Listening to the new schedule on RTE Radio 1 last week made me realise how glad I am not to have Helen Shaw's job.
No matter which way she slices it, morning radio is going to be judged through the lens of the past, and morning radio can never deliver what it delivered in the past. The market has fragmented. Disintegrated, even.
The radio in my car may be routinely tuned to RTE 1, but it was not matched by what I heard going into shops and offices and homes over the past week or so. The local radio station is the one to which sets are routinely tuned. If all politics is local, it seems at least half of broadcasting has become local. Many people younger than 25 do not know where to find RTE on their radio.
That is the first pillar of bad news for RTE management. The second is that many of the loyal listeners are older. Nothing wrong with that, except that those listeners do not come, innocent and open, to the new morning schedule. They come prejudiced by the past.
Even prejudiced by the past, however, it has to be said that Pat Kenny, in the samples heard so far, has hit a seam of pure gold. In the past few years there have been times when Kenny played against his strengths. Take, for example, his encyclopaedic knowledge of almost everything: a great asset, best underplayed. There were days, however, when one wondered if the programme needed interviewees at all, since the presenter seemed able to deliver both sides of any story.
Nor did it help that someone working on the programme seemed to think that a breathless rush was the same thing as a pacey programme, so that nobody got to finish a sentence, and the presenter often seemed to be in an urgent panic to get nowhere in particular.
This season, Kenny is at his best. His desire to show his knowledge is under control, his capacity to pay attention and spot discrepancies in full play. He is interviewing thoughtfully and probingly. The length of the programme facilitates his team in providing a variety of items, none of them permitted to go on too long.
What we're hearing is a broadcaster clearly representing the public interest, rather than promoting or defending himself. It may sound paradoxical, but the more anonymous Pat Kenny gets, the more memorably distinctive he gets.
If two hours and the absence of Gay Byrne have done Pat Kenny a power of good, 45 minutes (because in reality, that's roughly the length of the programme) and the absence of the after-lunch cuppa have done Marian Finucane a power of harm.
The harm was probably already under way, in that voxpoppery has passed its heyday. In the best days, Marian Finucane's sensible older-sister personality and instinct to challenge but not abuse made Liveline one of the best things to come out of RTE 1. In any given week it would be funny, sad, thought-provoking and newsy.
I was amused, and then dismayed, recently when an 80year-old friend, who's a radio addict, told me Liveline should be discontinued. Knowing her regard for Marian and for the programme, I asked why.
"The calls are all from oul' fellas these days," was her reply. "You get the impression they've been sleeping off their lunch, wake up and get the notion they'll ring Marian and get on some old hobby horse of theirs. She can't even interrupt them, because if you interrupt an oul' fella, he'll go right back to the beginning again when you finish your interruption."
The manic liveliness of some of the late night phone-in programmes makes Liveline sound slightly archaic. Which is undoubtedly why you hear Joe Duffy trying to nudge people into saying more sensational/emotive/nasty things than they rang to say.
Except that, much as we sympathise, the story of a woman damned by rowdy parties next door has a reheated feel to it, no matter how Duffy worries its bone. Andy Warhol's comment about everybody getting their 15 minutes of fame was never truer than of phone-in programmes, and the 15 minutes are nearly up.
In theory at least, Marian Finucane should have leaped off Liveline and on to her morning slot with glad cries. That's not how it has worked. The length of time may be wrong. The facilities available to her team may be inadequate. There are all sorts of possible reasons, but the end result is not satisfactory and is not helpful to this broadcaster's fine reputation.
The reheat problem has been in evidence, for one thing. Sad stories that we've heard or read elsewhere have been explored at great length. There is the dead flavour of victim radio at the beginning of too many programmes. People who have destroyed lives through drugs, alcohol or other devices were the stuff of radio for about a decade. Now, we almost have listener burnout: we feel we've heard all these sad stories.
And that's where comparisons with Gaybo are particularly odious. Gay Byrne, whether you like him or hate him, is an unusual broadcaster, particularly in his capacity to move from dire tragedy to rollicking comedy with virtually no break between them. He has said he does not have deep feelings.
It may be the best thing that ever happened to a broadcaster, that dearth of profound emotions, because it allowed him infinite variety on air. He could be funny, outrageous, melodramatic, argumentative, touchy, warm, sentimental, all within 20 minutes.
I can think of no other Irish broadcaster with that variety of approaches, and I do not believe Marian Finucane, as a broadcasting instrument, has all those strings. What she has, at her best, is a warm, engaged openness that is sceptical but not cynical. It is not suited by the format thus far developed for her new programme. She does not sound comfortable. Repetitive phrases ("so on and so forth") are creeping into her questioning, and she does not give the impression she is enjoying the show.
Then, of course, there is Carrie Crowley, chortling her way with impregnable good humour through an hour of music.
In facing the task of creating morning radio without Gay Byrne, RTE 1 has an unenviable task. The early weeks of the new regime have demonstrated highs, lows and an object lesson. The object lesson? RTE must create a context within which Pat Kenny can perform better than he has performed in years. And it must find a more congenial environment for the talents of Marian Finucane.