorrect statements about a company or product. But no-one (except me) seems to care or feel bothered.
Actually, as things are here, anyone can broadcast a complete tissue of lies and get away with it, as long as the last words of the ad are "terms and conditions apply". And it is quite telling that this phrase is the most common in Irish advertising, appearing in about two thirds of all adds I hear on RTÉ Radio. Most significantly they close all ads for banks, insurance companies and all sorts of other financial services.

But the crooks in the big multi-national companies and their henchmen (and women) in the large lying factories known as 'advertisement agencies' do not stop there. Now they even produce ads with clear and plain lies without attaching any verbal safety net at the end.
Not that this is the first time RTÉ has transmitted misleading ads. It happens ever so often, and one wonders if there is any control of the content at all before it goes out on air. Or perhaps it is all the same for RTÉ, as long as they get paid for peddling rubbish and spreading lies.

The latest example of that is a new ad for Opel cars, which I have heard on RTÉ Radio 1 today for the third time. It indicates that at least some US companies have by now realised that their uncritical support of the criminal Bush administration over the past eight years and their overall imperialist approach to marketing are doing some damage to their international sales figures, especially in Asia and Europe.
So now they have decided to use even obvious lies to win over the uninformed and truly gullible elements of the Irish population, which are quite significant in numbers.

This new ad opens with introducing Opel as "a German company", and that is a clear and plain lie. But for many it sounds alright nevertheless, because Opel started as a German company.

Let us look at the facts: The Opel GmbH was indeed founded in Germany 146 years ago, on January 21st, 1863. It first produced various household goods, but soon specialised in sewing machines. By 1895, the year company founder Adam Opel died, they were the largest maker of sewing machines in Europe and also produced each year 2000 bicycles, then a novelty form of transport that was gaining popularity.
Three years later Opel began also building cars, first in partnership with a German inventor and then with a French engineering company. In 1906 they developed their first own model, and by 1913 Opel was the largest car manufacturer in Germany.

After World War I things looked more dire, even though Opel was still the leading car brand in a devastated Germany. But the economic crisis of the late 1920s with hyper-inflation and political instability ruined many a German business forever.
In 1929 Opel was taken over by General Motors of Detroit, USA, the largest car maker in the world then and now.

So even though Opel began as a German company and still has production facilities there, it is actually a 100% American firm and has been for the past 80 years. To call it now "a German company" in an ad for the Irish market is at best misleading, at worst a plain lie. It has not been done in the past, as long as US cars were seen as somehow desireable here. But now, that many people have turned their backs on the USA and anything American for various reasons, suddenly General Motors declares Opel "a German company", hoping to cash in on the fact that Germany has a long, unbroken and exceptional reputation for engineering excellence.

Well, I do not wish to influence anyone here, and I believe that people make up their own minds in any way they see fit. Personally I would never buy or drive an Opel car, nor any other US car, knowing of the way General Motors runs its business (and has been supporting George W. Bush and other leading Republicans for many years with vast sums of money). And though GM is the worst of the lot, Ford and Chrysler are not much better than their larger rival. However, it is not for me to tell you what car to buy and drive. I just hope you know what you are doing and whom you support with your money.

But I strongly resent the fact that RTÉ, our national broadcaster, is offering itself as a willing accomplice to another deliberate tissue of American lies. I am certain that before this current crisis is over we will see many changes in many areas, including broadcasting. And I can assure you - and RTÉ - that I have an excellent memory.

The Emerald Islander

RTÉ - Having our Cake and eat it

If you read this in the USA, you will probably wonder what all the fuss is about, as your life is already completely dominated by advertisement for a long time and you probably don't even notice them any more as an intrusion into your privacy. There is no TV or radio station in the United States that is not controlled by private interests, and every programme is crammed with advertisements to the hilt. Often the actual programme parts are seen as not more than elements to fill the spaces between the ads.

