The Axeman Cometh

Whatever are they at? Radio 1 dumps its specialist music shows and everybody's scratching their heads trying to find rhyme or reason in the decision.

I wish I could inform you but my inquiries through official channels bore scant fruit. The RTE pressperson was less than fully informed and wished to refer me to the powers-that-be. Unfortunately Radio Controller, Kevin Healy was on holiday and the executive, most identified with the policy, Head of Music, Cathal McCabe had flown off to London. Thus the only indication of the rationale behind this autumn massacre comes from McCabe's vague performance on The Arts Show when he claimed it was all a "marketing" decision.

Ludicrous and absurd and mild words to describe this line of reasoning. If McCabe felt the ditched shows suffered inadequate audiences through bad 'marketing', he only had to allocate them increased publicity budgets. Instead while he pleads to marketing changes, he's abandoned the products themselves.

Nor does there seem to have been any serious research beforehand. The RTE spokesperson couldn't give me chapter and verse and McCabe was no more illuminating on The Arts Show. Perhaps figures do exist but I fear they have been spuriously interpreted in line with the vacuous philosophy of 98FM.

Somehow I don't think McCabe has any feel for the territory. His decision has enraged record companies, promoters and musicians in the tightly-knit roots music community. Words like shock and betrayal are inadequate to describe their mood and at the time of going to press, they were forming a lobby group to fight the changes. RTE should realise that even if they win this first battle, it's merely the preface to a long and potentially bitter war over Radio 1's music policy.

AMPUTATING EXPERTISE

So what actually is the new policy? Out go All That Jazz And Blues, Fleadh Club, Airnean Country Heartland, and Marcus Connaughton's blues show. Instead, the Both Sides Now programme will now appear at 9.15 to 11.00 from Monday to Friday, hosted by either Pascal Mooney or Aonghus McAnally, neither of whom can, or would, claim the wealth of specialist knowledge of the dumped presenters.

Cathal McCabe would argue that these new strip-shows will lead to more coherent programming where listeners might hear examples of all roots music in one evening. His critics disagree and insist the changes will lead to blander music, targeted at a mainstream audience.

Thus, the argument might continue, the new format will play Eric Clapton but not Robert Johnson, Mary Black, but not a solo piper, Dolly Parton but not Flatt and Scruggs or Jimmy Dale Gilmore. McCabe's critics fear that ultimately Radio 1 is realigning itself alongside the Classic Hits formats of 98FM.

On The Arts Show, Cathal McCabe struggled to refute such charges. To be fair to him, he wasn't asked the precise musical questions that would have proven the value or otherwise of his guarantees.

Nonetheless he seemed to be making policy off the cuff. Nobody, including McCabe, seems to be able to describe the precise nature of the new shows, nor how the thinking behind them evolved. McCabe did state that the programmes would include 10-minute music 'packages' but his critics believe this was a hastily-improvised concession to deflect further criticism.

But criticism of the decision to axe the specialist programmes goes far deeper. McCabe, it is argued, is amputating expertise. Someone like Neil Toner will have to quit RTE entirely. Country Heartland guaranteed him a stable source of income; 'packages' won't, so Toner will have to concentrate on his own musical career.

Nobody is claiming the ditched programmes should be sacred cows. Personally I concede that Bryan Day and Marcus Connaughton's shows don't always refect my tastes, but mine, I suspect, might be more fundamentalist than theirs. Also it might be open to RTE executives to argue that the presentation of the trad programmes is too earnestly academic and so not attracting new and younger listeners.

But behind all the anger is the suspicion that Kevin Healy and McCabe just don't understand what they're doing. To appreciate why, you've got to understand the evolution of Radio 1 through the past decade.

CASUAL SLAUGHTER

In the beginning was the word and the word is Radio 1. And that word is David Hanley, Gay Byrne, Pat Kenny, Marian Finucane and Myles Dungan, the custodians of the nation's nervous system who, through the last decade, have supplied the channel with both popularity and credibility.

Music has often seemed an after thought, the any-other-business of the station, the garnish for the spoken word meal and obviously dependent on the taste of each radio chef. Gay will give us Glen Miller, and Pat Kenny will remind us that he used to frequent folk clubs like Slattery's and that he's taken a real interest in music with him from that era.

