A newspaper editor once asked for a seemingly contradictory redesign that was to offer radical but imperceptible change. The editor was not totally mad. While we crave the new on radio, television and in the newspapers, we also want the familiar.
Yesterday RTE 1's first schedule not to include Gay Byrne in over 25 years came on air. It was radical and it was familiar. The new-look schedule is still heavy with stars; Marian Finucane comes on after Morning Ireland, Pat Kenny begins a two-hour slot at 10 a.m., while Joe Duffy takes over Liveline from Marian Finucane. Carrie Crowley offers a music break between Pat Kenny and the News at One.
So far, so predictable. Where commentators got it wrong was assuming that RTE would do something very different. Any close reading of statements from senior RTE people, especially the Director of Radio, Ms Helen Shaw, contained enough hints to be able to predict long before it was announced what the schedule would look like.
In her first interview on becoming Director of Radio, Ms Shaw spoke of the strength of RTE's top personalities. No other station is able to increase the audience after 1.30 p.m. the way Marian Finucane on Liveline has done, she said. Her former colleagues at the BBC were quite jealous of this pull. Others have criticised RTE's reliance on a handful of stars and the fact that the schedule is personality-driven, but not Ms Shaw.
When Helen Shaw was appointed towards the end of 1997 she spoke of the radio she liked. The BBC's Radio 5 came high on that list. In RTE she immediately changed the evening drive-time format to the current Five Seven Live programme and last January she made other changes to the schedule. The one problem was Gay Byrne and the all-important morning schedule. This time last year Gay Byrne was already operating on a three-day week on radio.
The break in continuity over the week, with Des Cahill presenting the programme twice a week, not only offended the scheduler's logic but also affected listenership figures at a time when RTE was expecting increased competition from the revamped Today FM.
The Gay Byrne Show slot was losing listeners. It had gone from an audience of 324,000 to 300,000 and the trend was downwards.
Pat Kenny was put into what had been Gay Byrne's slot at 9.15 a.m. and given a name change to Today with Pat Kenny. He held Gay Byrne's listenership with his mix of current affairs and music. The last official figures had him reaching 459,000 listeners.
It is the sheer familiarity of the new arrangements that will be welcomed by the advertising industry. Despite its image, advertising is very conservative. Advertising agencies are, after all, spending other people's money. The view within the industry yesterday was that the new schedule was strong but predictable.
The media director of Quinn McDonnell Pattison/DMB&B, Mr Steve Shanahan, described the changes as "good housekeeping". His reading of the changes was that RTE was looking to hold its audience rather than build. That is a sensible decision given that RTE Radio 1 is the most popular station on air.
While he believed that Marian Finucane's hour-long programme was too short, he agreed that Carrie Crowley should be given a chance. Ms Crowley's magazine-type programme would be helped by having two good audience draws either side, Pat Kenny and the News At One.
Though Mr Shanahan was not sure about Joe Duffy being able to hold and engage the audience the way Marian Finucane did, other industry sources were more optimistic. They cited favourably the way he presented the programme during the summer, especially the Liveline programme devoted to Omagh.
With John Kelly on the Music Zone every night and new programmes in the Life and Living strand every afternoon, along with Emer Woodfull taking over from Joe Duffy on the media programme Soundbyte, Gloria Hunniford hosting a celebrity music show at the weekend and Joe Jackson presenting his musical heroes of the century, it would appear that in just over a year Ms Shaw has finally put her stamp on the Radio 1 schedule.
Michael Foley is a media commentator and lecturer in journalism at the Dublin Institute of Technology.