When the hot topic on Marian Finucane (RTE Radio 1, Mon- day to Friday), sparked by a saucy Christmas board game, is outrage based on the bizarre premise that Friends is a wholesome show for all the family rather than a string of barelycoy jokes about genitalia, orgasms and assorted sexual partnerships, it's definitely time for some music.
But what music? In theory, choice is bursting out all over - that was the theme of RTE's explanation this week for dropping classical-music programmes in the light of Lyric FM's success. In practice, on Monday night I dropped off to sleep with Rhythm of the Night (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday) playing Doris Day (Perhaps), then woke on Tuesday morning with Risin' Time (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday) playing . . . yep, Doris Day (Que Sera Sera).
Perhaps, you say, I should know better than to listen to Radio 1 if I don't want a mix of MOR, insipid Nashville and the odd singer-songwriter-type. Well, it's a tough job . . . Also, I suppose I should be assessing the rearranged presenters on various shows, with Maxi now in the morning and John Creedon at noon. I like them both as presenters, really I do.
But can a presenter with personality carry the musical pap? As Samuel L. Jackson says in Pulp Fiction: "We'd have to be talkin' 'bout one mother******* charmin' pig."
Arguably the music of the moment - not necessarily being made now, but being played in clubs, being cited as influential and selling ever-faster - is jazz. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Miles Davis was mentioned in The Irish Times more often in 1999 than he was right through the 1950s.
My current favourite music show, The Third Wave (Lyric FM, Saturday and Sunday), has Carl Corcoran slipping in a few jazz tracks amidst the very tasty classic and contemporary compositions. And yet jazz and other black music remain conspicuous by their absence from the legitimate airwaves (though John Kelly does his best, and a new series on Radio 1, A Century of Blues (Sunday) with PJ Curtis, is promising). In Dublin, it's a pirate station, Jazz FM (89.8), that most often provides the most vital-feeling music radio, playing not simply jazz - though the jazz quotient seems to have risen in recent months - but soul, funk, ambient, R&B, Latin, hip-hop, world music, etc.
However, personality does count. Jazz FM often dies a death by Random Selecta, the machine that spins the disks when there isn't a DJ to be had. Even the amateur - and often amateurish - pirate DJs provide a crucial human link, and also crucial information when it comes to music that is bound to be a voyage of discovery for many listeners (me, for example).
The station really comes to life on weekends, in what's usually regarded in commercial terms as radio's quiet times. That's when, obviously, the DJs can devote their time: even the French-accented guy presenting last Sunday's "Black Note, in zee 'ouse" was great, though not entirely reliable to identify artists and tracks. How can you resist his requests? "Zees one is dedicated to Aggie, 'oo I 'ope is listening - if you don't, I keel you."
Meanwhile, in Britain the trend toward niche-radio continues apace. Talk Radio is a medium-wave station that, a couple of years ago, could boast respectable-enough listening figures and some programmes that were considerably more intelligent than anything on its main competitor, BBC Radio 5 Live. Since former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie took over Talk 14 months ago, it has dumbed down - and flopped big-time with audiences.
The solution? Talk Radio is about to be reborn as talkSPORT 1089/1053 (we'll grant them their typographic idiosyncracies for the moment), the first all-sport station in these isles. That means the station's already-increasing emphasis on the millennial holy trinity of "football, football and football" (it has covered some cricket too) will become its raison d'etre. Why should we care here? It's no big deal if you don't like sports or haven't got hooked on James Whale late at night. But if you've got used to listening to Test Match Special on BBC Radio 4, medium or long-wave, or if - better yet - you like tuning into 5 Live's superb soccer coverage on cable, the crowd noise pumping through your hi-fi, you may anticipate a jolt to your comfortable ways: talkSport will be chasing hard for the exclusive rights to everything.
Whatever about TV rights, it's absolutely absurd that the organisations which organise sporting events can charge fees for a person to act as commentator into a mobile phone for live transmission. (Where are the trust-busters on this one?) But so they do - I gather 5 Live paid the FAI more then £10,000 for the last Lansdowne Road match. (The BBC obviously used more than mobiles, but the principle is the same.) Already, vital Champion's League games - if that's not an oxymoron this season - have disappeared from 5 Live as Talk Radio snatched the rights away. What price the Premiership when 5 Live's deal expires next year?
Talk Radio sends a reasonably strong signal into the eastern part of the State. But, having been Britain's lowest-rated national station, it's not available on Cablelink or other cable systems here, so far. Once it starts sewing up the rights to important sports events - especially ones that are only televised on pay-TV services - there's bound to be consumer demand for that to change.
And, no doubt, there will be resistance from Irish broadcasters (including Dublin's forthcoming News Talk, which plans to go big on sport) to a station that would pose a challenge in the battle for that all-important young-male demographic.
ON the subject of 5 Live and all that, last week's column, which surveyed various into-the-millennium programmes, overlooked one of the richest, most sickening ironies of New Year's Eve. (That sort of omission can happen when washing your hands means wiping away the contents of your personal organiser.)
As midnight approached, nervous excitement swept, ever so briefly, through the studio at 5 Live, home of audio-only fireworks from around the globe. There was strange missile activity detected over Russia, apparently. Had we had at long last got our Y2K-bug story, and the fireworks display to end all fireworks displays to boot?
No, not to worry, it was only a few Scud missiles heading for Grozny, we were soon assured. It was nothing, after all, to spoil the party.
Unless you happened to be a Chechen, no one at all bothered to say.