I am aware that the following might sound harsh even a touch misanthropic. I feel it’s a social service that I do to raise issue with this problem.
I must consign the following and all ‘medya’ comments to a new blog ( working title-Landfill ) just as soon as I find further will and time.
There are mercifully exceptions in the Fourth Estate. Orla Guerin is one of possibly 6 maybe 7 Irish born who are actually good at their job without any apparent need to be greater than their story.
A future name to look out is Francesca Comyn. She might be saved by moving to Al Jazeera or Auntie Beeb .
http://bit.ly/10kVj7v
No harm was done to winged creatures or 4 legged animals in making the following comments, and that’s good!
Where to begin?
Those who ought to be publicly flogged are not only the gombeen political troupe or the financial wideboys but members of the Fourth Estate (a term they love as it alludes to status and gravitas)
I speak of the self- aggrandising, self-enriching venal tarts commonly referred to as the media in Ireland and their exponential golden circle of ‘rent a cliché gobs’ of the soft t’ Oirish genus.
In medieval times they would have been eviscerated, boiled for witchcraft and fed to four-legged animals.
News readers with a range from happy clappy to brainlessly chirpy announce a road tragedy like some Disney event.
They phonate ”Dats all from us! You’re now up to dayhet!. Send us your comments on tw**ter.”, or join us now -on Face***k! See article 7 Billion.
Further down the chain to print columnists who when not prostituting themselves on telly, have youthful looking byline pictures of themselves sometime after their Confirmation Day preceding their smug opinions.
Surely no one reads or listens or buys it! The luvvies must rely on
THE JNLR SURVEY US TOO!
Not too long ago as to forget there was something called
The Jacobs Award.
In times gone by in Oirland ca. 1963-1993 broadcasters took the biscuit (still not in the literal sense unless they actually ate fig rolls but close enough!) and they turned up in tuxedos, gowns and gormless grins. The women did too!
Mind you, it wasn’t work to cure diabetes or cancer. It wasn’t the Nobel or Pulitzer or even a trinket from AMPAS. It was the ‘me dee ya’ in Ireland for Jacobs sake!
The firm of accountants Kenny Byrne and Tubridy.
dailyedge.ie
and
Curley Moe and Larry.
restlessknights.com
Note the door lettering. Have you ever seen the six in a room together at the same time. Curious!
What’s the difference?. Very little on the surface we would all agree.
Except one trio (b&w bottom) were in show-business, and the other trio (atop in color but colourless) are in their own business.
One trio are dead. The other while ostensibly alive-die very often!
One trio passed over painfully and horribly (cerebral and cardiac complications) The other trio haven’t …..but have been causing horrible pain to locals for decades.
Where is Karma when it’s needed, I ask you?
I voluntarily listen (during the time of ablutions only of course) to Ireland’s ‘serious’ stations. The clichéd ’spake’ alone is nauseating.
Blame game is this news or sport or both?
Step up to the plate its sport, right? not culinary arts?
When did baseball become so popular on this side of the Atlantic. Babe Ruth is smiling somewhere
Level playing field we still playing baseball in the diamond -right?
From Left Field yes-it’s baseball all right!
On message ? Hey, I thought we were playing ball. Now it’s tactics
Final analysis. Usually is when analysed; until the next analysis.
The rest is history as senseless as ‘make poverty history’ is grammatically.
Sea change is that a Tsunami approacing?
We have a situation Sure do!
A ha moment what has a Norwegian pop band to do with news
Perfect storm we talked already about the situation with the sea change! Come On!
Tipping point the waves…the waves….the waves….the waves?
Be afraid, be very afraid A Judge advised me that mitigating circumstances for GBH would be taken into account if someone were to say this to me
Thinking outside the box I wish someone would try; just once!
This fatuous forty or so I’ll leave you to decipher….
Between the lines
Way forward
Is what it is
Point in time
Up to speed
Having said that
Wake up call
Bring it on
Jaw dropping
Have issues
Bring closure
Show stopper
Time is running out
Make no mistake
Window of opportunity
Collateral damage
Raise the bar
Any way, shape or form
Game changer
Continue the conversation
Smoking gun
In a perfect world
Par for the course
Reinvent the wheel
Tantamount to
At this moment in time
Wow factor
In all honesty
Take full responsibility
Those were the days
Zero sum
Resolve the issue
Defining moment
Hard earned money
Begs the question
One thing is certain
Hard look
On the same page
Post 9/11
Pushing the envelope ???
