For all his undoubted talent, I shall be glad to see the back of Chris Evans on BBC Radio Two. There is a case to be argued that he is the greatest TV and radio presenter of his generation and in many ways it’s a case I buy into. My view, for what it is worth, is that Evans is a presenter and not a disc jockey.
Evans is not alone in this. Jeremy Vine is no more a DJ than Evans and neither is Steve Wright with his enduringly abysmal ‘In the Afternoon’ show where the music is lower than secondary to the extent that it barely matters at all.
I cannot argue with the success of Radio Two. It is hugely successful and, for all its limitations, it plays at times music you will not hear on any commercial station. It knows its audience which, by and large, likes to hear the music it already knows and nothing new. This is why I have drifted away to BBC 6 Music, a station which employs mainly disc jockeys for whom the music is everything and not some fluff to fill in the gaps between predictable studio banter and ‘celebrity’ guests.
In the new year, Evans moves to Rupert Murdoch’s Virgin Radio to a new show which will be one long advert for Sky TV. My guess is that it will be a rehash of what he does now and has always done and for people who like ‘that sort of thing’ they will have the continuity and predictability they crave.
Sadly, Evans will be replaced by Zoe Ball which can surely only be because of her sex. Ball is another presenter and not a DJ, with a breathless, frantic delivery style which is guaranteed to turn me off. It will still be a world of golden oldies and turgid singer songwriters like James Bay and Tom Odell.
I’m off to listen to Lauren Laverne on 6 Music who replaces the dour monotone and dead air of Shaun Keavney. She’s a proper DJ who challenges the brain by playing new music as well as a sprinkling of the familiar. That was how music radio used to be. Thank God some of it still remains.
