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.