Test Pilot terminology which loses meaning in any other context! Of course if you work in a stationary shop-it’s ok too!
Not rocket science ???
Hack hubris knows no bounds
Not brain surgery
Their delusion that this occupation and that of journos are similar.
Then they ALL bleat “send us your feedback /twitter us /or on Facebook /or text us”
Will the last person to leave turn on some lights
There’s more says Pat. Jimmy Cricket is embarrassed by that catchphrase now.
In case I didn’t make it clear
WITHOUT THE SORRY BIT!
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APRIL 2013
Still with local yokels (not worth amusing title)
Unusually I tuned in to my reliable old cathode ray tube, which nowadays the cable conglomerate /national broadcasters use to track viewer behaviour. The former synchronising commercials to run at the same time to interrupt bad programmes. I don’t think I need a flat screen HD to see that.
I left broadband to tune into ’The Irish in America! Sounds familiar! This time we were promised a new slant ‘ Da Oirish influence on fillums in Ameri Kay’.
Not looking for gold this time?
Why not slap the above on to the screen to save the licence payer several hundred grand? The question is rhetorical. The answer is the same. ’a jolly is a nice entitlement to exercise now and again’
”From Hell’s Kitchen to Hollywood” must have been the deal maker. Judas wept! That’s lame even by present standards. A production company had to be outsourced for this novel idea. So Lugs Kelly went with a motley crew ‘translan’ again to look for the ‘bleeding’ obvious!
Years after the UK sent their lot (Fry or was it Laurie) to have a look at the 50 States; the Oirish have this caper in 2013. I know there’s a’gathering’ but rehashing this threadbare material to sell more advertising to the license payer is a bit rich.
Come back Mike Murphy! Oh oh! he did! Maybe he had his bubble burst in Florida.
On the plus side,
Orla Guerin as I said elsewhere, is a shining example of a journalist. There are a still a few who tell the simple facts in a straight forward way.
One who is not, nor shining either, Olivia O’Leary!. I suppose in a Mary McAleese sort of way she once bloomed. Now she’s like a Valentines rose on February 15th
1985.
Perhaps returning to Ireland had this effect. She is forgotten but not gone like a few others ; in comfortable retiremen, t but never short of an organ to dispense her views.
O’Leary’s Alma Mater in D.4 apparently hires her to do a ‘Vocem Sapientis’ on the wireless. Despite what both parties like to think; she is not Alistair Cooke.
Or to paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen “Madam …..you’re no Alistair Cooke”
Roger Cook maybe!
Ms. O, if you must do the Urbi et Orbi schtick; please desist from using the ‘we’ when referring to another shortcoming in the collective Irish psyche.
It took a long difficult road but I’ve individuated and I don’t play for the team anymore.
It’s worth remembering there was never an I in team but there is M E.
Telly. It was once a useful device.
Back to you in the studio Una, Brian, Aine, Eileen or whoever!
Often more than not during a link between gossip and more gossip in serious News Department someone tries to be unusually funny. I mean intentionally. They do it so well unintentionally. I’m speaking serious time 7am-8.30am some fool or fooline injects a pun or some drivel.
A pause!. Then torrents of laughter.
Had the great Larry David entered the room?
“Whay da ya say Pretty Pretty Good”
pic. jewishjournal.com
Little was ever original in Irish broadcasting. The five decades of ersatz entertainment with imports from ‘Auntie Beeb ‘ and our cousins in the US-meant a saving on programme research and development surely* What possible need is there for citizens to pay a license fee for advertising with programme interruptions?
Duh! To pay the troupe of ‘talent’. After all the broadcast corporations of the world are banging at the door to sign them up!
*I’m guessing that there’s a desk if not a door marked Programme Development behind the small barn they use as the main studio.
Meanwhile not too far away on Terry Street people are ‘prone’ to do their regular shopping.
pic.polarismr.
Random Tedious Effluenza and Newsquak!
