chrismoyles.net
- Sat Feb 05, 2011 8:18 pm
#427409
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicbl ... -jo-whiley
Remember when Jo Whiley was one of the coolest presenters on BBC Radio 1? It has been a while. When she and Steve Lamacq hosted the Evening Session – the station's gateway between its daytime programming and the weirder terrain inhabited by John Peel – their geeky passion for music made the show one of the most influential in pop radio.
But in 1997 she was "promoted" to her own daytime (and then weekend) programme, where she was forced to stick to the playlist. Though it was clear her heart wasn't in a continual diet of Rihanna and Kate Nash, she metamorphosed into acquiescent blandness. This week, it was announced that she's moving to Radio 2, and with her goes Radio 1's last link to that purple patch in the mid-90s that followed then-controller Matthew Bannister's purge of old-time showboaters such as Simon Bates and Dave Lee Travis. Enthusiasts such as Whiley, Lamacq and Mark Radcliffe were recruited to give the station something approaching credibility, and it worked pretty well for a few years.
But it's time for another purge. Radio 1's daytime lineup has become as rotten and entrenched as Bates and DLT ever were, and Whiley's departure ought by rights to prompt a wholesale clear-out. For a station that prides itself on the slogan In New Music We Trust, it's remarkably old-fashioned in its choice of frontline presenters: the hours bookended by Chris Moyles's breakfast show and Scott Mills's drivetime slot are colonised by DJs who wouldn't have been out of place in the era of Smashie and Nicey.
Moyles, it goes without saying, should be the first out the door. He and his team – "Comedy" Dave, Dominic Byrne and co – have established a fiefdom in which music is rarely played and big lumps of time are consumed by solipsistic anecdotage about what he did the night before. He receives more than £600,000 a year for this – a fact that entered the public domain last year when he ranted for 25 minutes on-air about not having been paid for two months.
Fearne Cotton, who occupies the 10am-1pm slot, is – sorry about this – a dolly bird who's been promoted way beyond her abilities. There was amazement when she was allowed to take over Whiley's weekday show in 2009, and it was well founded: her relentlessly upbeat style, laced with yaps of "brilliant!" and "fantastic!", will stand her in good stead for a future of Davina McCall-type TV crappery, but as a music presenter she's terrible.
Ditto Edith Bowman, who works weekend mornings. Though you feel she's probably less silly than she's forced to be – much of her show comprises squealing with dim-bulb sympathy when listeners phone in to reveal they are stuck in a tailback on the M40 – her on-air personality does her no favours. There's also the queasy business of her being in a relationship with Editors frontman Tom Smith, whose records she's been known to play – surely a conflict of interest.
All you can say about newish boy Greg James, 1pm–4pm, is that he's an innocuous radio salaryman who seems to have got a berth at Radio 1 because of his skill at being inconspicuous. His show leads into Scott Mills's long-running 4pm–7pm programme, and ... actually, Mills can stay. He's no less a careerist than any of the others, and his daily stint revolves around stunts like prank phone calls, but you get the sense he knows how ridiculous the whole thing is, and he knows we know. At least someone on Radio 1 is awake.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicbl ... -jo-whiley