If you are in the UK, you are lucky and privileged to have the BBC, which is undoubtedly the best and most informative broadcaster in the world. There are no ads on the BBC, which is financed through a TV licence fee, payable by everyone who has a television set. (If you only listen to radio, as I do, it is free of charge and still without ads.) There are also many commercial stations in the UK, financed through ads, so the people have a choice, which they don't have in the USA.

In most European countries there is a mixed system, with public broadcasters and private stations. While the latter are financed entirely from advertisement revenue, the amount of ads carried by the public stations is strictly limited. In some countries the public stations are - like the BBC - totally ad-free.

Not so in Ireland. Here we also have a mixed system with private commercial stations, most of them for a limited local area, and the national broadcaster Radio Telefis Éireann (RTÉ). Like the BBC in Britain, RTÉ has a TV licence, while listening to radio is free. But in contrast to the BBC, the programmes of RTÉ - on radio and TV - are constantly interrupted by commercial advertisement. Not even the main news are exempt from that, which in my opinion shows real greed. It is a typical case of having one's cake and eat it. And it annoys me immensely.

In general RTÉ is not a bad station, and many of their programmes are well made, informative and often interesting to listen to. If there were not the constant ad breaks, filled with the most mind-numbing and annoying dribble, I would listen a lot more to RTÉ. (I don't watch TV and don't even have a television set.)
But after a while with RTÉ, I usually cannot bear it any longer and switch over to the BBC.

To avoid misunderstandings: I do not object to advertisement in general. It has its place in a free society, and at times it can actually be helpful and informative. But like with everything - too much of even the best makes it eventually unwanted and bad.
There is also the general question if a station that charges a TV licence fee should not be required to broadcast ad-free programmes, as the BBC does.
In Belgium a similar situation as the Irish was challenged in the High Court, and subsequently the public broadcaster had to decide: either TV licence, or advertisement. They chose the latter, and Belgian TV is now free of charge.

But RTÉ seems to be on a roll. Not enough that they bombard us with commercials all the time, they add self-promotional ads to their programmes as well. The most annoying of them all are the smug and arrogant little trailers that threaten people with the "TV licence inspector" (even on radio, which does not require a licence). Yes, as ridiculous as it is in the fully electronic and computerised 21st century, An Post (the Irish postal service) still employs people who go around the country, knocking on people's doors and demanding to see the TV licence. And as the system is arrogant, self-serving and badly organised, they often call on people (like me) who do not have a TV and therefore need no licence. You would not believe how arrogant they are, assuming automatically that everyone must have a television set.

I wonder how many other people - apart from myself - notice that most of the commercial ads broadcast on RTÉ radio (I cannot speak about TV, as I don't watch it, but I presume it is the same there) are actually nebulous, deceptive and often misleading. In fact, they can really say and promise anything they want in an ad - even if it is completely untrue - as long as they close with the often heard phrase: "Terms and conditions apply."
What these terms and conditions actually are and how they bind the interested customer, one will only discover when one contacts the company. Usually they are far less attractive than the promises made in the ad.

There is also the question if RTÉ vets advertisement before broadcasting it. If they do, it seems to be done not very thoroughly. For example, there appears an ad on RTÉ radio now for some time that promotes a product "to stimulate the regrowth of hair". Like many other folically challenged men I would theoretically be interested in such a remedy. But then again, if one knows that there simply is no way to regrow lost hair, no matter what one tries or does, the whole ad campaign is exposed as a scam. And as the voices on this particular ad (there are two versions, one for women and one for men) are distinctly English with a good bit of cockney accent, I presume that it is another attempt to sell a bad British product to the gullible 'colonials' here in Ireland.
The real give-away clue that exposes this particular campaign as a scam is at the end of the message. "Stick with it for at least six months," the speaker says. Well, if you do and realise that the stuff is not working and you still haven't got any new hair after six months, the company will have made more than enough money from you, buying their product for half a year.

