Paul Danon

The head of BBC radio describes the possible privatisation of Radios 1 and 2 as a “cultural travesty”, adding that those stations “underpin the nation’s cultural life in the broadest sense”. Leaving to one side the unusual juxtaposition of “Radio 2″ and “cultural” in the same text, what, I wonder, could “in the broadest sense” mean? OK, so pop music is culture of sorts (and I do think that Radio 1’s late-night mixes are very cleverly presented), but what’s with all the breadth? Could “in the broadest sense” be a BBC-euphemism like “strong language”? The latter expression means obscenity or even blasphemy but, since the BBC can’t admit to broadcasting that, it needs somehow to associate vile, crude, insulting and offensive words with strength. Perhaps “in the broadest sense” means “actually quite trivial and lowbrow and mainly ephemeral”. That’s certainly broad if not cultural.

Microsoft has taken a further step in connecting various devices on line. I saw it all years ago. In the way things wrok, I write: “Commonly called ‘a network of networks of networks of networks’, the internet is actually a vast kind of collective sort of brain thingy which allows you to connect your gas-stove to the TV aerial and tell the heater in the greenhouse to switch on the cigarette-lighter in the car. I mean its potential is mind-boggling. The internet was started at the vast underground European Ear, Nose And Throat Research Complex (EENATRC) which straddles the border between Austria and Belgium. Here, a humble British scientist called Timbo Nersley hit upon the idea of running a piece of bare copper wire from the earphone-socket on his pocket calculator to the coin-weighing mechanism in the Coke machine along the hall. With trembling hands, Nersley cautiously pressed a random selection of buttons and within minutes there appeared on the screen the message: ‘Error 404. DNS lookup failure.‘ Simultaneously, the floor of the research centre began to swim with foaming brown soda and all the lights went out. The internet had been born and the world would never be the same again.”

Ofcom has been consulting on wireless broadband and admits that it’s been overwhelmed. It’s going to re-open the consultation after howls from the industry at its proposals. In commerce, a unit which fails is closed and replaced. In the world of government and quangos, you just start again but still get paid.

Peter Bazalgette, media-mogul, says BBC Radios 1 and 2 should be privatised, which makes so much sense. Think of the millions in revenue that have been forgone since those stations started in 1967. He also wants Channel 4 privatised, which will come as a surprise to some. Surely, don’t all those advertisements which interrupt the programmes mean it’s already private? C4 is, in fact, more government-owned than the BBC, which is slightly at arm’s length from the state. When it comes to serving the public, C4 arguably does as well if not better than the Beeb, yet without a penny of public money.

A think-tank wants London-style mayors for everywhere, but just hold on a minute. Such folks are elected dictators. Many folks voting in next month’s London-wide elections will think the London Assembly is some sort of county-council which the mayor uses to govern, but this is false. The assembly is a pretty toothless regulator which asks the mayor embarrassing (and sometimes cringe-makingly sympathetic) questions which he routinely ridicules or parrys. A better model of accountability is the one being demonstrated in parliament at the moment, where MPs are calling the prime minister to account over his abolition of the 10p tax-rate. Advocates of mayors say they give strong government, but then Zimbabwe has that. London doesn’t actually need a city-wide mayor. The boroughs have large enough populations to be unitary authorities (each with its own mayor, BTW) and there’s already a body for handling matters such as transport which cross borough-boundaries: it’s called national government.

St George’s day sees a new way of mapping northern France and southern England. Instead of the customary aquatic frontier between the two nations, several counties and départements become the manche (sleeve) region of the EU.

When the government consulted the public on the BBC, they got this from me.

The case for change

I am fed up with mixed programming. Even with the present analogue AM and FM frequencies, there is no excuse for it. Rather than moaning about it (too much), let me suggest what should be done without the deployment of any new resources in the corporation. Things just need to be moved around.

