Radio
Moving times
Michael Vestey
Why are radio people mesmerised by television? The size of the audience, per- haps; the feeling that if television perform- ers present radio programmes some of their fame will rub off on radio and increase the listening figures. It doesn't always work, of course. Did more people start listening to Any Questions? when Jonathan Dimbleby arrived from television to be its chairman? I doubt it. Michael Parkinson was a perfectly good television chat show host but was awful when he pre- sented the Today programme and Desert Island Discs on Radio Four. He just didn't sound right. Radio Two, where he has a Sunday morning spot, yes, but not Four.
But this belief is now deeply embedded in radio thinking. I wonder if it's working on Britain's only independent speech net- work, Talk Radio. For the past three weeks its breakfast show has been presented by ICirsty Young who is a Channel 5 news pre- senter. It seems that on this television show Young walks across the studio to interview people. I don't know for certain because, fortunately, I can't receive it where I live; either that, or the retuner failed to visit. I only know what I read. From her newspa- per pictures she seems fetching enough: young, blonde and, no less important this, Scottish. Moderate Scottish and Irish accents are de rigueur these days. Radio and television executives think they're classless and unthreatening to English ears. Radio Five Live is full of them.
I also wonder if we're seeing the Kirstyfi- cation of television news with executives enviously eyeing that revolutionary walk, especially as all BBC news is under review. Should Michael Buerk walk across the stu- dio to talk to someone? Well, it wouldn't be as watchable as Jill Dando wiggling her hips and sashaying around the autocue, would it? But the waltzing newsreader could be here to stay as it is thought to keep younger viewers awake and it is the young they're after. How, though, could this be translated to radio? Is there even now at the BBC a newly appointed Head of Studio Walks, Radio (HSWR) to explore the possibilities? Does Kirsty Young wan- der around her Talk Radio studio in the mornings to stand over her co-presenter Bill Overton while she speaks?
Probably not. After all, the listener can't see her doing this. To excite us enough she would have to tell us she is walking over to, say, Paddy Ashdown to question him. They could then trot off arm in arm discussing the Northern Ireland problem. 'We're just making our third circuit of the desk, mind the chair Paddy ...' And where does this leave Sue MacGregor on Today? How would she walk over to Jim Naughtie or Rabbi Lionel Blue? Today presenters sit behind a semi-circular table so that they can face several contributors easily. 'Well, I'm just going to walk round to Lionel now to hear his latest little Liberace-style homi- ly on Thought for the Day . .
No, the unpalatable truth for radio exec- utives is that presenters will have to remain seated. There are certain limits in radio though there are other ways to jazz up the news. Talk Radio's way is to run jingles under news bulletins (Radio Five Live does that too) or you can have traffic reports yelled from helicopters across the cities of Britain. Talk's new breakfast show also has a comic turn of a sports reporter who sounds like Alan Partridge. Whether or not she remains seated, Young is there because she appears on television regularly. She was obviously not chosen for her brain- power, wit or personality. She sounds, in fact, rather bland. One of the drawbacks of smooth Scottish voices is that their range is limited.
I'm not saying that she has no brain, wit or personality, just that they haven't come through. That's the trouble with radio: you need more than just a pretty face. I would not describe Naughtie as pretty, but he has a stronger voice and you can hear his indignation rising when he can't get the answer he wants. He is not bland. Young's interviews are like women's tennis — delightful lobs easy to return. She's faced the usual suspects, William Hague, Michael Meacher, Paddy Ashdown and others but all were allowed to ramble on. Meacher talked interminably of dreaded environmental task-forces, Ashdown was at his scoutmasterish best, oozing his now familiar phoney sincerity that makes the flesh creep.
I noticed during the second week that Overton began to speak more, as if he had been told to keep quiet during the early shows to allow Kirstyfication to take hold. Some of the more pertinent questioning came from him though his is clearly a sup- porting role. Although it's a vast improve- ment on previous relaunches, there are the usual listeners' calls and something called a 'reaction line' where people's comments on the news are read out. A friend complained to me the other day that he'd heard some- thing similar on the Jimmy Young Show on Radio Two.
Thinking of Jimmy Young I realised that radio news executives have missed some- thing here. When I said there were limits to how radio news can be made more exciting, I remembered that ICirsty's much older namesake used to be a crooner. They could sing the news. Does Kirsty sing like Jim, I wonder?
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