DONNYBROOK, DUBLIN

IT IS ONE thing to see dead people, it is quite another to be watched by them. But that appears to be what is happening to Irish broadcaster RTE as a new survey reveals that a significant proportion of its audience on any night, are actually dead.

“People die all the time, and old obviously people die more frequently,” explains Dr Majesty Schadenfreude of European research institute The Goebbels Method. “And RTE’s audience is now so old that a tremendous amount of those people who are tuned in – about twenty five per cent – are inevitably dead when doing so. They will have died during a program, or perhaps as they are switching on. The Late Late Show appears to have the same effect as a laxative overdose. Some will have been dead for years and their pre-programmed viewing will continue to switch the TV on every night while they sit there mummifying. We think that RTE News has quite a few of these in its audience figures. Indeed, it has been noted that RTE News may have to carry a health warning given its deleterious effect on older viewers. That said, nothing else about RTE has the casualty rate of its ridiculous salaries. This has caused what can only be described as a massacre among the old faithful. So bad is it that we’re surprised reckless manslaughter charges have not been forthcoming. The gorging on public money, and the constant demands for more has a parallel in what happened to the Catholic Church when Bishop Casey fell from grace. For the older viewers who dominate the RTE audience, it’s worse, it’s like finding that their favorite uncle has been embezzling from their grandmother. At the current death rate, we anticipate that RTE will not have a living viewer within the lifetime of the younger generation who never watch the station.”