Deaths may coincide with the end of an era for RTÉ in more ways than one

The View

Gay Byrne, Marian Finucane and Larry Gogan were household names but the loss of the less-well known but very popular 2FM presenter Alan McQuillan at 37 was also a tragedy.

At 69, Marian Finucane was the youngest of the older three, with Gay Byrne and Larry Gogan both in their mid-80s. They were all highly-skilled broadcasters who excelled at their profession. They have all been extolled for helping to create a new, open and more tolerant Ireland, albeit in different ways.

Larry Gogan always championed Irish musicians in an era when there were very few slots on Irish radio that did. More importantly, he seems to have been unfailingly kind and gentlemanly, a rare trait in anyone, broadcaster or not.

If he had an agenda, it was to play the very best music, including Irish music. He seems to have loved discovering new talent right up until the end.

Finucane, Byrne and Gogan are all figures who bridged two eras in our history, from a closed, conservative Ireland to one that is restless and cosmopolitan and not always as tolerant as it likes to think itself.

Justification

Even though both Marian Finucane and Gay Byrne could be very critical of the Church (many times with justification) they also had an understanding of Catholicism and its place in the lives of ordinary Irish people.

It is significant that all three funerals took place in churches (as indeed, did Alan McQuillan’s). Fr Brian D’Arcy has spoken of Larry Gogan as a “solid Christian” and Gay Byrne attended daily Mass when possible. Whatever Marian Finucane’s own personal beliefs were, she, and her husband John Clarke, worked closely to develop a hospice and children’s charity not only with community groups in South Africa but also with the Sisters of Nazareth and with Bishop Liam Slattery OFM of Kokstad.

All three of these broadcasters lived through an era of great change in Ireland and each, in different ways, played their part in it. The influence of Marian Finucane and Gay Byrne may have been exaggerated. The societal changes in Ireland were influenced by everything from membership of the European Union to rising levels of third-level education to greater affluence (at least for some Irish people).

No broadcaster or broadcasting organisation can take sole credit (or blame) for societal change. For example, in the last referendum, I suspect the internet played a bigger part in forming younger people’s views than any of the mainstream media.

Nonetheless, though many Irish Catholics are alienated from mainstream media, many more were addicted to it, including substantial numbers of older women, who might have timed their Mass-going so as not to miss Marian.

The era of the serious broadcaster with appeal across generations is disappearing” 

The era when broadcasters inspire that degree of loyalty is over. People’s media consumption is fragmented. Both Marian and Gay at different times in their radio careers were broadcasting primarily to women in the home, a shrinking demographic.

Sometimes people criticise society with the aim of improving it, not completely re-shaping it. But Irish society is in many ways substantially changed. I often wonder if Gay Byrne, in particular, was entirely comfortable with the new Ireland.

As a daily Massgoer, would Gay Byrne find it bit sad that the younger generation in Ireland never had an immersion in Catholic tradition? In most cases, Catholicism is a peripheral influence, a cultural leftover, a way to mark significant moments but not much more. Having the Catholic Church to kick against was a defining phenomenon for many of Gay Byrne’s era.

But it is not just Catholicism that is suffering from side-lining. While audience figures are relatively healthy, the era of the serious broadcaster with appeal across generations is disappearing. People expect media on demand, not tied to a schedule. The Netflix and Amazon Prime model works much better for people in the modern era than making a date with Marian on weekend mornings.

Irony

Many Catholics felt that the national broadcaster was dominated by liberal voices but the irony is that while the national broadcaster may have been trying to change the national conversation, it has no idea how to deal with changes that make fixed programming schedules seem very old-fashioned. Public service broadcasting only works when it is well-funded and impeccably committed to fairness, not just stop-watch fairness at times of elections and referenda.

Politicians do not want to fund it and audiences now have lots of alternatives. While Ireland needed to change in many ways, particularly in relation to attitudes to mental illness, lone parenthood and undue deference to authority, no-one, including RTÉ, could have foreseen that national and international changes would mean that the national broadcaster may soon be seen as a quaint relic itself.