COLUM KENNY
TWO out of every three Irish people are not interested in reality TV. At least that's what viewers have told Chorus, the Irish cable company. In fact, one third of us say that we "do not like reality TV at all". So much for Treasure Island and Celebrity Farm.

It's hard to believe, especially when the media is full of chatter about volunteers and freaks who submit themselves to public scrutiny on television. Yet, most of us claim to be unimpressed by the likes of those who survived a shipwreck on Cabin Fever, got booted off Big Brother or coped with jungle insects on I'm a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here!

Perhaps that is why RTE has no new "reality" shows in the pipeline.

The Irish are not alone in expressing a lack of interest in reality TV. And we also share the opinion of most other Europeans on where reality TV crosses an acceptable line.

We do not want to see, for example, the process of dying on television. And we are more than twice as likelyas the French to object tomedical operations being broadcast live.

But it seems that fewer than half of us Irish object to real sexual intercourse on the telly: such opposition drops to just one in three among those surveyed between ages 16 and 29. What we find least acceptable on reality TV are attacks and violence.

Ireland was among 14 countries researched by UPC, the parent company of Chorus. It found that fewer than one in five Irish people think that "everything is acceptable on TV".

Many of us try to stay at home to watch favourite programmes such as EastEnders or Desperate Housewives. Nearly twice as many Irish as Dutch make the effort. But when the Dutch do watch something, they are twice as likely as the Irish to discuss it with their partner. Maybe that is why most Irish homes have more than two TV sets.

The survey involved 6,000 Europeans, with 480 Irish respondents being polled via the internet from London. Where we did differ most significantly from other countries was in respect of the main reason given for watching TV.

Only in Ireland did a majority say that the main reason we watch is to be entertained. In every other country surveyed, people said that they watched telly mainly to beinformed.

It was the viewing habits of those Irish aged between 16 and 29 that swung that result in Ireland.

Most Irish over 29 still claim to see television mainly as a source of information. But perhaps younger viewers are just more honest. Annual viewing figures confirm that the majority of the most popular TV programmes in Ireland are pure entertainment,including You're a Star,Killinaskully and Coronation Street.

But shows such as Prime Time and The Late Late Show also continue to attract many viewers, with three quarters of us claiming to be interested in programmes about national politics.

Station controllers may be sceptical about the high number of European viewers who also purport to be interested in programmes about European politics (68 per centin Ireland).

While two out of every three Irish people claim to be interested in TV programmes about religion, just about one in 10 say that they actually like to watch them. Two out of every three Irish people believe that politics programmes influence our voting behaviour, and that religious programmes help us to understand one another.

There is a challenge here for RTE and the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland. They must respond to public interest with programmes about politics and religion that are both relevant and engaging.

The survey confirms that we are spending a lot of our lives glued to the telly, although not as much as we thought if its findings are correct. Researchers were told that three in five Irish people spend more than two hours in front of their televisions almost every day.

In fact, the real viewing figures in Ireland may be even higher. Perhaps we are just too embarrassed to tell the truth.

Another survey of viewing habits, conducted daily for Irish broadcasters and advertisers by AC Nielsen, reveals that each Irish person is (on average) watching around three hours per day.

In theory, it is possible that the two out of every five who admit to watching more than two hours daily are really watching such vast amounts that they are pulling the average up to three hours. But, in fact, it seems more likely that many of us are coy about admitting even to ourselves how much time we really spend slouched on the couch.

The more conservative figure for daily TV viewing given by Chorus/UPC may be partly due also to the fact that researchers used the internet for their survey, selecting their respondents from a database of people who had expressed themselves willing to participate in online polls.

Only a minority of Irish homes have access to the internet at home, but those who do may be substituting time in front of their computer for time in front of the telly.

The fact that the survey was conducted online, among a body of Irish web volunteers largely interested in new technology, could also help to explain one bizarre result. This result suggests that more Irish people believe the internet to be the most credible source of information when compared to newspapers or radio.

Given our high readership of broadsheet newspapers, the success of radio talk shows here and the relatively low penetration of broadband nationally, it is a result that beggars belief and requires further research.

One of the few areas where researchers found no difference between older and younger viewers was in respect of television news.

Across Europe, seven out of 10 people believe that TV news usually or mostly tells the truth. Across all age groups, when it comes to credibility, two out of every five Europeans favour news on "public television" over that on commercial stations such as TV3 or Sky.

In Ireland, that figure rises from the European average of 41 per cent, up a full 11 points to 52 per cent, despite the fact that news is one of the few areas of local production in which TV3 has invested at all seriously.

Colum Kenny is Associate Professor of Communications at Dublin City University