Radio 1 had a rare shake-up of its daytime schedule this week, with Jo Whiley and Edith Bowman both shunted to weekends and replaced by Fearne Cotton (10-1pm) and Greg James (1-4pm). So, after their first week on-air, how did Fearne and Greg fare?
Well, it wasn't anything to get excited about. I'm still relieved that Jo and Edith have been removed from weekdays, so any change is an automatic improvement over that irritating pair. The main problem with Fearne and Greg's succession is that the shows themselves haven't changed to any huge extent. Fearne has inherited the popular "Live Lounge" feature (where singers/groups cover a track, live), but beyond that the show is still characterless. Likewise, Greg James has introduced various experts each day (on gaming, sports, etc), but it was otherwise business as usual. There weren't even any new jingles to make casual listeners prick up their ears.
Disappointingly, there were times when Greg's show felt like an amateur had wandered into the studio and started riffing into the mic. An "alphabet game" was played, where Greg asked listeners on the phone lines to name bands/singers beginning with a certain letter, getting as far as "V" before nobody could come up with an answer (ahem, Vangelis...) And then there was a moment when Greg threw two dice and asked a listener to guess what they added up to, with the prize being a mint-flavoured Aero. Or how about a game where you guess how many sweets are in a jar? O-kay. Sure, the "comedy" is meant to come from how knowingly stupid this all was, but why not come up with some creative, fresh ideas and really get listeners engaged with daytime Radio 1? Being ironically bad is still being bad.
As it was, the new daytime lineup became a bland malaise, with neither D.J doing much to endear themselves to anyone giving Radio 1 another go with Jo and Edith gone. Change is great, but considering the new D.J's reputations at the station (Fearne's been hyped as a great presenter for years without actually proving it, while Greg's leaped up the Radio 1 pecking order in record time) it was all very unimaginative and, yes, dull.
Luckily for Fearne and Greg, their predecessors had become so awful that a deaf chimp could have played the Birdie Song on a loop and it would have been an improvement, but it's a shame that six hours of mainstream radio programming is being filled with nothing worth listening out for. It's early days, so things could improve, but as both
