Archive News
Morning Edition comes to life much too late for breakfast
Date Published: 04-Feb-2013
The problem with RTÉ’s new Morning Edition is the day is half over before it goes on air – it’s not so much breakfast news as brunch.
And gently browsing through the day’s newspapers is all fine and dandy if you’re previewing the content – but doing it after anyone who wants one has already bought one renders the whole exercise utterly futile.
People who watch television at 9am – and admittedly this is a sweeping generalisation – are more worried about whether or not the cheating husband on the Jeremy Kyle Show will fail the lie detector test than they would be about global economics.
They might raise an eyebrow if they heard something about a new brand of Botox – unless they’d already injected themselves with it and thus couldn’t raise an eyebrow for all the tea in China.
If they watch news on the telly at that time of the day, it’s more likely to be of the Sky variety – short 15-minute cycles of news that require you to only watch for that length to get a handle on the big events of the day.
So Morning Edition startéd off on the back foot, its time slot perhaps owing more to RTÉ’s inability to get staff into gear early enough for breakfast television as opposed to deciding on a 9am start with the target audience.
That said, it is blessed with a presenter who will blossom in the weeks and months ahead – already Keelin Shanley has relaxed into her role and made it her own, but you know that even better is still to come.
Her style is easy but her questions aren’t; she listens to her guests – unlike some other high profile female current affairs presenters we could mention – and she comes up with the perfect follow-on question to the last one.
She puts guests at ease if that’s what is required but she’s not afraid to get tough when that’s what is needed to.
It can’t be easy to front a new two-hour news and current affairs show, but she makes it seem almost effortless – and she moves seamlessly between heavy and light in a way that her colleagues would do well to study.
She’s the big winner in this new equation – but there are many downsides; not least the fact that they have neither the content nor the audience to sustain a marathon production at this hour of the day.
Flagging the ‘exclusive’ interview with Bill Gates was understandable given their excitement at unwrapping a new toy in Donnybrook, but it was also over-the-top – as was splitting it into two segments, when that was really just for the sake of it.
Promoting RTÉ’s own programmes is also a bit rich and lazy … and if they’re not careful there will be nothing left for Ryan or Brendan O’Connor to chat about by the time the weekend comes around.
The other change to the news schedule sees The Week In Politics go out live at midday on a Sunday and then again as a repeat in its old slot on Sunday night – and this works.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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