If THEY are the flagships of Irish broadcasting (the Costa Con DireS) then start looking for lifeboats!
”RTE supporting the *arts” intones a pubescent cailin sotto voce. Other vocal artistes try but fail to impress in a US accent extolling a ‘The talk of the year-a must see muvee’.
Speaking of accents;when did Irish people start saying ‘Coirk’ for Cork?
Where did that awful inflection at the end of sentences come from?. My theory is Australian TV was the electronic babysitter to the pampered generation during the 1980′s.
R Tee E.
I tune in for a few minutes each morning just to see if a cultural uprising against the message if not the messenger has broken out.
Nah! Just kidding! It’s La La Ireland. Easily satisfied!
20th/9/2012
Uncle Pat (who was the best chemical engineer in very light entertainment before finding his feet again in serious broadcasting) is sounding more and more like an impression of himself.
The inflections and emphases were in hyper-drive, . A few more pk-isms such as “the optics”, and Apres Match could be out of business.
Today 19th /9/2012
I heard a health executive person (an executive of the Executive, or the top executive you follow) say “300,000 people on a waiting list is bad. The good news is…we are now making a decision on what to do”.
“Vot a country”!
Oirish radio as ever followed slowly all other broadcasters worldwide by having podcasts and playback.
The only problem is, it makes the miss-able……less miss-able!
Daffy Duck requested not to have his picture associated with this subject. He was overruled.
Oirish broadcasting.
You heard it a million times; you heard it once!
Judas wept!
Rte (cailin whispers) “so bad we play it twice!”
Media schools evidently urge the herd of ‘wannabees’ to ‘be themselves’. Being themselves is a problem here in Oirish broadcasting. So much worse with a microphone.
“The tree girls went the udder way (sic) “
This diction brings to mind several images, and has at least two meanings. It could be women tree arborists milking a cow. Or it could be something too explicit for WordPress.
Then we have ……
“Dats all ? Who is Dat, and why is he- all of it?
“Der you have it” - Who is Der, and what has he got?
Or full-blown Lyric FM with the pretence that they are polyglots by over-phrasing foreign words. G.Hamilton being the exception. Although his liking of Elgar’s ‘pomp & circumstance’ relegates him badly.
It takes all Oirish stations quite a bit of time to decide where the syllabic emphasis should be intoned for foreign names. Just in the last decade alone, David Ginola, Thierry Henri, et Sarkozy had theirs ‘chewed up’.
Somewhere the clamour of an overworked producer-director is heard ”Never mind the Hungarian roots of Sarky- Pat!-just feckin say sumptin ’til ye get used to it”. You’re as bad a Eileen and Una in the newsroom for asking”! Update girls! The French voted in another guy. “just drop the ‘H’–and get on with it! It’s all on auto-cue!
The director will later go home, kick his long-suffering pussy-cat and cry ”If only the license payers knew the salary of newsreaders and presenters”.
Speaking of which……
Any remote regard RTE might have for their audience rings hollow in the the license fee campaign. The target audience are taught in a step by step way how to pay and not to be naïve about it! They take condescension to a new level. Unlike their programmes or products!
It’s a marriage of convenience. Guess who holds the prenuptial contract!
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Could anything be worse? I’ll rephrase that! Could in one small country-anything be as bad. Frankly yes!
TV 3, or Tree as they would have it.
Not as beautiful as a Sequoia , but thicker than the thickest one on steroids.
A pen of folk who prefer to sit on sofas and lunch all day complaining in many different ways. Where did feminism go wrong? Why are men not able to multi-task? It really is so….. ‘Looney’
It’s wireless sibling Newsqualk FM, supports failed politicians; failed economists; failed U2 wishabe pop singers; and rugby widows and orphans.
Or maybe the term is people ‘in transition’. They havn’t a Montrose contract but the Sky is the limit!!!
How much? Shure! Who needs a soul?
A shower of unluvables whose only ability is to reverse the adage – ‘ye heard it a million times,-ye heard it once’ .
Newsquak, “It’s not just news you know!”
No!
it’s diabolical nonsense, with a twist!
The latest perversity is to have some schoolboy read a prepared segment in ‘Gaelic’ which would make Gerry Adams blush.
