Radio Ulster's Sunday evening GAA Phone in

[Uladh]

Obviously it's half in Irish and half in English. What is the point?

First week i tuned in on the way home from that day's championship match only to switch it off after enduring it for fifteen minutes. Only a tiny fraction of it's potential audience can understand it and will not persevere through large sections of irish.

Why have the decision makers in question so blatently wasted an opportunity to provide a much needed forum for GAA discussion and interaction. it really bugs me.

If any irish speakers could desist from the aul line about it being our heritage to learn the language and quoting the nonsense figures regarding the numbers who speak irish, that'd be great. i loosely canvassed 25-30 lads who play or fanatically support gaelic games. 1 fella had enough irish to understand the program and most of the rest had tuned in once only to be pissed off and turn it off.

[ONeill]

One the of most ridiculous posts.

This show has been on the go for a few years now. It is for those who speak the language, and those who have a bit of it.

[Donagh]

You're the third person today I've heard criticise an Domhnach Mór, are yez all that easily influenced by the 'Gaelic Life'? For years the only people on this site I ever heard mention the show were O'Neill and T Fearon - though a late convert to this hidden gem, at least he made the effort.

Lynette and the team have probably made a rod for their own back by handing out the flyers at the games recently in a bid to up the ratings but they've provided a great service over the past few years for us regular listeners of Radio Uladh i.e. now more people know about the show the more opportunity for critics.

It's always been an Irish language slot and the ADM team switched bilingual in an attempt to promote the games and the language. IMO they should be congratulated for this as it's pitched in such a way that even a cultural philistine like me can keep track of what's being said while stuck in the traffic on the Monaghan road out of Clones or trying to get onto the M1 northbound from Dublin. Look upon it as a challenge to understand rather than your 5Live and Talksport spoonfed rubbish and it'll be more rewarding. Once you pick up a few phrases and the accents you'll find it a damn good show (even though I don't forgive them for sending me to Downpatrick for a night after the 2004 quarter-final).

[Uladh]

Didn't know it existed until after the drawn down/cavan game this year, so maybe it could do with a bit more work in the pr department. or maybe the ads for it are in the native tongue too...

It's ridiculous to waste this program by conducting it in a language the vast majority of their target audience can't understand.

Where is the public service broadaster's similar provision for the majority rather than the minority?

Gaelic Life? What's that about?

"Lynette and the team have probably made a rod for their own back by handing out the flyers at the games recently in a bid to up the ratings but they've provided a great service over the past few years for us regular listeners of Radio Uladh i.e. now more people know about the show the more opportunity for critics. "

In the grand scheme of things that is just plain stupid Donagh.

"Look upon it as a challenge to understand rather than your 5Live and Talksport spoonfed rubbish and it'll be more rewarding. Once you pick up a few phrases and the accents you'll find it a damn good show"

I'm quite capable of deciding on my own education route thanks very much. Coming home from a match listening to the radio, instead of the energetic post match discussion which every other sport in every other country in the world, i've to tune into the local station for the challenge of understanding a minority language?

Radio Ulster should cop on and realise the mass listening audience they are missing out on. Imagine the number of people who'd tune in to listen to Adrian McGuckin or Martin McHugh's musings on that day's championship fare and get up to date reports on club football.

[The Gs Man]

Lynettes a great girl!!  She played one of our songs on Radio Ulster yesterday....

[Fionntamhnach]

First off I haven't heard the show, so I can't comment directly on it, but through reading about radio broadcasting across the world, bilingual & multilingual broadcasts for programs that are mostly spoken word just don't work. As examples close to home, the Belgians didn't find it acceptable and ended up splitting their services into seperate Flemish and French language stations, and the Swiss never considered it viable (only recently did they launch multilingual services, and they are all music based) except for a couple of programs in Romansch on their German language radio service a week until they got their own station.

[T Fearon]

Don't understand this criticism. Its a bit like complaining about the teams being in Irish in the match programme, or a few pages in Irish , or the Irish commentary on the All Ireland Minor Finals. It doesn't detract one iota from the show.

I do think Radio Ulster could perhaps replicate a phone in slot for fans after a Championship game on Sundays, as they do for Irish league soocer fans on Saturdays.

[Donagh]

ADM is not a GAA phone-in show, it's a programme covering Irish language and culture that caters for the thousands out there trying to improve on their Irish. The fact that they cover that days GAA issues has more to do with their likely audience having an interest in the GAA rather than an attempt to provide expert analysis of the days sport. It is supposed to be a light-hearted bit of craic. The masses are already well catered for with Sunday Sportsound running all afternoon on MW, though I haven't heard McHugh on it for a few years. If its another GAA phone in you want you already have 5FM and Radio 1 doing that at the same time.

As for bilingual programming not working, I don't think there are to many other places around there world were you have such a mix of so many Irish speaking schools in non-native speaking environment and were there are so many non-native speakers learning the language at the same time. That section of the population has to be catered for and I think the popularity and success of TG4 and to a lesser extent Radio Failte in Belfast has shown that if you cover topics that people are interested in, in an engaging way, they can work extremely well.

[Fionntamhnach]

As for bilingual programming not working, I don't think there are to many other places around there world were you have such a mix of so many Irish speaking schools in non-native speaking environment and were there are so many non-native speakers learning the language at the same time. That section of the population has to be catered for and I think the popularity and success of TG4 and to a lesser extent Radio Failte in Belfast has shown that if you cover topics that people are interested in, in an engaging way, they can work extremely well.

The argument there makes no sense as with the exception of Newfoundland, Irish isn't spoken anywhere outside of Ireland to a notable degree. The nearest comparison is Brussels, which has a slight majority of French speakers compared to Flemish/Dutch speakers in the city, many schoolchildren there that go to Flemish speaking schools don't speak it at home. This doesn't mean however that RTBF, the French-speaking public broadcaster in Belgium, is going to start carrying Flemish radio programs. Radio Failte in Belfast is a monolingual radio station, along similar lines to RnaG, while TG4 does work very well. However it has been proven that while multilingual radio doesn't work in most places, it can for television because with the use of additional audio channels (e.g. Euronews on satellite) or subtitles either on screen or through teletext, the viewers who don't speak the primary language of the show don't feel as alienated.

[Donagh]

I would suggest a better comparison would be some of the southern states of the US which has a large Spanish speaking population attending English language schools – where bilingual programming is quite common.

The reason I included Radio Failte was that contrary to the initial wishes of the language fascists, it continues to play contemporary English language music and that makes it accessible to a wider audience and in many cases non-fluent speakers.