I haven’t written about radio for quite a while, unless you count my comments – on Matt Degan’s excellent site – about Commercial Radio blaming its woes on the BBC, and I don’t think that counts.
As I look back, I see I wrote about The End of a Radio Era in December 2002 when Jimmy Young left Radio 2. And I find myself wanting to use that same title today as Sir Terry Wogan leaves his top-rated breakfast show. Throughout my childhood, I was aware of Jimmy Young, but as a family, we actually listened to Terry Wogan.
The news people say it’s 27 years; of course, we know that the number represents years, actually, talking on the breakfast show. There were years off for good behaviour (when he did that television thing), meaning that it’s really four decades that Terry’s been an integral part of our lives.
Many people have written elsewhere about what a remarkable broadcaster Terry Wogan is, and I wouldn’t say anything different. It’s a special talent to be able to talk, cross-generationally, to such a large audience and yet make it seem like you’re sharing in a small, intimate, and thoroughly entertaining dinner (breakfast) party. And that, to me, is what separates great radio broadcasters from average and poor ones: people who can really ‘do’ radio make you feel like you’re part of the conversation. The rest shout at you.
I do believe today marks a bigger transition than the end of a much-loved breakfast show. Radio 2 has been able to point to Wake Up To Wogan as a shining example of what sets it apart: no commercial broadcaster would have done that show, and I find it unlikely any would have let it run so long (though for that audience?). But as of today, Radio 2 can not point to Sir Terry as a difference that helps validate its existence.
I hope Chris Evans is given a chance (the BBC will, but I wonder about the rest of the media). He, too, is different, and I find it frustrating to read the many views that assume he is still a 30-year-old Radio 1 breakfast host, not the consummate, radio-loving professional broadcaster he clearly is. But Wogan came from a different era. It wasn’t his physical age that helped secure Radio 2’s difference; it was that he started his career in a different broadcasting era, when broadcasters felt like your friends. And he became part of our breakfast routine before we, as a nation, took to shooting down our celebrities as quickly as we do today, and before the radio industry replaced presenters after a bad ratings quarter or two. I hope the new host will be different enough to let the BBC keep pointing to Radio 2 as something you can’t hear elsewhere. I think it’s going to be a challenge: not because Chris isn’t unique, but because the broadcasting landscape has changed, and Chris has played his part in today’s tabloid celebrity fascination. Will we be able to separate his history from his present?
But I don’t want to end up pondering Radio 2’s future. I find myself looking back on the words I wrote about Jimmy Young and realising that many of them apply to Terry Wogan. It was an interactive show from early on. Letters about the Poison Dwarf and the M1 cones may have been replaced by emails, but the audience has always been integral to much of the content. As a style, it is decades old, but it still appears to work. Making you feel part of the show is important. Making you feel like a friend is, surely, a gift.
Perhaps something about Radio 2 in the 1970s remains underappreciated because the flares distracted us. A generation of broadcasters deeply integrated audience participation into their shows long before anybody knew what they were doing. While all radio uses input from listeners, very few shows are built around it. I wonder if radio should look backwards to understand its value because, in the rush to work out what a digital future means for it, I sometimes think it’s losing sight of how powerful a medium it really is. Surely, if Sir Terry and his 8 million TOGs are to leave a legacy, it should be to remind us of the power of the audience contribution when making unmissable radio.
Thank you for being a friend. Indeed.
Update: 22 December
Celebrity broadcasters pay tribute to Sir Terry Wogan | Terry Wogan signs off from Radio 2 breakfast with a crack in the voice