Ahead of the broadcast of Ireland In Music on Tuesday night on RTÉ One, producer/director Donal Scannell looks back at his own obsession with music on Irish television
I've been watching music on Irish TV screens for about 41 years and making Irish music TV for about 28 years. It’s hard to call out your own obsession but if I’m being honest, I am a bit obsessed about music on TV.
It was only last year that I threw out the VHS tapes of my favourite music TV from when I was 12. And that was only because I’d digitised them all.
In my lifetime we’ve gone from one TV channel to infinite choice. At one point in my Ireland it felt like there was no music on our screens other than Gloria, TR Dallas and Big Tom. As a young child I knew all the words to One Day at A Time and had little interest in music. It wasn’t exciting to say the least. Everyone wore Stetsons and looked like my neighbours.
Read Donal’s preview piece of Ireland In Music
My kids still don’t believe me when I explain my viewing choices in 1978. The Test-card followed by Bosco followed by The Sullivans and Heidi followed by the Angelus. The test-card was my favourite and the only music on offer was Bosco singing!
In my one channel youth everything around felt second hand and overdue. Top of The Pops was the sole window from the outside world, and it seemed aeons away. Relayed live every Thursday from the BBC via RTÉ to every corner of Ireland. I recall being confused by punk at five and being even more confused by Foster and Allen on Top of The Pops in their leprechaun outfits. How did they escape from Tróm Agus Éadrom without even a costume change?
When I was 13 bootleg cable TV arrived in our part of Ballinasloe and I finally had the BBC and about ten other channels including Super Channel who played mostly music before MTV ever got to Europe!
We need your consent to load this YouTube contentWe use YouTube to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
Then U2 happened. This Irish band exploded onto the world because of Live Aid, enabled by this other guy, Bob Geldof. Boom! Ireland changed the moment Bono jumped into that pit at Wembley to pick that woman from the crowd for an impromptu slow set on stage. A light was switched on and all eyes were upon us. Self Aid a year later cemented this excitement. We had a whole day full of Irish bands live on RTÉ!
Suddenly Irish screens exploded with a plethora of youth-facing TV that didn’t make you feel like you lived in East Germany. Some like Anything Goes had splashes of music, The Late Late Show began to have regular decent music slots and then we got proper shows like Seven Bands on The Up, TV Gaga and Borderline.
We need your consent to load this YouTube contentWe use YouTube to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
The absolute apex had to be Megamix. I can’t begin to describe the excitement generated by an Irish TV show clued-in enough to feature The Smiths. Presented by Flo McSweeney and Kevin Sharkey and filmed at Christchurch, Megamix felt like Channel 4 had mistakenly made a show in Ireland. There was literally nothing to differentiate it from what was being beamed in from over the pond and that was a great thing.
We need your consent to load this YouTube contentWe use YouTube to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
Living the dream, by age 20 I was working on RTÉ shows, most of which involved music. JMTV Rocks The Garden, an off-shoot of yoof show Jo-Maxi from Dublin’s Rock Garden, was an early high. Slightly dumbed down but still great music - everyone from Pulp to 2 Unlimited to GW McLennan from The Go-Betweens graced that show. The theme for most of the TV I got to make early on was sneaking things in to where they didn’t really belong - whether that was St. Etienne on Gortnaclune '94 or Pop Will Eat Itself on The Late Late Show.
We need your consent to load this YouTube contentWe use YouTube to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
No Disco was of course another peak of Irish music TV. A whole community of us gathered around the new sounds that show beamed out to our nation including The Frames, David Gray and Tricky.
MTV and then YouTube almost completely killed off music TV. They certainly killed off shows that featured little more than music videos. Sometimes I wonder what did more damage to music TV - the internet or what felt like a complete and utter stagnation of the form for a long time.
Fast-forward to the end of 2020 and music is all over our screens. Lockdown has helped us all realise how much we love and crave music. Netflix, although still only a small percentage of the total TV market, has helped us all realise that TV has been globalised. This is a great opportunity for Irish programme makers to make shows not only for Ireland, but for the world.
Ireland In Music is an amalgam of no less than fifteen funding sources, with all of the artists taking part brought together by Tradfest. Some of the same core team that brought No Disco to our screens have grown up and devised a format that links Ireland and our musicians to create a new platform. This is music TV made in Ireland but for the whole world to share.
RTÉ is presenting Ireland In Music to the world on December 29th on RTÉ One at 8.00pm. It is just the beginning.
Donal Scannell
