OUR two morning phone-in hosts were of one mind this week as Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann got under way in Belfast. Like most of us, Stephen Nolan and Frank Mitchell probably have a range of opinions on what’s lining up to be the biggest event to have taken place in the city of Belfast for 400 years.
They may believe it to be a huge and welcome boost to the city’s economy. They may see the Fleadh as further proof that Belfast’s reputation as a grey, hard city full of grey, hard people is starting to recede. They may think the programme is too ambitious; they may think it’s not ambitious enough. But as the first wheeze of a box accordion rose up towards the Belfast Hills and the lilting notes of a harp orchestra wrapped the city in a warm embrace, Steeky and Frankie Boy were in lockstep on the most pressing issue of the day: Yeah, joy, harmony and prosperity are all very well, mate, but how’s everybody getting home? How are people supposed to get to work?
Steeky being Steeky, he presented us with a scenario so simultaneously grim and poignant that one could only gnash one’s teeth and shake one’s fist in anger at the Fleadh, Translink, City Hall, Comhaltas and any of the other heartless fiends who had brought us to this sorry pass. How, he plaintively asked, is a carer with two jobs supposed to catch a bus when the place is shut down to allow people to enjoy themselves?
It’s actually a fair question. And when the Biggest Show in the Country starts peeling the onion it’s a fair and heartbreaking question. But of course it was an even fairer question three years ago. It was a fair question two years ago when the serious planning got under way. And it was still a fair question a year ago when people began seriously to think of the rather knotty problem of moving 800,000 people about.
I’m not stupid enough to believe that the phones would have gone boogaloo if a year ago Stephen Nolan had opened a show with “We exclusively reveal the Translink timetable blueprint for next year’s Fleadh.” I don’t think Frank’s bosses would have reported a huge spike in listenership if this time last August Frank had led with the details of the Glider network’s Fleadh nighttime service blueprint. I know as well as the two morning rivals that cats purring don’t draw as much attention as the unmerciful screeeching they produce when their tails are tied together and they’re thrown over a clothesline. Sweetness is not a sought-after commodity; light even less so. Sturm is where it’s at, baby; that und drang.
Let me be clear at this point and say that I don’t think either DJ has a responsibility to help outside agencies – statutory or otherwise – make their events go smoothly. I don’t expect them to halve their audience by devoting an hour to turgid debate about the organisation of events that are months or even years down the line. But I do think if they really cared about that imaginary carer with two jobs, or even about a real carer with just one, giving off about their predicament while they’re in the middle of it is not an effective strategy. Giving off about their predicament when there’s still time to do something about it is the right thing to do, let the listening figures be damned.
But, of course, the listening figures can never be damned. On radio, on TV and in newspapers the listening and sales figures can only be worshipped, fetishised and fretted over.
That’s as true at the New York Times as it is at the Andytown News. That’s as true on the Today programme as it is on the Frank Mitchell Show.
Which left Stephen and Frank in a bit with a choice. Do we accept that the first day of the Fleadh is not the time to bloviate about Fleadh problems that are beyond fixing at this point and talk about something else? Or do we crack on and hope that nobody notices that we only showed an interest in the ball when it was up on the slates?
The choice, of course, was that it wasn’t a choice at all.
Unhappily, Fleadh trains and buses aren’t even top of the Now They Tell Me League, mostly because it’s a transitory issue (albeit one that will doubtless raise its unaddressed head when the Fleadh is held again in Belfast next year). Media gripes are as seasonal as Irish strawberries and as sour as early gooseberries. Boneys, the Twelfth, St Paddy’s, Christmas, Féile, sundry anniversaries, diverse remembrances. They sit there all year long, silently looming yet totally ignored. And then they explode with the grim familiarity of that black and white footage of a car bomb going off in Chichester Street.
Maybe it’s time for a phone-in on phone-ins. Or – perish the thought – is it too late?
