Even BBC stalwarts are beginning to admit covertly that the licence fee, if renewed in 2017, won’t pay for everything. Enter Apple Music, hot on the heels of Spotify. Enter grim statistics charting listener decline from Radio 1 as Nick Grimshaw bids farewell to 1.24 million of the audience Chris Moyles left behind. Enter Radio 1 controller Ben Cooper, protesting that he’s being asked to replace the legions of the lost “with a generation who have tablets and phones and distractions in a very crowded media landscape”.
Which raises a most difficult question. How and why is Radio 1 a public service to young and youngish people that must somehow be maintained, if the millions it exists to serve vote with their smartphones? When does change in the outside world mean change inside Broadcasting House?
