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Media world: Silly season’s order of merit
Sunday, August 31, 2008 By Catherine O’Mahony
August is indeed a ‘wicked’ month in newsrooms nationwide, and the arrival of September heralds the end of another silly season.

In no particular order, here are some of the media ‘highlights’ of what’s traditionally the slowest month of the year for news.

* Rain. You get the feeling the nation is in trouble when the weather provides one of the biggest stories of the season, but when the relentless summer drizzle morphed into a deluge in early August, everyone was talking and writing about rain, rain and more rain. We can only hope this isn’t going to be a regular thing.

* Cowen’s caravan. The new Taoiseach had a poorish summer in media terms, but he got some positive press out of this one. While most sensible folk (with the resources to do so) made their escape from Ireland’s rain-sodden shores, Brian Cowen gamely stuck by his family’s caravan in Connemara. And he duly got his media inches reward.

* Fat Freddie. The Evening Herald devoted many summer covers to a Dublin gangster with a headline-friendly name. Essentially a serious story about crime in the capital, the saga dredged up detail that bordered on the comic.

There were Fat Freddie’s trip to a stag party in Latvia with 19 ‘‘henchmen’’, the ‘‘revelation’’ that he was disguising himself using an ‘‘Oasis-style wig’’ and numerous other antics involving himself, the gardaí and many ‘‘associates’’.

* Fáilte Towers. This reality TV offering should probably have been no more than a dull, late-summer filler for RTE, but it generated robust audience figures and filled dozens of tabloid pages in dead days.

No matter that the celebrities were mostly F-list, or that the show was slated by the critics: it was raining, there was nothing much else on telly other than sport, and this was fairly gentle stuff.

Close to a million viewers tuned into the final show in the series, when affable radio presenter John Creedon was crowned King of the Castle.

* Kevin Myers. It was a lacklustre summer for opinion as well as news, but Myers stirred up the biggest controversy when he used his Irish Independent column to raise the subject of Africa, or, in Myers’s words:

‘‘Almost an entire continent of sexually hyperactive indigents, with tens of millions of people who only survive because of help from the outside world.”

Clearly well aware of what he was at, Myers said he knew this view ‘‘will win no friends’’. He was correct.

Technically, the Myers saga was outside the silly season (late July), so a mention is also due to rival columnist Stephen Collins, for suggesting in recent weeks that the government should go ahead and ratify the Lisbon Treaty, despite its referendum defeat.

* Bertie Ahern. The former Taoiseach’s intriguing debut as a TV presenter attracted almost as much media attention as he ever got when he was in power.

Ahern’s TV performance was bland enough, but the event provided an opportunity for chat show hosts such as Ryan Tubridy to bring Bertie into studio to talk about GAA. We were also treated to details of his conversations with Tony and Bill and – more importantly — how he’s been getting on with grandkids Jay and Rocco.

* The Olympics. The event was expected to be a bit of a damp squib in media attention terms because of the time lag and our limited medal hopes.

But it threw up compelling tales of disgrace (in show jumping), heroics (in boxing) and gold medals missed (boxing again). Not only did the young boxers do very well, they did reporters the favour of displaying personality outside of it as well.

Kudos is especially due to Belfast’s Paddy Barnes who ungraciously said the Olympics committee could keep his bronze medal because coming third was ‘‘for losers’’.

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