Little optimism accompanied the launch of this State’s radio service, 2RN, a century ago this month. The Irish Times ran a story under the headings “No funds for broadcasting” and the “curious position of the Free State station”.

It was not possible, noted the writer, to make definite programming arrangements as “nobody has any authority to arrange anything that will involve expenditure”.

In some respects the dilemma was obvious; radio licences would not be purchased “if programmes are not attractive”, but to provide such programmes “will cost more money than is expected from licence fees”, leaving the Minister for Finance in the “preposterous” position of having to wait and see how many licences would be bought.

Such an uninspiring start was not surprising; the minister for posts and telegraphs, JJ Walsh, who had favoured a commercial rather than State-funded service, told the Dáil in 1924 what people wanted from radio broadcasting was “amusement; they want nothing else”.

Maurice Gorham, director of Radio Éireann in the 1950s, who published his book Forty Years of Irish Broadcasting in 1967, noted that such a “contemptuous view of the broadcasting service was to recur frequently among politicians in the years to come”.

It is worth noting and celebrating the achievement of those who worked in the new service as they managed to persevere through such cynicism, underfunding, transmitter coverage issues, qualms about reliance on advertising and political and control pressures.

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© The Irish Times