Such lack of regimentation has its endearing side. But it also indicates how the present controversy stems from Radio 1's lack of any real musical identity or policy and how it's been the refuge (or more accurately, dumping-ground) for all those musics that aren't rock or contemporary pop.

This results from the creation of 2FM. Back in the old days, Radio Eireann had a patronising attitude to the lowly culture of pop. Radio Eireann enforced national cultural standards, so the only music that counted was either classical or trad and maybe some middlebrow dance music. Radio Eireann couldn't deny the fact of the Beatles, but you felt that, in their heart of hearts, they would have preferred to.

2FM relieved Radio 1 of pop obligations but the station seems to have doddled on, making little effort to create a music policy. But meanwhile, the radio environment has changed. What Radio 1 executives fail to understand is that there is now emerging an audience of people over 30 who are increasingly alienated by the lack of choice in the commercial stations. Instead of nurturing this audience, these changes slap it in the face.

Go outside Montrose and you'll find the roots scene is flourishing. As two examples, take the success of the Guinness Blues Festival or the recent opening of Tower Records with its extensive catalogues of roots and jazz. Nor are traditional record sales diminishing. The Sharon Shannon phenomenon surely proves that.

The offloading of the country, blues and jazz programmes is bad enough but the casual slaughter of the Irish music programmes is close to cultural criminal negligence. Perhaps it doesn't go against the letter of the Broadcasting Act. I'm no expert there but I do know it infringes against its spirit.

One doesn't need to be some antique and barnacled Gaelgeoir to be angered. Irish traditional music has consistently flowed into rock. And not just in the obvious cases like Van Morrison, Hothouse Flowers, Horslips, The Pogues and Sinead O'Connor. The guitar styles of both U2 and Thin Lizzy have also been influenced.

WOMAN'S ISSUE

Consult this week's RTE Guide to really understand Radio 1's policy of ethnic music cleansing. FM 3 devoted over 45 hours to classical music. Including the shows that are about to be axed, Radio 1 has approximately 4 hours of traditional music. I don't begrudge classical listeners their own air time but a 10 to 1 ratio was in itself indefensible, before the latest cuts.

Still Cathal McCabe seems to believe it makes sense. He prefers pot-pourri shows that will attract the more casual, less selective listener. His critics - and rightly so, I believe - insist that the more committed listeners will tune out and find their music elsewhere now they're deprived of the anchor specialist shows.

Furthermore there already is a model for quality Radio 1 roots programming. Philip King and Nuala O'Connor's Bringing It All Back Home series affirmed the deep cultural links between Irish and country music. As Pat Kenny's shows have indicated, the Irish ear takes easily to combinations of the best of Irish and the best of American singer-songwriters; to Randy Scruggs and Christy Moore; to Sharon Shannon and Mary Chapin Carpenter.

But the Radio 1 execs seem to lack the professional expertise to understand or explore these ideas. Instead we have a station where spoken word broadcasting dominates beside a dated middlebrow music philsosphy apparently derived from the Sixties Light Programme.

Nor do the Radio 1 bosses understand the role of specialist shows in the ecology of the station. New ideas percolate through, as people like Neil Toner introduce more mainstream presenters and producers to new talent.

These shows have also been the first rung in the ladder for much major Irish talent. RTE profits from the huge sales of A Woman's Heart but forgets to inquire where the five women involved got their first broadcasting exposure. Indeed since the folk and singer-songwriting genres are the areas Irish women performers find most congenial, the scrapping of these shows can even be seen as a woman's issue.

MARVELLOUS BIRDS

Throughout the controversy, there is a sad and detectable sense that Radio 1 just tolerated these shows out of a tired and vestigial obligation to public service broadcasting. One gets little sense of encouragement; of making the various presenters and producers feel wanted; of seriously entertaining their ideas or of using their substantial talents to the maximum.

That's possibly why Cathal McCabe faced such flack on The Arts Show. He had accumulated little trust or understanding, so suspicion was the immediate response, an attitude reinforced by the apparently offhand and unsympathetic way, the individual presenters were informed of their axing.

A bird in the hand is always worth more than two in the bush. Radio 1 are killing the bird in the hand. But when they can't even convincingly describe their two new marvellous birds in the bush, they shouldn't surprised at the anger they've stirred.