I wonder if this satisfies the commercial radio license agreement?. Have a listen BCI-Broadcast Commission of Ireland.
All thrown at their target audience. I flush the toilet!
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The Me D Ya is the message!
I refer exclusively to the presenters-glitterati with the microphone phoniness.
The off-stage staff are not a target. Sound and vision staff while on more than average industrial wages, usually deserve it. I found all ’behind the scenes’, from directors in the gallery to support staff hard-working and friendly. In the face of great provocation, it amazing how discreet they are.
(A declaration of fact and certainly not jealousy as I know a little about the subconscious. I had a flirtation and then a very brief unsatisfying affair with television and radio broadcasting at one time, having previously sabotaged a possible career in the Hades of ‘adverteasings’.
It was always going to head to divorce. The tale is for a less interesting paragraph from a chapter of a book yet to be written-viz autobiography.
It will be in a bookshop when the shelves are cleared of ‘celebrity’. As of now the latter is unlikely so the former is on hold! The working title may likely change-but as of now, I’ll call it “Fate Falls Furiously”
May I insert my latest profundity here “ For every clown at the top (theres’a surfeit of them in OIrland) there are at least a score who would be equally at home in a circus and probably 5 who would do better”
It may appear elitist but I’m a lower middle class chap who never had an elocution lesson but remembers the caring discipline of parents who would joke about a dropped ‘h’ or a forgotten ‘th’
Pronunciation of foreign nouns
FYUU-dur Dahs-tuh-YEF-skee was a Russian writer -and now much abused name drop of the chatterati. Not dosstoyes ski. There are no reports extant to say whether he skied or not. There was a lot of snow admittedly but little recreation time.
POO-teen is the current Russian Federation boss whether people like it or not! PooTIN is not!
duh-GAH Degas is one of many artists whose works are displayed at the LOOV-ruh
Duh-by oo Debussy tinkled on the ebony and ivory.
SAR-truh et Duh-bo-vahrrr were very philosophical and intimates.
Loord where a miracle might happen to bring correct pronunciation to the angliscised world! Not Lourdes!
From a long list of panel seater mispronunciation.
And in Italy and Little Italys the world over Scorsese is NOT Scorsaysee
’It’s Scor sessi’ Marty said!
Let’s decompress at Jango website once more
Type in
In the Waiting Line, Red Dust, Comfort Zone, Red Eye, Hayling, Peaceful Day, Konkret, Blue Grassland, Sparks,
Treat yourself again to Adam K and Soha Mix of Kaskade
More from the last century…..
New York Minute Eagles
California Dreaming Mamas&Papas
Just a Song Before I go CSN
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Micro-phonia! Who said it’s an obsession on this page!
For their many junkets. jollies, or vacations- the unloveable luvvies have never displayed the imagination to go beyond Fitzpatricks of Manhattan or Disney Florida. More often than not in a hired Mustang? Cliché all the way!
They implore their listeners “”Text in if you know what city has the initials NY?. Have you got it? Very good! You could be there! Their subconscious says ”but never like one of us”
They are fascinated by their ‘industry’. “Have ye seen the latest-must see it- Yah!”
None of these ‘minor floaters in small stagnant pond’ realise that World-Rated personalities hardly ever view films unless it is in their contract to promote them. More about that elsewhere.
That was the word of LA folk on ‘Holly Wood Land” as I made my way to more interesting events at Edwards AFB in the Mojave desert.
ADVER..TEASING!
A few years ago, a high-end campaign for a high-end car had the incidental music, ’The Good Life’. The lyrics were written originally in a bitter ironic sense. It was a curious advert campaign and not a great endorsement for the product
Every item can be sold without nuance or subtlety nowadays. Fundamentally “why waste money and time selling with costly creative ideas when society has been primed to buy for a century”
pic: AngryDogDesigns.png
Daffy Duck’s agent demanded he be deleted from this topic or litigation would ensue.
Don’t get me started on the Irish standard of advertising. The most offending one currently is so bad it actually suits the show! Liveline with Lyons Tea. Richer tea for richer talk!
On what level does that make sense, I ask you? Infantile level? Remedial?
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Another thing….
