Comments on: Real Politic

By: Greg

Greg — Mon, 21 Jul 2003 03:08:49 +0000

Sadly, I know people back home who call RTE 1 and N2 (what RTE 2 eventually metamorphosed into) Bog 1 and Bog 2. Sad, but true. These were people who could not merely ‘scarf up the English channels’, but in fact refused to watch the Irish ones. Now there are four Irish ones -TV3 is imported nonsense, and TG4 is nominally an Irish language channel but tends to show an awful lot of English stuff…

By: Daragh McDowell

Daragh McDowell — Wed, 16 Jul 2003 19:39:01 +0000

I was raised with a cable box that got somewhere in the region of 40 channels of garbage, 24 hours a day, and spent my saturday mornings glued to atrocities such as the new Scooby Doo and the animated Adam’s Family. I think you’ll find that Maria and Henry’s Irish upbringing produced far more intelligent, well-rounded individuals than my one in Calgary did. BTW Maria, in all fairness how long did Dublin put up with ‘switching sides.’ Did it belonging to that region that was able to tune in the BBC? If so its somewhat misleading to refer to a small portion of the East Coast, as it does hold a third of the population :)

By: Scott Martens

Scott Martens — Wed, 16 Jul 2003 16:24:20 +0000

Hey, when I was a kid living in the brush in Canada (in 1980 when the dinosaurs still roamed the earth and boy bands meant Menudo), we only got one channel: the CBC. All the other channels didn’t have powerful enough antennas to get out where we were, and there wasn’t cable back in those days. It could have been worse. One place I lived (Iqaluit, actually) had only gotten a CBC satellite feed a couple of years earlier. Before that, they flew three day’s worth of CBC North – four hours a day – out on tape twice a week from Montreal. Getting just CBC is bad for your health. Even after all these years, I still can’t quite get the theme song to Disco Rene out of my head.

By: David Weman

David Weman — Wed, 16 Jul 2003 09:33:05 +0000

Sweden didn’t get a third channel until christmas ‘88. I’ born in 1980 and remember the days of no coercial television.

By: Henry

Henry — Wed, 16 Jul 2003 05:14:24 +0000

It was a sad day in the Farrell household when Rory’s departure to help sort out the problems on the moon was announced. And he never came back either :(

By: Kieran Healy

Kieran Healy — Wed, 16 Jul 2003 04:25:58 +0000

And remember that RTE2 didn’t get off the ground till the late 70s. And it wasn’t until well into the 1980s that either channel woke up before noon or stayed up after 11:35pm. On the other hand, we had Wanderly Wagon.

By: Henry

Henry — Wed, 16 Jul 2003 02:49:56 +0000

This is an Irish insider joke. RTE One (RTE a h-aon) and RTE Two (RTE a do) were the only two TV channels available in Ireland for a very long time (unless you lived along a small section of the East coast, or the border region, and could scarf up the English channels. Thus, you didn’t “switch channels” – as there was no multiplicity of same – instead you “turned to the other side.”

By: Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Patrick Nielsen Hayden — Wed, 16 Jul 2003 01:36:25 +0000

“It got me thinking of the old days of RTE a h-aon agus RTE a do.” Spa fon? Squa tront!