Cosmetic changes for Radio 1 when it really needed a facelift

So, once again, the music has stopped and the frantic scramble for seats is complete. As Gay Byrne retires from RTE Radio 1's occasional game of musical chairs, is it possible that the latest reshuffle is actually an opportunity lost?

On the face of it, the post-Christmas changes amount to the schedule's biggest upheaval in a decade or more. But scan the names and faces, and examine the breakdown of programmes a bit more closely, and its essential familiarity, its conservatism, becomes more apparent.

If this conservatism were born of complacency on the part of the director of radio, Ms Helen Shaw, and the Radio 1 editor, Ms Ann Marie O'Callaghan, that would be more than understandable. Unlike television, where the rapid proliferation of choices is in our faces, the radio environment has stagnated; the competition from local stations is reasonably strong but stable, and Today FM has abandoned efforts to attract Radio 1 listeners, apart from evening drive-time.

So Radio 1's market share has been scarcely dented in the 20 months of the latest incarnation of national commercial radio. Ms Shaw has her own strong, BBC-flavoured views about what makes good radio - check out the proposed story slot in Carrie Crowley's new programme, a straight lift from Radio 4's Woman's Hour, as well as a useful sop to the drama department now that Konvenience Korner is being axed. She must be aware of the dangers of resting easy with an audience who can mostly share their vivid memories of Eamon de Valera.

And we also know, because she has said so, that she saw the departure of Gay Byrne as an opportunity to introduce "shorter, more focused programmes" to the timetable. That ambition, though partly - and bizarrely - realised with the under-an-hour programmes proposed for Finucane and Crowley, has been dealt a severe blow by "Pat power". E would have wanted and expected, Pat Kenny will have a longer programme, by 10 minutes, than his present one, stretching across the old morning thresholds the way Gerry Ryan does at 2FM. And Pat Kenny is no Gerry Ryan. While the man widely regarded as RTE's most natural broadcaster is stuck at 2FM - for fear the station's morning audience would collapse if he were moved - Radio 1 continues to build the heart of its schedule on a "personality" who appears to inspire little warmth among most listeners.

The authoritative Kenny has many positive qualities, and Today with Pat Kenny is required listening for its current affairs content. However, his shortcomings as an interviewer and "host" may be thrown into sharper contrast when he follows Marian Finucane in the new schedule; 10 a.m. could become known as The Big Chill. Des Cahill's warmer presence might be essential.

Largely because of the girth of Kenny's show, the new Finucane programme is one of the mysteries of the new schedule. The beloved "Marian" has sustained Radio 1's afternoon schedule with extraordinary ratings for many years; it makes sense to move her to the morning prime time, but not with such a truncated programme.

Unlike the more sedentary Liveline hour, 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. - I'd argue - tends to be "lost time" in many people's lives: arriving at work, completing the school run, doing some shopping, launching the day's activities. It's an hour that's nearly over before it has started - which could be the listener's impression of Finucane's new programme. If there is another radio station in these islands that starts a programme after 9 a.m. and finishes it at 10 a.m., I don't know about it. Particularly if 9 a.m. continues to have a seven-minute news bulletin - and it should - then Marian's airtime amounts to little more than a "quickie". It seems an extraordinary waste of such an asset.

It seems very unlikely that this division of Finucane and Kenny's programmes is how Ms Shaw would have preferred the schedule to pan out. Her first opportunity to revamp Radio 1 has apparently introduced her as well to "circumstances beyond her control".

Otherwise, how do RTE's claims of "a new sound and look" to the station stand up to scrutiny? Well, as she has been doing for a couple of years now, Carrie Crowley carries the flag inscribed "RTE's nurturing of new talent".

Having run with it from pillar to post on radio and TV, it was inevitable that Crowley would eventually plant it in the weekday schedule. A 50-minute "music-driven magazine", with a drama slot in the middle, is the sort of safe, somewhat equivocal vote of confidence you'd expect from the Montrose bureaucracy.

Joe Duffy has already had a long run at Liveline, and will likely help make it an edgier programme. While he has limitations, Duffy has also grown into a funny, attractive broadcaster, virtually the only one of this gang who merits the label "personality". Emer Woodfull is scarcely a new voice, and has a hard act to follow in filling Duffy's roving role on Five Seven Live - but her experience and her intelligence certainly merit this sort of regular forum.

A CALLER to Today FM's Last Word this week had read about Vincent Browne's late-night Bible programme in the Evening Herald and wondered if the story had been planted by Navan Man, who regularly parodies "Mad Dog" Vincenzo Browne. But regular readers of his Irish Times columns and of his clerical correspondents in the letters page are doubtless aware that Browne will be straining at the leash to sink his teeth into this sort of material.

Like Tonight with Vincent Browne, and the new music programme hosted by Today FM import John Kelly, this millennium-inspired Bible show has nothing to do with big ratings; but it's a reassuring and welcome reminder that Radio 1 has a serious public service, minority interest remit that comes to life after dark.

The audience's reaction to the conservative and lopsided changes in the morning schedule will be intriguing. In Britain, more radical alterations to the Radio 4 schedule have alienated what was previously the most loyal listenership anywhere; meanwhile, Kelvin MacKenzie, with Rupert Murdoch behind him, prepares to take Talk Radio into the tabloid realms that a British radio station has never dreamed of. All of them are preparing for the digital revolution to hit radio, which will bring many more stations and the possibility of interactive text services on your pocket tranny. The small, incestuous world of RTE Radio 1 begins to look kind of quaint . . .