If an alien had parked their hyper-sonic craft in Ireland over the last few years they might be forgiven for thinking that someone called Kathryn Of the Thomases from the dynasty of Miriam was Queen. That another someone called Craig of the Doyles was King.
Craig the Sincere out of a caste of professional ‘Dubliners’ D’ Fanning of the Fakeist, D’ Murray O the Mint, and Tomasina Dunne Scotus, a servant of the Bono household. All from a lineage of insincere Hibernians stretching to the McGurk dynasty!.
Breaking news! There are no intelligent aliens likely to arrive! Not if they are aware of self-replicating life-forms that are already here.
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I see one of the Seoige’s or Showages (the one who is not as pretty as the other 0ne that thinks she is prettier) had another excuse to make herself seem ‘important’.
Seemingly she had the Big C. No-not a contract for Channel 4. She had meant ‘cancer’.
There never was a threat to her life of course with comprehensive private health and Blackrock Clinic being on speed dial! She chose iodine treatment. The surgery option would have meant a snip around the parathyroid glands where nerves control the vocal chords.
Missed opportunity Doc!
A programme on her suffering was aired later I believe! Series to come. Look out for the box-set.
While on the healing arts…..
A website had a comment on the HSE” they are incompotent, (sic) when will situation improve?
Perhaps the HSE might do so more speedily than the spelling! Incompetence is lack of competence. Administrative incompetence is dysfunctional administrative behaviors that hinder attainment of organization goals.The other ‘potency’ needs a medical check-up.
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Before another award season begins somewhere in OIrland a luvvy is overheard to mutter
“Times are so hard. It’s difficult finding the right agent to get the right exposure. I’ve had my fill of panel and reality. OK! Sure it pays for Surly and Dylan at Sion and Gonza all right; but it’s not the kinda exposure level for ‘ME‘”
“It’s just appalling! The sheep-I mean our fans are too stupefied. It’s so hard to keep the pretence going that we care about them”.Why do the IFTA’s have to clash with Cloe’s wedding in Budapest this weekend?. Life is so unfair! ” Does my bum look too big in this” . If only it were the BAFTAs not the IFTAS. More Bolly?
Camera right darling-SMILE! “
The world is doomed
- 1955 I’m outta here, suckers!
If there is a need for more voices in the morning, there is always World Service / Radio4, at Portland Square, where talent and pay is tolerably commensurate with each other.
http://www.pictureperfect.ie/mauriceaherne/e310b91c3
http://www.pictureperfect.ie/mauriceaherne/e3ef92d04
http://www.pictureperfect.ie/mauriceaherne/e377f9b1c
Not always perfect but still better than wireless on John Bull’s other Island.
Friday 4/4/2013 6.40 am on BBC Radio 4 Sarah Montague vocalised ” White House ..eh Whitehall said today ……
Was she stating the reality, the actual truth, or was it parapraxis?
Still in the murky depths of psychoanalysis with a Radio4 Today motif -a few years ago Mr Humphries on a reality series involving artistic painting said “this is harder to do than nuclear fission”-when his doodles didn’t quite meet the standard of other celebrity efforts at art.
So he understands Nuclear Physics too! What hubris!
This is not nuclear physics but it’s appropriate enough OK!
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A comment I left with Radio 4
11/4/2013
Lead found in rice imported to the US. That’s symbolic at least!
Sport prognostication for Switzerland tonight April 4 2013
Basel won Fawlty (Spurs) didn’t!
< These articles are brought to you without product endorsements and largely free from clichés viz. ’literally, ironically, invariably, and nonsense interjections ” as you do’ or ‘if you will’ or ‘ I would have thought’. or ‘shure shure>
I rest my case for the prosecution M’ lord. I emphasise those who I do admire and who deserve great praise.
They are most nurses, doctors, emergency service staff, and generally all who are actually indispensable ie utility/ electric/gas/sanitation workers.
Similar gratitude to waitresses, hairdressers, shop assistants, and all who work in day to day services for a pay which is not commensurate to its usefulness.
Finally, great praise to the ‘new Irish’ (foreign workers as wireless people are prone to say). More often than not they easily outshine the more grumpy native variety.
text copyright MOSAherne 2013. All Rights Reserved.
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