Saturation coverage of visit becomes boring

TV Watch with Declan Tierney

Yes it was historic; yes it was momentous; there is no doubt that it had a lot of significance for a lot of people and emotions did run high during the visit.

Last week out TV screens – if you were stuck on RTE, that is – were dominated by the visit of out President and his wife to Windsor Castle to meet the queen.

When the visit was announced, it seemed like an occasion that deserved plenty of coverage on the telly but what we were treated to during the week of the visit was nothing short of jaw-dropping.

Long before Michael D and Sabina flew out on the luxury jet to meet Queen Lizzie, the whole occasion had become a bore. This was due to the fact that RTÉ threw the kitchen sink at the coverage to such an extent that it was excruciating.

Look, it was great to see our President meet the Queen and it helped build bridges from our troubled past but to be quite honest it was slightly overdone.

Christ there didn’t seem to be anything else happening in the country or the world apart from this visit to London which undeservedly dominated our screens and occupied all of our news coverage.

There are only so many responses to the question about how significant this visit of an Irish President to England is. And yet this was the same question that was asked by every RTÉ presenter to anyone who would talk to them.

From Morning Ireland on radio to the last TV news at night we were saturated with coverage of the visit – most of which it has to be said was meaningless twaddle.

Between Monday and Friday I think that every person that emigrated from Ireland to Britain was interviewed. This was all very well but you would imagine that it would be more suitable on Mary Kennedy’s Nationwide programme rather than the main evening or night news on RTÉ.

It was simply a case of RTÉ getting carried away by the whole event. To be quite honest, it is more significant the Taoiseach meeting the British Prime Minister than Michael D coming face to face with Elizabeth.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.