RTE’s Press Office could not confirm the Mail on Sunday’s story but did confirm to me that at 1pm each Saturday there would be a new series of Green Tea, hosted by Oliver Callan.

At 1.30 each Saturday Charlie Bird will present a new one hour Saturday show which will ‘follow the big stories around the country’ and ‘report on the big issues as they happen’.

Rachel English who has presented Saturday View since Rodney Rice retired is joining the Morning Ireland team on a permanent basis, 5 days a week. She is an excellent presenter and a great addition to the team with Aine Lawlor and Aoife Kavanagh and Cathal McCoille – great to see women dominating the presenting in primetime.

Despite the fact that Saturday View was one of the few RTE Radio 1 programmes that had gained listeners this year (up 4,000 in the last JNLR’s) it seems that the station decided the programme had to go.

Oliver Callan is no Dermot Morgan.  RTE seem desperate to have some satire on the station no matter how terrible it might be.   Nob Nation is not Scrap Saturday and in my opinion the writing on the first series of Green Tea was poor. We already suffer John Murray’s efforts five days a week.  And then there’s the Charlie Bird problem, RTE does not seem to know what to do with him since he came back from America.

Saturday View was intelligent radio, bringing politicians, economists, policy makers and commentators together in a fast paced debate on the issues of the week and able to react to breaking issues as they happened also.  Both Rodney Rice and Rachel English never let the programme be about them.  This won’t be able to be said about Charlie Bird.

The new schedule will be launched on Tuesday.  I think there will be more than a bit of a protest at this news.  Unfortunately there is nowhere else to turn to for intelligent debate and analysis on Irish radio as NewsFox or ManTalk has completely gone to pot.

What you may not have known is that the brand’s PR company are sending crates of the stuff to media organisations all over town so that the more people talk about it the more the presenters, researchers etc. are rewarded with free product.

Bias and ethics eh? Has anyone sent it back?

Me, I’m drinking Finches from now on if I bother and no I don’t want any of it for nowt thanks very much.

Hosted by the Galway Green Party the panel will debate the relationship between old and new media and politics and given garglegate last week and #simoncoveneysfault promises to be very lively. (It was planned before the hangover/hoarseness)

Naoise Nunn the founder of Leviathan, Robert Cassidy a political consultant, Senator Ronan Mullen and myself will create the hot air to be channeled by the chairperson Senator Niall O Brolchain. I look forward to taking part and maybe some Galway bloggers might attend?

First up it’s Matt Cooper

It’s not the usual political correspondent tweet (no they’re not all devoid of humour but they are generally careful enough), but then the Mail is not your usual newspaper is it? And to think that politicians have seen articles (mountains) made out of tweets (molehills) quite a bit recently – Dermot Looney and Dan Boyle come to mind.

Have a look here – at 22.54 minutes in and watch Anne Doyle calmly introduce the TV News moment so far for 2010.

Charlie Bird is back viewers … back with a bang. After over a year of isolation and loneliness as RTE’s Washington correspondent, Charlie has found a role for himself in the coverage of Anglo Irish Bank and Ireland’s financial meltdown.  And it’s no April Fool.

He went on the road to Cape Cod in Boston looking for former Anglo Irish Bank CEO David Drumm who has moved to live there.  Mr Drumm owes money on loans amongst other issues.

In classic Bird fashion Charlie found the house and went knocking at the door.

I’ve transcribed the important bit.

We were set up for drama…

CB: As we approached the house it had all the appearances as if there was no-one at home

[Knock knock knock]

CB: Oh they’re there, he’s there [Cue viewers going 'oh yeah!']

CB:Mr. Drumm, It’s Charlie Bird from RTE, Can I talk to you?

CB: It’s Charlie Bird from RTE

CB: Why are you ducking down?

DD: Charlie, What are you doing?

CB: I want to talk to you

DD: [Muffled - we can assume Drumm said you can't come in or something polite like that]

CB: Well can I talk you outside

DD: No you can’t

DD: Have a bit of respect, will you, I have my family here in the house Charlie.

CB: There are tax payers at home in Ireland who would like to have some answers.

DD: Did you see the sign at the gate?

CB: There are some tax payers…

DD: Leave Now

CB: Ok, thank you very much

We later find that Charlie discovers that Drumm has protected his home from claims from people who are owed money. (Read Cape Cod Online’s report on the recent interest of Irish media in the house).

We’ve lost George Lee’s gleeful tones during the last while, but let’s have more Bird please – much more. Let’s send Charlie around the world to find Seanie Fitz, Sean Quinn, David Drumm, oh and Michael Lynn too while you are at it.  Please RTE!!! It’s in the national interest

And can someone please put it up on Youtube for posterity?? Thank you!

