Getting To The Art Of The Matter
After a dozen series critiquing the arts and keeping close to the hearts of viewers around the country, The View is no more, rebranded and reupholstered as The Works. Hosted by John Kelly, it aims to reinvent RTÉ’s cultural wheel with a new magazine format.
Craig Fitzpatrick, 01 Feb 2012
For respected broadcaster John Kelly, The View now lies in the rear view mirror of a new vehicle he’s driving called The Works. The decision came pre-Christmas that, after 12 years, RTÉ’s arts mainstay would end its review incarnation in favour of something a little different. Weeks of uncertainty followed, with dissenting and disappointed voices, given the show’s strong standing in the arts community. Thankfully, a replacement, The Works, has just commenced transmission, aiming to fill your cultural quota each Thursday. And, making us doubly grateful, John Kelly and most of the old crew are onboard. A case of ‘The View is dead, long live The Works’, then.
The way Kelly tells it, the change was a long time coming. “While The View had its strengths and successes, the review format has in-built limitations. For a long time, myself and others have been talking about broadening out and that couldn’t have been done under the old umbrella. I think everybody was thinking the same thing and now seems like a good time, socially and in terms of where the country’s at, to do more. We can get into things in more depth, we can devote more time to certain things as is necessary.”
With much unfounded conjecture regarding the slot’s future, it’s heartening to see much the same crew take on this new project. Kelly sees his continued presence as a stamp of approval.
“I’m very grateful,” he notes. “There’s no doubt, if you’re going to revamp a programme, one of the first things that might occur to you would be to get rid of the presenter. So I’m very pleased that they’re behind me fronting The Works. That’s a vote of confidence and I don’t take it lightly.”
Kelly will be joined by several reporters who have acquitted themselves well as View contributors in the past – Sinéad Gleeson, Nadine O’Regan and Kevin Gildea.
“One thing I constantly heard during The View,” he says, “was, ‘Why can’t you get more of the same people on all the time?’ Now we have three people who are really smart and who I have a lot of time for. It will change the flavour, and one-off reports should yield a few idiosyncratic pieces. I’m delighted to have all of these characters involved.”
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