Like most columnists who write about music, I have an emergency list of topics which are good for 700 words or so when everything else fails.
The list includes such old reliables as "something about the Irish music industry" and "anything about digital music".
There are also items which were added to the list a while ago and make absolutely no sense now. If you read a column about "Xmas radio stations", "MTV research panels", "fake interview with reunion band" or "ODB is the new 2Pac", you will know it's been a pretty slow week.
"Rick and Ruth" have been bobbing around near the top of that list for the last few months. Rick O'Shea and Ruth Scott took over the 2FM Breakfast Show in March and I spent a few mornings listening to them in June and July with the intention of writing about the show.
However, that column will not now be written. Last week, 2FM decided that five months of dreadful, inane, tedious, deeply unpopular and excruciating morning radio was more than enough to foist on the plain people of Ireland.
In a surprise move, the station ditched the Pinky and Perky of morning radio, who I believe are the worst Irish radio DJs of the 21st century. They have not been sacked, but relegated to evening and night-time slots. They will be replaced on the morning run by Marty Whelan.
It's the latest twist in the 2FM story, the tale of a very confused pop music station and its attempts to sort itself out. Imagine the Abbey Theatre on the wireless and you're close in fiasco terms. After going dance a few years after everyone else and then going on an indie rock jock shopping spree in 2003, it's 1989 all over again, with the hugely experienced Whelan setting the tone for the country's national pop station by anchoring the breakfast show.
Of course, it will be a huge ratings winner. Whelan's a pro and, like Larry Gogan, Ian Dempsey and Terry Wogan, he's a broadcaster that people relate to and feel comfortable with. He's not the ridiculously outdated Tony Fenton or the hopeless Gareth O'Callaghan and three cheers for that.
But the arrival of Whelan is an indication that 2FM just cannot match Spin 1038 in Dublin or any of the regionals like Red or Beat when it comes to nurturing and developing new shows and talent.
2FM's market leaders remain the old guard, and the station is synonymous with Gerry Ryan and Dave Fanning rather than Jenny Huston, Dan Hegarty or Nikki Hayes. A successful pop station to be sure, but one resting on its laurels with a day-time schedule in dire need of a shake-up and an injection of youth, vigour and fresh ideas.
The fault for this inertia rests with one man. When John Clarke took over 2FM in the late 1990s, it was a station in need of wholesale changes. An experienced producer and DJ, Clarke seemed to be the right man. But, in my reckoning, he has shown again and again that he just doesn't have a clue how to transform 2FM from Radio One and a Half and into an attractive, innovative pop station.
In an interview with The Ticket in 2003, Clarke maintained that "we're not growing old with our audience, we're serving the audience we were set up to serve, the 15-35 year olds". The appointment of Whelan makes you query the veracity of that statement.
The failure of O'Shea and Scott can also be laid squarely at Clarke's door. Both lacked absolutely everything a breakfast DJ needs: empathy, ideas, daring and good jokes. It shouldn't have taken five months of terrible radio to find out that they were totally unsuited to the job. It was a bad call from the off.
Turning 2FM into what it purports to be requires some radical decisions. Clarke has failed to do this in his six years in charge, so it's time for someone else to take over. A few calls should be made to ex-2FM boyo Liam Thompson at Spin to see if he's up for the job. For the sake of 2FM's audience, lets hope he is.
