The Stage

Dick Hill

Published Monday 25 January 2010 at 16:15 by Anthony Garvey

Dick Hill was a former TV programme director at RTE, the Irish national broadcaster, and also a former general manager of Cork Opera House.

Born in August 1938, he died on January 1 and had joined RTE in the sixties as a researcher, trained as a current affairs producer and later became head of features. As his rise through the organisation continued, he was tipped as a future director-general and was one of four candidates shortlisted for the job in 1985, but lost out.

Instead he became the first programme controller at the station’s second channel, RTE 2, and spelled out his vision of what he felt its role should be. “I see our obligation as being to inform, entertain and enlighten,” he said at the time, “but we must do this with increasing humility, since the people who are paying the piper must call the tune.”

During his term, the station imported programmes such as Tomorrow’s World, Pennies from Heaven and, in response to popular demand, Coronation Street, which has since been lost to TV3. After a spell as TV programme director, he left following a management shake-up and became general manager of Cork Opera House.

In difficult economic circumstances, he struggled to keep the Opera House open, bringing a number of successful Abbey Theatre productions to Cork. But, in 1989, he was forced to close the venue for six weeks and shortly afterwards he resigned to join CoCo Productions, a corporate television company based in Cork.

He opted out when the CoCo moved to Dublin, but remained involved in broadcasting through a locally based TV production company, Peripheral Vision, and also through commercial radio.

Hill died aged 71, at his home in Cobh, County Cork. He is survived by his partner Jan Reid and by his family, Sue, Richard, Ronan, Catherine and Mary.