Now and then ads with a special promotion that runs until a certain date are still appearing on air after the date has passed. I don't know if this is deliberate or just sloppy scheduling, but it is wrong anyway. Only yesterday I heard a promotional ad for Opel cars, saying that the promotion "ends on September 20th". But yesterday was already the 21st! (This sort of thing does not happen often, but it does and shouldn't.)

Especially annoying I find the ads for banks and insurance companies, the very people whose reckless speculations and gambling have caused the current global economic crisis.
They always start with a sensation or a big promise, then fall into financial jargon and always end with the - legally required - information about the firms status, which is "regulated by the financial regulator". This final part of the ad is usually spoken much faster than the rest of the ad, and often rattled down in the same way many Irish Catholics would rattle down a badly said rosary. That really says it all, tells us how serious the financial industry takes the "regulator". Given the situation we find ourselves in now, one does really wonder who this "regulator" is and what he or she is doing. Obviously not a lot.

Similar "regulators" exist for other industries, but they are not doing much either. And when they appear in the news, then only to give a quiet nod to price increases, like the exorbitant and unjustified rise of the electricity price in Ireland. This gives the Electrical Supply Board (ESB) an almost unlimited licence to print money, and we all are robbed blind and can do absolutely nothing about it (as we all need electricity nowadays).

But this is not about the ESB and electricity (I wrote about them already), but about advertisement, and especially ads on RTÉ. There are simply too many of them, and if there are more people like me, then our national broadcaster is loosing potential listeners (and viewers) as a result of this advertisement overdrive. Less would be more, make better programmes and attract more listeners (and viewers). But as things are, I expect that they will just carry on as usual. They live in a little world of their own, up there in Dublin 4, and don't give a hoot about the rest of us. If we listen to their programmes or not, they still get paid those huge salaries that sets them apart from ordinary people. But that was the same with the smug and arrogant gamblers in the US investment banks, until ... the whole system imploded.

The Emerald Islander

Farewell to Irish Medium Wave

Today at precisely 3 p.m. GMT (or 1500 hours, as we say in the Navy) an era ended on the Emerald Isle. At that time Ireland's national broadcaster RTÉ switched off its last medium wave transmitter in Tullamore, Co. Offaly. With this last step Ireland's medium wave (MW) radio programmes ended after 82 years of stalwart service. Ten days ago RTÉ has switched off already the Clermont Cairn transmitter near Dundalk, Co. Louth, which had provided Irish radio service for the whole of Ulster, including the six counties of the North, as well as for the large Irish diaspora in England, Scotland and Wales.

So now there will be no more listening with hungry hearts to MW broadcasts, impeded by white noise and interrupted by high sunspot activity. Ireland's medium wave is dead, but long live the radio!

Like many other friends of the good old wireless, I was of course listening today to the very last MW programme, which began at 1.30 p.m. (1330 h). It was called "Medium Wave, Goodbye" and hosted by Brendan Balfe, one of this country's longest-serving broadcasters, who has been on the air for more than 40 years.
It was a sentimental programme, 90 minutes filled mostly with memories of the "good old times" and with music many of us heard first when we were wearing short trousers. Fittingly the last tune played was "Taking care of you", which had been composed in 1926 - the year Ireland's MW service began - and played on Irish airwaves many times since.

RTÉ began indeed as 2RN on the MW service in 1926, just four years after the establishment of Saorstát Eireann - the Irish Free State - and only three years after the Civil War had ended. Later known as Radio Athlone (because the transmitters were based since 1933 in Athlone), Radió Éireann and more recently as RTÉ Radio 1, it served the people of Ireland and many Irish ex-pats well for 82 years. RTÉ introduced the superior sound of the FM service in 1966, to counteract the common interference and poor reception on MW, and ever since the importance of MW has declined. According to RTÉ only about 10% of its listeners were still listening regularly on MW at the time when the decision to close down the service was made in February. But this figure might not take into account the large number of Irish ex-pats listening to RTÉ programmes abroad.

