The flak is unjustified. As a debt-collection exercise, involving the movable feast that is fat legal fees, the station did well. Most of the flak has been powered by whinges about the licence fee. If Flynn can pay half her debt, why can't the rest of us pay half the licence fee? In modern, consuming Ireland, we are acutely aware of the price of everything.

Unfortunately, a sense of the value of some things is beyond us . . . or at least, appears to be beyond RTE.

On Thursday, it was announced that RTE Radio's Tonight with Vincent Browne show was at an end. Dying with it is a piece of precisely what publicservice broadcasting is supposed to be about.

At this stage, the requisite declaration of interest is presented. For a few years, I was a regular guest on the show, providing commentary to reenactments from the planning tribunal, which I was covering at the time. In latter years, as I drifted from the tribunal, such appearances were less frequent. I hardly know Browne. We have barely exchanged more than a few sentences outside the radio centre in Donnybrook.

My interest in his show, as expressed here, is purely as a listener.

From the point of view of public-service broadcasting, the show was a template. It went out at an hour long past the most commercially viable time for advertisers. The presenter had form, having been one of the most outstanding journalists in the country over the last 40 years.

The hour of broadcast allowed him to drag the show from the main agenda to wherever his nose told him it should go. He introduced . . . on the suggestion of judge Brian McCracken . . . the concept of re-enactments for the tribunals, a saga that was excellently served by Joe Taylor and Malcolm Douglas.

And if the rest of the country drifted from tribunals over latter years, then Browne hung in there, on the basis of public interest, rather than the interest of the public. But that didn't stop him in recent months turning bitterly on the inquiries when he considered that they had acted unfairly, if not illegally, towards those who came before them.

Beyond the maelstrom of current affairs, the programme was no less engaging.

When he introduced sport or music to the agenda, it was with the infectious enthusiasm of a fan, rather than the detached expertise affected by some of his contemporaries.

Of course the whole exercise was informed by his personality . . .

and here he was in a class of his own. He could be bullying, scary, fulminating, outraged, mischievous, humorous, didactic and empathic . . . all before the first ad break. This miasma of positions would usually reach a conclusion with that sigh, the most withering sigh known to the airwaves. He was also served by a string of producers who laboured under the burden of hauling their emotions from tears of frustration to helpless laughter at the wonder of it all.

Now the show is gone. The tragedy of its demise is not a personal one for Browne. He won't be short of work. But the national broadcaster is down one of the few remaining radical voices on the airwaves.

Just like John Kelly's Mystery Train, Tonight with Vincent Browne is surplus to requirements because there is precious little room anymore for dissonant voices. Everybody must fit into the nice, neat boxes that are designed for the consumer society.

Kelly gave a platform to eclectic music tastes on a mainstream station. Browne hauled minorities from dark corners, people like Travellers, immigrants, the mentally ill, and, through the force of his personality, made listeners take notice of some of the issues that remain unresolved in society.

In today's shrill environment, that instinct is denigrated under the tagline 'politically correct'. Advertisers and consumers don't need the hassle. They just want to be comforted.

Yes, we do know the price of everything today. The pity is, we appear to know less and less about the value of anything anymore.