Why Sky has its limits

While he's not on the same level of bewildering as one of those mysteriously popular quiz-show hosts, Chris Evans nonetheless falls into the category of British celebrities whose fame doesn't quite translate to Ireland.

Some viewers have got a sense of his outrageous persona from television outings such as TFI Friday, but the real basis of his notoriety is the deeply national medium of radio, where our big JNLR book doesn't even record the audience of British stations.

Undoubtedly when he was a BBC DJ Evans had some listeners here. For the last year, however, he's been found on Virgin Radio, and I haven't a clue how to listen to that without desperate resort to the World Wide Web.

Now, however, BSkyB, the people who bring you round-the-clock satellite news, hundreds of channels of digital TV and a future full of pay-per-view soccer, bring you an exciting new venture: stick a few cameras in a studio and telecast a radio programme.

Perhaps the Chris Evans Break- fast Show (Virgin Radio and Sky One) for the media menage a trois of Evans, Murdoch and Branson; it comes complete with news and sport supplied by Sky.

It certainly doesn't make radio look particularly interesting. Like the mostly dismal experiments in radio as TV conducted in the US by Howard Stern (again an Evans model), it risks sapping the essence out of both media.

It tries, with split screens and the like, but the idea is that we're watching Real Radio. When Chris plays a record we get to (have to) watch the music video, with occasional glimpses of what Chris and the gang are doing in the studio. (Gas altogether to see Chris throwing rubbish at his "mates" while the newsreader tells us about a Philippine death sentence.) The casual clothes, the headphones, the scripts, pencils, cups of coffee and general disarray are fun to see in a school-trip-to-Montrose sort of way, but they get old quick.

It pains me to say it, but Evans's now-familiar team-based breakfast format, such a success on radio, is too trivial for television. (Did you ever think you'd read that phrase?) It's not exactly offensive - though the casting of the on-air woman, Holly, as audience sex object (augmented by the female newsreader) is distasteful as well as boring, and this tendency looks like being encouraged by television ('coz to be honest, they're both very cute).

Once an alleged bad boy, Evans is now tame and familiar. Watch him avoid pulling faces so as not to give offence to a singing caller, and you're plumbing new depths of pointlessness. But wait, as the music plays here's a split screen with a birthday photo-montage of John Lennon on one side and Chris flipping through the Tele- graph on the other. I take it all back.

Evans is not entirely unknown in Irish radio circles. His Ginger Productions were brought on board last year to help transform Radio Ireland from RTE wannabe to the pop anonymity of Today FM.

Famously, a successful pocket of resistance to that project was the man who at the station's launch looked like the best candidate for the title of Ireland's shock jock, Eamon Dunphy. The surprisingly mellow current-affairs interviewer and his team on The Last Word convinced station management that the drivetime slot didn't need Ginger spicing. The rest is irony: the programme has left the rest of the schedule in its ratings dust.

Anyway, while Evans was starting his TV schtick, last week saw Dunphy brimming with the sort of anger and aggression that we used to think were his trademarks. He was like a dog with a bone for the latest instalments of his programme's tireless pursuit of the BTSB hepatitis-C scandal.

The story this time concerns a Chicago woman allegedly given contaminated anti-D in Castlebar four years ago. Dunphy and Co are determined to end her bureaucratic run-around, and have pushed out the limits of their investigative resources - employing handwriting experts and the like - to sort out the story. It has made dangerous, rivetting radio, not least for Dunphy's on-off relationship with health minister Brian Cowen.

On this story, The Last Word's practice of using the best available journalists - Robert Fisk from the Middle East, Frank Connolly on the planning scandals etc - has paid particular dividends. On the blood-bank story, the remarkable Fergal Bowers from the Irish Medical News has informed and focused the programme's coverage - and presumably helped ensure the team that the thin-looking ice they're treading on is thoroughly solid.