ABSTRACT
On New Year’s Eve 1961, President Éamon de Valera launched Raidió Telefís Éireann (RTÉ), stating that ‘never before was there in the hands of men an instrument so powerful to influence the thoughts and actions of the multitude’ (RTÉ, 1961). As broadcast history would now suggest, de Valera’s foreboding was not unfounded. With this new medium of television came radical change, bringing ‘a new symbolic structure, habitus and practice nightly into people’s homes’ (Inglis, 1998, p. 138). As alternative conceptions of Irish life were broadcast into people’s living rooms, television also served to question the very definition of the Irish home.