FM does undoubtedly produce a better sound quality, but the range is limited. There should be no problems to receive RTÉ radio programmes inside the Republic, but there might be reception gaps now in the North and in Britain.
Some areas of the North may also experience problems in receiving the Limerick-based Lyric FM, as RTÉ prioritised RTÉ Radio 1 versus Lyric FM for cross-border transmission. Most of the MW coverage will be taken over by RTÉ's long wave (LW) service on 252 kHz (1190.4 m) that started in 2002 after the demise of the once popular music station Atlantic 252, which closed in December 2001 after twelve years of broadcasting to Britain and Ireland.

Listeners who did tune into MW specifically for special RTÉ Radio 1 programmes like weekday sports broadcasts and Sunday religious services will find those also on 252 LW (where they have been already for some time), as well as on cable television and the internet. This means of course that listeners outside Ireland will be hearing a Catholic Mass and a Protestant Service on Sunday morning, when they would probably prefer listening to Diarmaid Ferriter and Marian Finnucane.

Other special broadcasts, like the alternatives to live sports on Saturday and Sunday, including arts programmes, features and drama, are shifted entirely to the internet and also available as downloadable podcasts. But what about all those who don't yet have a computer and access to the internet? (And there are many, thanks to the incompetence of Eircom...) RTÉ's digital test station, RTÉ Choice, is so far only on air in and around Dublin.

There have been critical and warning voices, arguing against the switch-off of the MW service, in particular with concerns for the Irish living and listening abroad. Despite last year’s broadcasting legislation allowing for license money to be spent on more radio broadcasting for the Irish abroad, RTÉ went ahead with its plans to get rid of the MW service.
Well-known podcaster Brian Greene and the Irish Emigrants Advice Network (EAN) had meetings with the Department of Communications, pointing out the folly of closing down the MW service. But obviously to no avail.

“The shutdown is a reversal of recent trends in which Ireland has acknowledged its debt to the Irish abroad, and the need for maintaining strong links. Both MW and LW are complementary solutions for the Irish abroad. Long wave on its own is rather inadequate and presents problems for the future. The move is premature it will make the transition to digital more difficult,” EAN wrote in a letter to the Irish Emigrant newspaper.
They argue that RTÉ should be working to improve access to its services for the Irish abroad, particularly the most vulnerable who will experience difficulties in making the transition from medium wave to any other format.
While most people in London could not receive the Irish MW service, there are large parts of cities like Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester that could. They should be allowed to listen to a service that has existed for decades.

Brian Greene also questions RTÉ's choice of the new DAB broadcasting technology. He says that RTÉ plans to use DAB (digital audio broadcasting), but this is meanwhile an old standard and Ireland should be focusing on world digital radio standards like Digital Radio Mondiale or DAB-plus.
“The French have withdrawn funding for DAB. RTÉ needs to move to DAB-plus rather than an old standard like DAB,” he argues.

I am no engineer, so I could not comment on that debate. But what I have so far heard on DAB did not impress me.
It seems that radio is now following TV technology, where digital technology led to an explosion in channel numbers, but at the same time to a decline in programme quality. Perhaps I am a bit old-fashioned, but I like to listen to traditional radio on MW, LW and on short wave (SW), where one can find many international stations. I prefer that any time to listening over the internet, where the quality is often not good and I encounter frequently brief interruptions of transmissions.
It is also worth mentioning that a digital radio will use a lot more energy than a conventional one. In light of the increasing world energy crisis with ever rising prices for all forms of energy - especially electricity - I am not keen at all to exchange my good and very old radios for a new digital one.

It seems to me that once again a new technology is forced upon us by certain companies - like, for example, mobile phones on which one can watch films and TV (who needs such nonsense, especially on a tiny screen) - without any consultation. But consumers are very powerful (even a lot of them don't realise it) and can say no. This can stop new but senseless technology and gadgets in their tracks (and many times has already). Maybe it is time to make a stand against digital radio and demand that things are kept as they are. After all - since it ain't broke, why fix it?

The Emerald Islander