Standing in for Wogan was a piece of....

I generally avoid television at this time of year – the endless Christmas specials (which are actually filmed in June) and the tedious ‘review of the year’ shows drive me to distraction and only fill the schedules because pen-pushing TV executives are either a). on holiday, b). slashing budgets by not spending money on new content or c). lacking in creativity to come with any new content in the first place. As such, I’m condemned to spend hours on end listening to the festive radio offerings.

Now, I usually have t’wireless on in the background whilst working anyway because silence seems to prevent my brain juices flowing freely. As the BBC are the only competent radio producers on the planet my office is filled with the dulcet tones of Bruce, Wright, Evans, Mayo etc. (avoidance of Radio One is compulsory in my working domain – I’m not one for listening to a station aimed at teenagers and operated by 12 year-olds). Aunty’s audio fare is perfectly listenable during the sane months of the year, but when the tinsel-draped silly season descends all the true broadcasters take some annual leave and the BBC bosses take annual leave of their senses.

For some apparent reason, known only to a panel of overpaid desk monkeys and Mark Thompson, anybody with an ounce of celebrity status is capable of presenting a radio show. The yuletime airwaves were blessed with the incessant ramblings of people who have spent years carving out careers in other mediums but have no business being on the radio. Their presence to me is an insult to the pros who have grafted their way to the top via tin-pot local radio or as graveyard-shift jocks. To have Johnny C-List Celeb take over their daily slot and twitter on about whether Brussels sprouts should be on the Christmas day menu is a slap in the face of talent. Surely this country with its pedigree of radio presenting has people waiting in the wings for a shot at some prime-time action?

One of the chosen stand-in blithering idiots who is usually found performing on the stage or selling fitness videos likened their time on the air to coming off the substitutes bench. Their footballing analogy couldn’t be further from the truth. A substitute in a football game isn’t a world class pole-vaulter that likes kicking a ball about and fancied a shot at the Premier League. A substitute by definition is a replacement that is typically skilled in the role that he or she has been called into.

Radio presenting is a skill like any other form of broadcasting. You wouldn’t expect an actor to immediately take to presenting a television show as the results more often than not would be disastrous, yet sitting in a studio where you can only be heard and not seen is fair-game for anyone who can lay claim to a media presence. For a week or so the BBC radio output was reduced to independent local radio status with content that can only be described as the audio equivalent of effluent sewage.

I fear that radio presenting is becoming a lost art anyway. More and more programming is being incompetently helmed by those who see a radio show on the BBC as this year’s must-have accessory. For frequency modulation’s sake, let’s pray the new year brings stability back to this most important use of licence fee payers money. Let us also hope the replacements we endured during Christmas were not given a paycheck for their woeful efforts and did the work purely as a CV enhancing exercise.