Update:

Many thanks to Alexia Golez for the video in an accessible format!

Drumm Doorstep feat Charlie Bird from Alexia Golez on Vimeo.

Now its ‘the twitter that did it’ and ‘tweeted out of office’.

So was Dan Boyle’s tweet planned or off the cuff? What will his next tweet say? When will someone tweet from the pol corrs seats?

I await the expert articles and socmediagooru’s writing politics posts.

(Things I want RTE to stop doing?

• Putting pol corrs outside Government Buildings when there is nobody there;
• Putting two different correspondents outside different bits of government buildings to do live talkies to Anne Doyle;
• Ciaran Mullooly on a helicopter ‘bringing’ hay to a stranded farmer;
• The Week in Politics and the features with the music and the screen fades…

feel free to add your suggestions.)

Many in the media refuse to accept that there are people who enjoy writing and thinking about issues and don’t want to get paid for it. There are many others who like to read these opinions and statistics from Google show that people search for information on everything from news to sport to receipes to reaching out to other parents of children with disabilities. Bloggers don’t need to write everyday because they don’t want to! Yes we don’t have an editor standing over their back making us do so.  It does not matter how many there are or who is reading them. Or that bloggers give up, start again or decide to do something different instead.  How this makes us any less valid or indeed worthy of the continual jibes and comment from the mainstream media won’t be keeping me awake.

The fact is that blogs still exist and things change as technology and people’s interactions change.   Many express opinions and exchange information on Facebook – indeed I often get more comments on blog posts I write on facebook than on the blog itself. My posts are shared on facebook amongst many others who would never visit the blog.  I don’t know what Burns’ problem with niches is either.

Be it on blogs, facebook, twitter or elsewhere people are talking to each other and they don’t need to hang on to every word typed by a journalist or a columnist who is paid.  They thought Guthenberg was mad – some would like to see all bloggers and online researchers and commentators as eejits, that’s fine by me.

Damien Mulley publishes the email correspondence between himself and John Burns on what seemingly started out as a piece on political blogging in Ireland. It’s a shame he didn’t stick to writing about political blogging and the reasons that it is not as developed as in the USA or elsewhere. The party political system, difficulty in accessing information through FOI’s and control freakery of political parties about what their candidates do online, or the positive experiences parties and candidates have had in interacting with readers would all have been interesting discussions to have.

Burns refers to a ‘tipping point’ in 2008 on my blog re Sarah Palin and how we have not had one since. I’d love to know what his tipping point meter consists of.  In the next week or so I will be reviewing my year online and I think we’ll see different.

Did you read the last sentence?

An important absence in Ireland are leading players from business, the arts, education, politics and property who write honestly and revealingly, giving an insight into their sectors. Instead, the blogosphere has been left free for “amateur� commentators and journalists. While some are entertaining, not one continually demands our attention. No Irish blog is important enough to read every day. Until that changes, you’ll be getting your news and comment on paper.

It made me laugh a lot given I had read the story online and rarely get my news on paper. I know I am not alone. I now less frequently get all my ‘news’ from old school newspapers online either.

Ireland as a nation is still too small to be able to resource internet only professional media. However a joint venture between those paid and unpaid may be possible – the so called and often belittled ‘citizen journalists’ without whom people in the Sunday Times and other places would spend a lot of time not finding things out or being able to write articles about.

Last week the Huffington Post held it’s staff holiday party – the crowd was over twice the size that was at last years party, and easily three times the size present in 2007. Love the jumpers by the way!  I wonder what Murdoch bought his staff for Christmas.

However there was a lot of voting on the poll and the results changed wildly. So the Editor of the Limerick Leader has decided to take it down.

As a result of a huge upsurge in voting on Monday night, the indicative result of the poll was dramatically altered. The poll had asked readers if Bishop Murray should remain in office and earlier on Monday it was running at 75% No and 25%. Following an unusually high level of votes recorded in a three-hour period on Monday night, the result changed to 18% No and 82% Yes.

Limerick Leader Editor Alan English said “This is a very serious matter and it is important that an accurate picture of the views of Limerick people is represented.

“The Limerick Leader was not satisfied about the accuracy of this poll and for this reason we have decided to discontinue it.

“We regret that our readers have been denied the opportunity to make their views known through the poll, but it is vital that such polls are reliable and we had strong reasons to doubt that this one was. Readers are invited to submit their views on the matter to our Letters to the Editor page, by emailing letters@limerickleader.ie.”

Eh online polls are a bit like that – not very scientific.  But surely if you decide to run one you just publish the results and get on with it? No letters from the bishops palace to the Editor asking him to take it down I trust?