Cash-strapped Xfm has confirmed it's getting rid of its daytime DJs - in effect, turning the 10 - 4 slot into a wall-to-wall music zone (apart from the omnipresent ads, of course).
That sounds like a listener's dream: hours of music, uninterrupted by vapid presenter-babble - what could be better? (We'll save for another blog the fact that Xfm's daytime programming is so clogged with Keane and Snow Patrol that the DJs actually provide a respite from the horror).
Except... that's what iPods are for. You want music with no interruptions, no dingbat phone-ins, no traffic-and-weather at the "top" of the hour? You crank up your MP3 player with its 10 million tracks and there you have it. Or you listen to "personal" stations like last.fm or Pandora.com or even Xfm's own version of the personalised services, Mi-Xfm, all of which provide non-stop music tailored to the listener's tastes.
But that's not what radio is for. Radio is - pardon this word - "interactive", and presenters are a station's personality. They offer companionship, a familiar voice and, most of all, reassurance that there's still a world out there. Those of us who work at home are grateful for that (and deplore anything else).
Unluckily, pop DJs have been tarnished by association with Chris Moyles, after the disclosure that he earns over £600,000 a year. Not a patch on Jonathan Ross's £18 million, obviously, but the outcry prompted questions about the general usefulness of presenters. So can we assume that Xfm's owners, GCap, think that nobody would mind the disappearance of a couple of their own? And if paying fewer salaries will keep the station going...
But it's a bad, bad idea. Xfm is already cannibalising itself with Mi-Xfm; what would be the point of also leaving the main station pilotless for a quarter of the day? And this is a station that prides itself on its DJ/listener relationship, with dozens of listener-driven features such as You Take Control and Gig Pig. (The former, unsurprisingly, lets the audience choose tracks; the latter sends a fan to five gigs in a week, and gets his/her hungover report the next morning.) It would disrupt the rhythm of a lot of lives to lose those friendly voices.
