Paul Hopkins: TV or not TV?... that is the question!

PAUL HOPKINS

As I kicked the ball one more time towards the goalpost – and missed – I said: "That's it, lads, I'm off. Top Of The Pops!" And in no time the makeshift pitch on the green was emptied, as we trundled home. After all, it was Thursday, 7.30pm and David Bowie was rumoured to be on.

We were growing up fast, in those halcyon days of bruised knees and wide-eyed curiosity. The telly in the corner was growing too. We now had colour and two channels. No more watching The Lone Ranger before tea as we fidgeted with the rabbit's ears to get rid of the annoying snow drops. No more looking out the front-room window – the Good Room – through a dark evening of proper snow, hoping the TV repair man would come back, as promised, in time for The Fugitive. He never did. It was always the next day. And my father would give the 17-inch rented telly a 'bit of a blem' with his chammy before we'd all get glued to the box, no matter what was on.

One hundred years on from the invention of television,

RTÉ says more than one in five Irish households no longer has a regular TV set, double that of 2021. So why are Irish homes abandoning the box in the corner? The evidence points to two reasons – young people with personal screens and a shift to streaming platforms.

Figures show one in every five adults under 24 "rarely or never” watch a traditional TV set, with non-viewers for those aged 25-39 at 15 per cent. While telecoms regulator ComReg found that the number of homes paying for traditional pay TV services such as Sky or Virgin has fallen from 70 per cent to 57 per cent in the last four years, it also found that subscriptions to Netflix and other streaming platforms haven't fallen at all. Here, we pay €2bn annually for such.

While it's arguable that RTÉ is building its argument to replace the ailing TV Licence – down 19 per cent in the last four years and continuing to fall – there are several signals that some people have been moving away from large-screen household displays to smaller, private ones.

Core Media, the biggest media agency group in the country, has said TV viewing is falling at a rate of 18 per cent a year in the 15-34 age group and by 14 per cent among the 25-44 group.

The 100 years of television have seen a century defined by storytelling, technological breakthroughs, cultural touchstones, and global connection. One hundred years since Scotsman John Logie Baird transmitted the first recognisable television images, when his "mechanical televisor system" delivered a moving image of his assistant William Taynton as the first broadcast in January 1926.

From those modest beginnings to the sophisticated systems today, television has been transformed beyond recognition – a technology that informs, entertains, and connects people across the globe.

Albert Einstein observed: “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity,” a reminder that innovation must be matched with responsibility. Somewhat apt, given that non-terrestrial viewing, hand-held gizmos and secluded viewing online are posing continuous harm to our younger 'viewers' and to the vulnerable, and serious headaches for our policy makers.

After all, there was no sex in Ireland until Gay Byrne and The Late Late Show came into our homes.

Speaking of which, Patrick Kielty is returning. The issue, moreover, is The Late, Late Show, although still hugely popular, is well past its sell-by date. We now live in a very different world than that of the early Sixties and Uncle Gaybo. Byrne was a colossus of a conduit for moral and political change, paving the way for how we are today, having cast off the yokes of the Catholic Church, rigid misconceptions of morality, and cruel and degrading intolerance for the rights of women and children.

The seasoned broadcaster gave a voice to those who could not speak openly; the oppressed, the abused, the morally denied. The past 60 years have seen an extensive change in Irish social thinking, values and what we, the citizens, expect. Byrne played a pivotal role in that seismic change.

TV could do it again for a different audience. UN data shows 15 per cent of the world’s population live with some form of disability or has special needs. Emerging technologies could offer immense potential to make television more accessible and inclusive to a whole new audience.