"I wanna drop the atom bomb...on Radio 1"

[Neil]

Radio 1 makes my fucking blood boil.  I mean, it just does in general, but especially so when I think about their attitude to comedy these days.  I've been relistening to the Iannucci R1 shows over the last couple of days and thinking about how it's such a shame there's no real outlet for this kind of thing on British national radio anymore.  Resonance seems to have some decent stuff, but is net-only for me which is a pain in the arse.  The excising of  pretty much all comedy from the Radio 1 schedules has had a knock-on effect on British comedy in general, I feel.  Just look at some of the shows that have been on their in the past and then think about what we've missed out on over the last load of years:

Chris Morris Music Shows, Victor Lewis-Smith, The League Against Tedium, Iannucci R1 Shows, The Mary Whitehouse Experience, Hey Rrradio!!!, Alans Big 1FM, Shuttleworths Showtime etc...

BBC7 may be filling a gap but what are the kids meant to do for comedy these days?  Is it any wonder they like shit like Bo Selecta.

[TJ]

To divert away from comedy slightly for a second (although not entirely, as most of the following featured a staggering amount of comedy or at least borderline comedy), Radio 1 has also dropped a number of worthwhile slots that were previously a given in its schedules. Where are the magazine shows (Studio B15, Walters' Weekly, Backchat, Soundbite etc), the documentaries, the In Concerts, the Saturday Lives, the Anne Nightingale-style request shows, the Roubtables/Singled Outs, the esoteric stuff like The Antiques Record Roadshow and Out On Blue Six, and plenty more that I could mention? There's no real equivalent to them on national radio, which is a genuine shame.

To be totally honest, I find myself really missing the likes of Simon Bates, Mike Read and Adrian Juste, who at least had a bit of character and despite the image that Smashie and Nicey have given them appeared to have real enthusiasm for the music they played (I've left Steve Wright off the list as he never quite fit the latter category in my opinion). Mind you, there's not even any equivalent to the 'new wave' (Goodier, Mayo, Radcliffe etc) who gradually started to take over from the late 1980s onwards (another myth there - 'Bannisterisation' was not the overnight process that the history books like to claim). I recently interviewed a load of former Radio 1 presenters for something that I'm working on, and at the end of the interview I asked them all what they thought of the station at present. Hardly any of them had a good word to say, and Stewart Lee perhaps put it most effectively when he simply said "I think Radio 1 is fucked all round"...

[benthalo]

There's no real equivalent to them on national radio, which is a genuine shame.

6Music plugs a lot of those gaps, including a revived Roundtable of course, although that remark in itself opens up the whole thorny issue of digital broadcasting. Freeview boxes and DABs might be selling in spades, but at what point should it become acceptable for anything remotely demanding to be shuffled over to BBC Four, or for the leftfield music of the last fifty years to be commodified on a digital network station like 6Music?

What about those box bedroom kids in Ferryhill or Runcorn stuck with none of this and unable to access the avant-garde, to discover things for themselves? There's the internet of course, but I grew up with an interest in a wide range of artists and art forms purely because a box in the corner of the room and a transistor gave me access to them. Man cannot survive by John Peel alone.

[smoker]

there's still some good stuff on radio 1. i avoid the daytime stuff like the plague, but if you can get over mary ann hobbs' constant erring and umming, she plays blinding good music, then you have the lock-up, plus stuff like the blue room, and i always enjoy pete tong's friday night show.

[benthalo]

Apart from Tong, they're hardly on at civil hours are they? The sort of shows we're bemoaning the loss of used to crop up between 9pm and midnight, and many more in daytime.

I actually think Radio 3 does a better job these days - Mixing It and Late Junction are both rewarding shows.

[lazyhour]

I've just gone all around Newbury looking for a copy of The Wire, and it was nowhere to be found.  Since I got back to the UK 6 weeks ago, I have never seen The Wire in Newbury.  A few years ago, when Radio 1 was good (Mark and Lard in the graveyard shift, Evening Session, film reviews, comedy, documentaries) I know you could buy The Wire in Newbury, because I sometimes did.

I'm not saying that the two are necessarily connected, but to continue the themes already touched upon in this thread:  How exactly does the normal young person growing up in a market town these days find out about music that isn't on Radio 1?

Yes, yes, "the Internet," but that demonstrably hasn't been shown to be true.  We need stuff on the radio and peeking out from behind Mojo in WHSmiths, not on obscure websites that you only go to if, and here's the snag, you already know about them.

Thank goodness that John Peel is still on R1.  I just can't see it lasting much longer.

