RTE Radio1 Autumn Schedule

The Autumn radio schedule for RTE Radio 1 was much talked about in mid summer. The loss of John Kelly, Rattlebag......and John Creedon to the graveyard shift. The schedule has now settled in, but really there are some oddities.


- Eamon Dunphy on saturday morning. Hopes that the demise of Carrie Crowley on Sunday morning with the VIP Suite (that ran for years), at least saturday morning was sacrosanct from this type of production.

- Mooney, Weekday afternoons. I always thought that " goes wild" on a saturday morning was never as good with the 1 hour as it had been over 30 minutes. There had been occasional hints of feistiness in Mooney in this format - how this might be channeled in mid-afternoon is another thing; early signs are not encouraging.

- Drivetime, Weekday evenings. Too much sport. Des Cahill is an engaging, funny guy on radio, but methinks in small doses. Enough has been said in the weekend supplements about the strange format that runs over this two hours, so there's no point in adding.

- Val Joyce and Late Date. I think this is a great loss. Great voice, great music. Replaced by John Creedon - I think doing a very good impression of Alan Partridge doing the late night slot on Radio Norwich. Maybe summertime is a funny time of the year, but the number of daft text messages Mr Creedons lunchtime show was getting, seemed as if they could almost have been generated from the bowels of Radio Cork.

As a footnote, I could not but mention Rachel Allen of "Favourite Food for Friends" and Ballymaloe. She made an appearance on the Maran Finuncane show a few saturdays back. What is with that accent? it is unnerving it is so pinched. Anyway, alarms bells began to reach levels that would have enraged Quasimodo when she could not tell Marian what the essential items she would always have in the kitchen cupboard. Extremely odd.

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