Radio Telifís Éireann (RTÉ)

Irish radio and television station, established under the 1960 Broadcasting Authority Act as the Irish public service broadcaster, which began television transmission in 1961. It developed from the state-controlled radio station founded in 1926 (2RN). A second television channel, Network 2, began broadcasting in 1978 and, until 1988, RTÉ enjoyed a monopoly position in both television and radio. It now competes with a number of local radio stations and a national commercial one, Today FM and, since 1998, with the partly Canadian-owned commercial television station, TV3. RTÉ's affiliate, TG4 (formerly TnaG), the Irish-language public service television station set up in 1996, is scheduled to become a wholly independent body. This competition has had a positive effect on RTÉ's productions, most particularly in Network 2's response to TV3.

In addition to its television services, its teletext information service, one local and four national radio stations, RTÉ funds two orchestras, the National Symphony Orchestra, and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, as well as two choirs and a string quartet.

Historically, RTÉ has been the most important employer of people in the audio-visual sector. With the absence of formal film training until recent years, RTÉ has been the training ground for many film-makers, including Bob Quinn and Pat O'Connor. Its support for independent film and television production has been sporadic but, following a ministerial directive, its IR£3.5 million to the sector in 1993 had increased to about five times that sum by 1999. Its own soap operas, dramas, documentaries, and other programmes have been consistently more popular than imported programmes, indicating that, as with Irish-theme theatrical films, Irish audiences in general engage with Irish material.

During the 1960s RTÉ provided an important forum for previously publicly unarticulated views and as a result aided the process of modernization and internationalization of Irish culture and society. Its strengths during the 1960s and 1970s lay in such areas as successfully combining light entertainment with controversial discussion, most especially in the long-running The Late Late Show, and current affairs, where numerous challenges were made to governments and other interest groups through investigative reporting.

By the 1980s RTÉ seemed to be in danger of losing its programming direction. In drama, it concentrated on producing popular soap opera, such as the rural Glenroe, that followed on from 1960s rural soaps, such as The Riordans, and Bracken, and the urban Fair City; in turn this had grown out of the earlier Tolka Row.

Similarly, RTÉ has largely failed to promote comedy with a satirical edge. Although it broadcast the innovative Nighthawks in the 1980s, and more recently Feed the Gondolas on television, Dermot Morgan's Scrap Saturday on radio and Nighthawks were discontinued, and Morgan went to Britain's Channel Four in the 1990s to make the successful comedy series Father Ted.