[benthalo]

I remember buying my first issue of The Wire in 1997, with Can on the cover.* I've subscribed ever since. As great as Peel is, I do frequently sense a cut-off point with his show. Not unreasonably, as it's just one man's instinct, but that's precisely the argument for having more voices like his, more art shows on terrestrial TV etc. You need to look towards Mixing It or Resonance FM, or indeed The Wire with a CD plonked on the cover for things which surprise, although I probably have Peel to thank for taking that path in the first place. Failing that, you have to become Peel and go into specialist shops and spend reckless amounts of money on records you have no idea about. Which in the past I have done.

* Mind you, that was the first time I'd ever noticed a copy in Darlington, another of those towns of which we speak.

I don't want to hijack Neil's thread into something seemingly unrelated to comedy, but it does seem a significant issue to me.

[gazzyk1ns]

To me it seems like the BBC have given up on Radio 1 and are keeping it there just as the 24-hour "pop tunes" channel now. I don't think it's likely that anything apart from that is going to be on it in the forseeable future. At the weekend you'll get the dance/clubbing culture cash-ins but apart from that it seems as if the BBC are just keeping it as the sound-only alternative to all the music video channels which most 15-20 year olds seem to have on in the background 24/7.

Still that doesn't excuse the BBC for keeping all the stuff Neil mentioned off their other channels - and indeed - "how are 'the kids' going to get into anything new in the first place"? I can't see anyone below University age flicking the radio on and shunning 24 hour repeats of Outkast and Nelly for some '94 Iannucci greatness.

Simon Bates is on Classic FM now by the way. Classic FM also do their own version of "our song" on a Sunday afternoon, which always makes me giggle. Even if you're not a big fan of classical music I'd recommend listening to this station most of the time, I do like classical stuff but the main reason it's the only radio station I listen to these days (having not got DAB or a freeview box anywhere but the living room) is the lack of appalling "Larrrrgin' it, massive chooowwn!" DJs and 3-minute jingles/blurbs telling us that their station has "m-m-m-more music... than anyone else ALL the hits, back to back... the tunes YOU want to hear.." etc etc, it really does drive me insane, most radio stations are absolutely unlistenable for me these days.

But yes, back a bit more on-topic, I do agree with Neil, I think I can see why Radio one has no comedy on it any more but I still think it's bad. If you confine all new and classic stuff to what essentially are unfashionable, specialist channels then programmes are never going to become popular apart from with those who they are already popular with, or would have been anyway regardless of broadcast channel.

I hate it when the BBC pimp BBC3 by putting new stuff on there only but at least they've gone one better than their radio setup, the new things do get advertised on the main two channels and indeed they do get to one of them eventually. I don't think there's ever any good comedy on BBC1 any more though, at all, is there? The only thing I can think of is vintage eps of OFAH, but that's very much an exception, from where I'm standing they're only re-showing them as ratings grabbers because their rubbish new specials are/were so incredibly popular.

Sorry for the ramblimg, un-focused post but hopefully it makes a certian degree of sense.

[CK1]

Radio 1 has deliberatly focussed very tightly on the 15-25 audience in the last few years. It's become a smaller, narrower station than it was in the 80s and early 90s. Working there is no longer the ultimate aim for aspiring broadcasters - even the non-stop music brigade.

It's all about the cult of showbiz - Vernon Kaye, Colin and Edith etc. Programmers require an instant hit and need to find programmes that fit with the "overall station sound". So there's less chance for anything remotely different.

I enjoyed the comedy programmes of the 90s Neil refers to. But perhaps they benefitted from the transitional phase Radio 1 found itself in at the time. Bannister quite deliberatly made the network different. He wanted it to stand out a mile and move away from being a pop station. He put Emma Freud on at lunchtime remember!

Now it's settled down and found it's niche which it would argue it serves very well. If I was 18 years old, considering working abroad before going to uni, had several sexual partners and liked going clubbing I would be pretty well chuffed with it.  It still does do more than churn out music but it's more tied in with the target audience's lifestyle choices rather than taking risks on comedy shows.

And finally - the new radio networks, 6 Music and BBC7 have been funded with only a minimal increase in the licence fee. So perhaps Radio 1's budgets have been cut. Maybe that's how Wes got the chart show!

[benthalo]

To follow two specific points, I would say that the last thing Radio 1 would claim for themselves is that they're aligning themselves in some way with the 24/7 music video stations, although I take the point about the youth mentality that The Box and MTV have created in the past decade. The basic issue is that the BBC have to justify the station, and for Andy Parfitt to openly claim that it fits in with a lot of other stations would do them more harm than good. Peel and the buried late-nighters are the most convenient way of fulfilling their basic broadcasting remit - one step short of ditching any specialist programming on 6Music.

