Only room for one Ryan at 2FM

Come summer, Ryan Tubridy will return to his spiritual home. No, not centrestage at the Rose of Tralee festival, but the national broadcaster's senior station and a chair in front of a microphone in RTÉ Radio 1.

Tubridy will soon pack away his Full Irish garb, say goodbye to 2FM and head across the corridor. There may be a party, there may be cake and there may be tears, but there is no doubt that Tubridy is making the right move.

While 2FM has been good for Tubridy, he knows that this strange pop station is no place for a young man in a hurry, especially when the management has more interest in keeping Gareth O'Callaghan and Gerry Ryan on-air rather than promoting fresh talent.

Further evidence of this policy came in comments made by 2FM boss John Clarke in the Sunday Business Post. "He's a huge name, but he's gone," said Clarke of Tubridy. "For all the PR he's had, he never generated the 400,000 listeners we get with Gerry Ryan - he never actually ate into Morning Ireland's share. It was never going to be for the long haul and for him, this was a golden opportunity."

The breakfast show, Clarke concluded, "can never deliver more than a quarter of a million. The lion's share will always go to Radio 1, so all you can do is make sure there are no blips and that there is an audience there for Gerry Ryan to further enhance."

Not only was a career as Gerry Ryan's warm-up guy of little appeal to Tubridy, but there's also the baffling notion that the 2FM breakfast show was going to take listeners from Morning Ireland. Would you swap your breakfast briefing with Cathal Mac Coille or Aine Lawlor for the cornflake banter of a Tubridy? Thought not. At least new breakfast jocks Ruth Scott and Rick O'Shea know what's expected when they see Gerry striding their way.

In every audience sector in every region, 2FM is facing a dog- fight because the station refuses to adapt to changes in the radio landscape. In the 15-25-year-old Dublin market, Spin is making more and more ground. Its secret weapon is Liam Thompson, a bright chap who worked with Clarke at 2FM before taking the helm at Spin when it became apparent that no one would take any chances or make changes in Montrose.

Around the country, regional kingpins like Beat and Red are taking on 2FM and will continue to win increased audience share.

Clarke can certainly counter these arguments by pointing to Gerry Ryan's 400,000 listeners, or the station's new coterie of DJs, but such shadow-boxing is not enough. While the Ryan show has a huge audience, it's out of place on a so-called pop station. Yet, because of its importance to 2FM's advertising revenue and profile, Ryan will continue to shite-talk freely for three hours in the daily schedules.

Really, it's the station's new DJs who should be given a shot during daytime hours instead of being consigned to night shifts. But, for all the wholesome lip service paid by Clarke to the talents of Nikki Hayes and Jenny Houston, they're not allowed anywhere near a microphone during daylight hours, when the audience is really there.

Even Clarke must recognise that the time for change in the 2FM house is long overdue. He's certainly comfortable enough calling for change at Radio 1, saying that "there appears to be a reluctance to move on the top talent" and "there needs to be a plan for some kind of succession". Three words come quickly and cynically to mind: pot, kettle, black.

The arrival of Tubridy will certainly shake things up at Radio 1, but his departure should, by rights, serve as a warning to 2FM that change is inevitable. As Clarke said in that interview, "the days of people like the Chris Tarrants and Ian Dempseys doing decades on the same shift are gone".

Maybe after he's had his coffee and toast this morning, he'll have a close look at his own schedule and apply that same logic to his bailiwick before 2FM turns into Radio One-and-A-Half.

[ jimcarroll@irish-times.ie ]