This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Media
Commercial radio air concern over Chris Evans R2 breakfast appointment
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 9 September 2009
As that Chris Moyles bloke welcomed the news that Terry Wogan will retire from the Radio 2 breakfast show at the end of the year by announcing that it will make his programme the most listened to breakfast show in the country (the assumption being that enough Wogan fans will tune out when Chris Evans takes over that the Radio 2 prime time show will lose its lead over Radio 1’s), the boss of commercial radio trade body RadioCentre urged the two national BBC stations to avoid a breakfast show ratings war.
Andrew Harrison is concerned that if the BBC let Chris M and Chris E enter into a ratings battle it will result in Radio 2 moving ever more into a youth audience territory, and such a move, while not necessarily persuading Radio 1 listeners to switch to 2, might encourage those currently listening to the breakfast show on their local commercial station to move to Evans.
It’s all part of the commercial radio sector’s continued bug bear that the modern Radio 2 aims too young, certainly with some of its programmes, putting it up against twenty/thirty something targeting commercial stations like Heart and Magic. Commercial stations, of course, preferred Radio 2 when it had its reputation for serving primarily the over-50s, a demographic Harrison’s members have never really managed to engage or commercialise.
According to the Guardian, Harrison told 5Live: “[We don’t want] a ratings war developing for listeners between Chris Moyles and Chris Evans, between Radio 1 and Radio 2. If that were to happen it would be disastrous of course for the overall plurality of stations and provision for listeners across the UK, not just from a BBC perspective”.
He continued: “We are very worried in the commercial sector about the overall footprint and role of Radio 2, which has been driving a much younger audience across the last decade, and that’s beginning to encroach on commercial radio’s territory. Older listeners are our concern. Radio 2 [once] very much catered for an older demographic, an older audience, and that was appropriate as part of the overall radio landscape in the UK, a publicly-funded BBC would have a mainstream national service catering specially for older listeners”.
Harrison didn’t got as far as to criticise the decision to give the Radio 2 breakfast slot to Evans, but he added: “Our concern would be much more really with the BBC management and the BBC Trust to ensure that whoever is fronting the breakfast show and replacing Terry ensures that the public service delivery of that breakfast show, the amount of news, the amount of information, documentaries and features are consistent with the BBC’s public service remit”.
He concluded: “It’s incredibly difficult for small local radio stations to compete against the national BBC. Radios 1 and 2 are the only stations on FM with national licences to broadcast pop music. Inevitably a lot of the strong talent that is nurtured and developed in commercial radio will want to move on to a national platform whenever they get an opportunity”.