With regards to the Bannister era, yes it was a period of change, but the whole point was that it responded to the emergence of Virgin and other stations, both local and nationally, which had basically done the same job for a couple of years, hence the extreme gear shift. Other than the personality-led nature of Radio 1, I don't see much that it's doing different nowadays from Galaxy, XFM and a number of other stations.

In addition, whereas current R1 may well focus effectively on a specific age group, the truth of the Bannister era was that it was *phenomenally* popular with the target group it aimed at, with audience shares almost unheard of at the time. The broad ratings weren't great, but then, nor are they now. History tells us it was an utter disaster in the mid-90s, but that was far from the case.

[Ben Ordinary]

I was talking my friend on a Friday night around midnight last year and remember saying "God, If this was 15 years ago we could be listening to The Mary Whitehouse Experience right now, instead of this dance drivel". A comment my friend found particularly strange as I was only eight 15 years ago and wouldnt have been up at midnight on a Friday night anyway.

That, and TMWE started in 1989, not 88 obviously.

I wonder if Mr Radcliffe's arrival at Radio 2 towers will start a slow shift into more-comedy based programming for the station late night. We can but hope,

[hencole]

Chris Morris Music Shows, Victor Lewis-Smith, The League Against Tedium, Iannucci R1 Shows, The Mary Whitehouse Experience, Hey Rrradio!!!, Alans Big 1FM, Shuttleworths Showtime etc...

Were these really such influential programmes to people? I doubt most people I know would even have known about them, I certainly didn't.

[Neil]

Those are only a small handful that I could think of late last night, TJ could reel millions of them off.  The point is, there's nowhere for people who want to make that sort of comedy to go now.   Your friends haven't heard of the Mary Whitehouse Experience?  If not, I'm sure they are familiar with the TV transfer and then the subsequent "Newman and Baddiel In PIeces"   especially bearing in mind all the hype surrounding them and British comedy in general at that time.  If Chris Morris decided he wanted to do another run of Music Shows, where could he go?  Radio 4?  Wouldn't bloody think so.  Regardless if you or your mates were sat listening to Victor Lewis-Smith or not, at least you had the chance to do so.

[hencole]

True they have heard of all the TV incarnations and I see what your getting at, that without hese toes in the water they wouldn't get to be on TV.

[Neil]

True they have heard of all the TV incarnations and I see what your getting at, that without hese toes in the water they wouldn't get to be on TV.

That's certainly part of it, yes, however I'm also concerned with the type of radio show that didn't have one eye on a TV transfer, the sort of show that you have to fiddle with webstreams or get a digital radio to try and find now.

[danielreal2k]

I want to drop something on Tim Westwood,

Has anyone listened to this monkey?

caught a few mins on bbc radio1 just now....
He was having trouble with his diget midgets, and someone was being
disrespectful to his bitch.
he was sayin it was " ludicrious ya'll and all",  he sounded rather cross
this young fellow - his best friend apparently is scooby doo, if your best friend is a cartoon character you need to get some help, seriously.


i do hope he is ok.

[kenneth trousers]

I'm rather pleased Mark and Lard have decided to leave R1, it will free up another pre set on my car stereo.
It really is a radio station for retards.
News Beat!!!
"The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, will be travelling to PARIS today which is the capital city of a country called FRANCE."
If its not patronising you then its covering some 'news` item that would only be of interest to pre pubescent children. Now in my day we didn't have radios in classrooms (we had BBC model B computers) so I don`t know who they are aiming this shit at?

[Ben Ordinary]

I'm rather pleased Mark and Lard have decided to leave R1, it will free up another pre set on my car stereo.
It really is a radio station for retards.
News Beat!!!
"The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, will be travelling to PARIS today which is the capital city of a country called FRANCE."
If its not patronising you then its covering some 'news` item that would only be of interest to pre pubescent children. Now in my day we didn't have radios in classrooms (we had BBC model B computers) so I don`t know who they are aiming this shit at?

Personally it winds me up when they refer to McDonalds as "MaccyD's". Its like someone's sad old uncle trying to be down wid' da kidzzzzzzzzz.

[GoochDogHigh5s]

I cannot believe that anyone over 12 still listens to R1 anyway.

XFM is where you should be!

For the record Mark and Lard are 2 talentless idiots who should be chased into the sea

[Darrell]

I cannot believe that anyone over 12 still listens to R1 anyway.

XFM is where you should be!

"Wispas are fucking shit! No-one eats Wispas, they're fucking stupid. Aeros are brilliant!"

For the record Mark and Lard are 2 talentless idiots who should be chased into the sea

The evidence dictates otherwise.