Rolling news

With its globally unrivalled resources, the BBC can sustain two rolling news TV channels, one domestic and one global, yet it does not seem to want to do the same for radio. I am fed up with going from hard news to silly plays about people who can’t sort out their lives, or going from intelligent discussion to inane phoneins. 198kHz needs to be NewsRadio, a rolling news channel which would be like Today only all day and every day. All other networks would opt in to its hourly bulletins and then opt back out to the things they did best. NewsRadio can, of course, appear on FM and digital but the key thing is that it will be universally available without deviation from its mission or fatuous regional opt-outs. Indeed, World Service might do well to opt in.

BBC local radio in London

All other local radio stations seem to do to a good job. Only the capital’s station consistently fails, yet it should be the flagship. It must stop trying to compete with funky pirates broadcasting through coathangers from highrises. It must deploy the full resources of the BBC to knock competitors like LBC into a cocked hat. Since it is in the capital, it should be briefed to compete with NewsRadio for attention. The Evening Standard punches way above its weight because it’s London’s evening newspaper. People throughout the south-east should strain to receive BBC radio in London for similar reasons. Maybe it should almost see itself as an ITN to the BBC. London is no village and we’d be silly to kid ourselves about it, yet it could stand alone as a nation. BBC radio in London should be as good as a national station for Belgium, Denmark or Switzerland. Maybe BBC Scotland (with just half the potential listeners) is a model. What isn’t a model for BBC local radio in London is PunkkFM.

Sport

I naively thought that the point of Radio Five was to quarantine sport from those of us who loathed it with a pathological hatred, yet, even though Five has a second digital frequency, sport still leeches into other networks. Enough is enough. You can have 12 sports radio channels if you want but, on rolling news, you must only report sport when it is news. Last Saturday’s results matter not a jot. All that matters is who wins championships, leagues and gold medals — once a year or every four years. So, there can be SportRadio 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 but there shall the sport remain.

Drama and talks

This is like sport. Have as many channels as you want. BBC7 is great, as is Radio Four at times. A while ago Mr Tariq Ali suggested the potentially marvellous Radio Einstein for intellectuals. You find some quite intelligent speech-programmes on Radio Two too, but only by accident. Such material needs to be grouped so that those of us who are depressed by rolling news can chill. Only, we must be allowed to choose when to do that.

Music

This area is stupendously over-catered-for by the BBC and commercial stations. However, it has its place as long as controllers don’t hide quality news, speech and current affairs programmes in their schedules. Bandwidth allowing, let’s have as many channels as there are genres. There must surely be room for two BBC non-pop channels: one featuring the western canon and the other for world music combined with the avant garde. I think you’ll find two distinct listenerships for whom to cater. One will see music as a way of relaxing and enjoyment. The other will see it as an intellectual gymnasium. The former can listen to WesternCanonRadio and the latter can listen to Muzikqxz. Guess which one will get more listeners.

Commercialism

There is a case for impartiality in news which is why NewsRadio might not carry advertising. However, music and drama needn’t be seen to be lofty so they can carry advertising which would pay for NewsRadio without the need for a subsidy from the TV-licence.

Getting real

Controllers and presenters need to exercise humility and realism. With wide bandwidth people simply won’t tune in and listen to the same station regardless of what comes on it. The news is more important than the newsreaders and interviewers, who spend a lot of time editorialising and interrupting. The presenters must step back and let the material speak or sing for itself.

You have mail

A piece on handling lots of email alludes to the quaint notions that:

• email somehow isn’t part of work (yet for many of us it is our main medium)
• if you only look at your email twice a day you’ll somehow get less of it and need less time to deal with it.

Meanwhile, the Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery treats people for whom so-called social networking has become an obsession.

The curse of Mordac

The Dilbert website has relaunched and, from a review, looks great. You can even write your own text in the speech-balloons. However, I can’t see most of the content when I go to it with Firefox 2.0.0.14.

• rent-a-dog