What with 2FM subtly "rebranding" itself as a commodity for teenagers, Radio 1 is, in theory, preparing to rush into the breach, making itself the station of choice for youngish adults and trimming its own demographic middle-aged spread in the process.
Weekday listeners will have struggled to hear the theory translated into practice: from Marian Finucane through to Ronan Collins and Myles Dungan, the air of familiarity is, if not stale, at least a little static.
The breeze blows at the weekend. That's where the schedule has changed most dramatically over the last couple of years, and where the atmosphere has become distinctly under-45, if not exactly youthful.
The flagship with this breeze behind it is Morning Glory (RTE Radio 1, Saturday), which has gone so far as to have a child as its presenter. (Okay, Ryan Tubridy is twentysomething, but he's held on to his boyish good sounds.)
Its free-spirited would-be iconoclasm wears a bit on this prematurely middle-aged thirtysomething. At the moment, for Lent, the programme's old-movie "expert", Joyce Ward, is turning her attention to religious movies. Last week she blasphemed against my own religious sensibility by insulting Martin Scorsese.
The Last Temptation of Christ, she said, "made me turn to prayer - I was praying for it to end". The low-brow gimme-a-break critique continued with a sneer at the casting of Harvey Keitel as Judas. "He's a great actor, but don't put him in robes. Put him in Levi's and have him slapping around someone in the Bronx for late payment." Which is not a bad line, just so long as you don't pause to recall that hardly any Keitel role conforms to that description. (I wonder what Ward makes of him in a red dress and one welly in Holy Smoke.)
She also didn't dig his red beard. "He was a cross between Chris Evans and - I don't know, somebody beardy. I'm not thinking very clearly this morning." As for the other apostles, "get it together lads, somebody organise dry cleaning." No, I've no sense of humour. Not when somebody is saying, in all seriousness, and as a criticism, that Scorsese is no George Lucas or Steven Spielberg. Maybe they should sign Ward up to host The Arts Show. Tubridy afforded much more respect to a guy who's written a book about an old sitcom, The Good Life. Similarly respectful was his "where is he now?" interview with Paul King of the 1980s group, King. Paul gave extremely good soundbite:
"We were like glam bootboys for the Eighties - hippie skinheads meet glam rock." He was also gloriously bitter about record companies. "I didn't like the people who work in the labels, they're pretty horrible people. I know it's a cliche to say it, but they are . . . . I care passionately about the music," he said, not "product". Which is why King now works as a video-jockey on VH1. "The television-communications industry is such an exciting area . . ." Nostalgia for the relatively recent past continued on Comedy Stored (RTE Radio 1, Saturday), the latest in a long and distinguished line of Brendan Balfe trawls through the archives, focusing on Three of a Kind. Throw in the gang on Season Ticket (RTE Radio 1, Saturday) enthusing about Stevie Wonder's new box-set, and you've a thirty-to-fortysomething vibe rising from the radio like a whiff of Jacob's Creek.
After Wales and rain had made April Fools of the arrogant forecasters, it was especially bizarre to hear Philip King broadcasting his show, South Wind Blows (RTE Radio 1, Saturday), from the tip of the Dingle peninsula, with his shades on, he told us, and the sun streaming in the window. (I'd say that description will have made him popular in the bunkers at RTE's radio centre in Dublin, where decentralisation must suddenly have sounded very good indeed.) Anyway, King in Kerry could play The Beach Boys without a hint of irony, along with plenty of other lovely tunes. It can't be long before Elvis Costello is hosting a Radio 1 programme, his songs are now such a constant of evening music shows. Carrie Crowley's new series of intimate interviews, Snapshots (RTE Radio 1, Sun- day), is also typical of the sensibility, even when its subjects are older public figures, such as Mary Banotti last Sunday, or Paul Durcan tomorrow.
Crowley is a good interviewer, clearly smart but a little prone to wander. She's made the most of this banishment to the weekend, crafting (with producer Liz Sweeney) a warmer, more atmospheric alternative to The VIP Suite. It's also occasionally daring, by the standards of Sunday morning's old religious-service slot: that was definitely the unbleeped f-word in one of Mary Banotti's favourite songs. Banotti's life story is extraordinary, but only unfolded in fragments here. At one stage Crowley put it to her that her interest as an MEP and activist in cases of child-custody battles and abductions was related to her own experience. "A bit," Banotti replied, then moved the conversation on. Crowley could not, of course, simply allow "a bit" to slide by, and made it clear that she'd heard it, suggesting that perhaps Banotti was uncomfortable with the subject. Banotti replied with politeness, genuineness and finality that it was not her discomfort but the privacy of other involved parties that was the issue.
April Fool's Day ain't what it was. Soundbyte (RTE Radio 1, Saturday) gave it a shot with the old reliable Eurovision hoax, but efforts elsewhere were thin.
Still, the RTE newsroom had a good 'un, to be sure: all morning last Saturday it ran on its Radio 1 bulletins an item happily marking the arrival of the minimum wage. In typical semi-State editorial style, it said the rate was £4.40 per hour - "but it is recommended to rise to £5 an hour by October 2002". Well, now, isn't that just great, why that's more than a 12 per cent rise after only two-and-a-half years - it's no wonder that "but" is in there, lest anyone imagine the £4.40 rate is just a little mean. What's that you say? Inflation at five per cent? Lord, you'd think that level of begrudgery would be done away with by now. Obviously you haven't been listening to that IBM ad. "The marketplace has served our economic needs for thousands of years," we're told, to the accompaniment of vaguely souk-like sound effects. I'll bet the Mesopotamians didn't need a minimum wage.
Harry Browne can be contacted at hbrowne@irish-times.ie