Liam Gallagher and chums

TFI Friday is back for what is, effectively, its reunion gig this week. But will it be good TFI Friday, where you'd get a decent band and something inventive? Or will it be bad TFI Friday, when it had passed the point that it had forgotten it had viewers and approached its tasks with an attitude of 'if we're having fun, then the audience will enjoy us having fun, right?'

Your finger is hovering over the Record button.

But which will it be?

Which will it be, NME?

TFI Friday will return for a one-off live special at 9pm next Friday (June 12), hosted by Chris Evans. A TFI spokesman recently confirmed to The Sun that Gallagher and Daltrey will perform 'My Generation' as part of a supergroup featuring The Lightning Seeds' Ian Broudie and former Oasis drummer (and Ringo Starr's son) Zak Starkey.

Ah. Thanks for the clarification.

Suddenly, Kate Humble living with nomads on BBC2 seems very compelling indeed.

Rajars: two key moments

Two key things from the latest round of Rajar audience figures.

First, Chris Evans is now pulling the largest-ever radio audience (this century, at least), with 9.91 million. (This isn't at the expense of Grimshaw, either, as the Radio 1 breakfast show has started to grow an audience, too).

Second: 6Music now has more listeners than Radio 3. Not bad for a network that was supposed to be nothing more than a trivia question by now.

Jesus dropped from Chris Evans show

Eliza Doolittle turned up to do a tune or two for Chris Evans, and ended up changing some of the words. The Christian Post is outraged:

Doolittle had to change her lyrics from "Sometimes I wish I was Jesus, I'd get my Air Max on and run across the sea for you" to 'Sometimes I wish it was easy to get my Air Max on and run across the sea for you."

"It was weird because I'm not being blasphemous, I just meant 'I wish I could run across water and see you,' but maybe wishing for the power of God was blasphemous enough for them," Doolittle told the Daily Mail in a recent interview over the issue.

It's not clear why this has suddenly become a thing - the show was on at the end of November last year, but never one to object to an unlikely resurrection, an ex-Archbish has piled in:

Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey has spoken out against the radio network's decision, saying he is "totally appalled" over the incident. "I'm not surprised the BBC is behind this because their attitude tends to be to dumb down the Christian message."

Is it worth pointing out that the same programme featured - as Chris Evans' show does every day - a couple of minutes of spiritual reflection in the Pause For Thought slot? Probably not.

Is it even worth asking Carey to explain why removing a lyric that hooks one of the miracles held sacred by Christians to a pair of expensive plimsoles in the context of a weak love song is "dumbing down" a Christian message, while including that lyric in the song, presumably, isn't?

And, naturally, it turns out it was Doolittle's label which pushed for the lyric change. Perhaps Carey was just taking the Mail's story on faith alone?

(Side note: Interesting that the Christian Post seems to be unaware that Carey is no longer head of the Church off England.)

Rajars: Grimshaw climbs

The latest audience figures, out this morning, show that Nick Grimshaw's Radio One breakfast audience is growing, and closing the gap with the position he inherited. MediaGuardian:

The 29-year-old added 709,000 listeners for a total average weekly audience of 6.3 million during the final quarter of last year, a 12.6% rise over the previous period, according to the latest official Rajar figures published on Thursday.

However, Grimshaw is still below the average weekly audience for his first three months on the Radio 1 breakfast show and 400,000 listeners off Moyles's last quarterly audience figure of 6.7 million.

"Congratulations, buddy, although you're still getting fewer listeners than the guy who had to leave Radio One because his audience was distorting the figures and profile for the station as a whole. If you can close that gap, we can start having a pop at you for clearly being too mainstream and pulling an audience outside the target for the network."

Curiously, Grimshaw's growth isn't at the expense of his nearest rival - Chris Evans also added half a million listeners.

6Music is within a nudge of two million listeners across the week, which isn't bad for a station which Mark Thompson wanted to have humanely destroyed.

(They never drag him to Parliament to ask about that, do they? Surely 'writing off the costs involved in establishing a radio station and building its audience' would have been just as expensive as the Digital Media Initiative? Wasn't the original decision, and the need to reverse it, an equally terrible set of events?)

Cameron shouldn't have been on Chris Evans

Apparently, David Cameron was down the Olympic Park on Thursday. Of course he was; he hasn't done a hand's turn for the last fortnight, instead choosing to try and photobomb the Olympics in a scratchy Team GB vest, clutching a Wenlock.

This time, though, he spent twenty minutes chuntering on on the Chris Evans show.

We know how much the Tories hate any hint of the bias at the BBC, and yet they seem surprisingly relaxed about this, despite it being a breach of guidelines. MediaGuardian explains:

The BBC has strict guidelines governing the appearance of politicians on non-news programmes, which require senior executive approval, as well as topical issues that are the subject of public debate.

Such is the level of sensitivity over the interview that the BBC is believed to have discussed internally whether to remove it from the iPlayer. It remained available at the time of publication.

"Nobody knew anything until it was too late to do anything about it. It was a huge cock-up," said one BBC insider.

Cameron was so desperate to please he even started to act like he was part of Steve Wright's posse:

Cameron read out a number of text messages from listeners in the "listener breaking news" section of the show, which included "I let my new chickens out this morning" and "On my way to pick up my new Mini".

The prime minister commented: "That's buying British, I approve of that."

Mini is a German company, Prime Minister. Remember, Thatcher flogged off most of our car industry to the private sector, Dave?

Perhaps it wouldn't have been such a disaster if Chris Evans had been anything other than a fawning patsy:

Evans, who introduced Cameron as the "prime minister of Great Britain, the ultimate Team GB", read out the newspaper headlines and asked Cameron: "They've not been bad headlines over the last 13 days, have they prime minister?"

Labour, to its credit, has kept quiet on the matter.

Rajars: Evans widens his gap over Moyles

Latest radio audience figures are out this morning, with the headline that Chris Evans now has a lead of two million plus over Chris Moyles at breakfast time.

Evans' value to Radio 2 is shown by his follow-on presenters also enjoying record audiences - both Ken Bruce and Jeremy Vine are getting more listeners than ever before.

It's arguable that Radio 1 might not be chasing the biggest breakfast show, and, as part of the remit that might be desirable. But, unarguably, the Moyles programme isn't designed to not strive to be the biggest. It's ten years since Chris Moyles claimed he could kick anyone's arse at breakfast; that's clearly no longer true. Hopefully the BBC are coming up with a way for him to make a dignified exit.

John Humphrys snapping at Chris Moyles

Here, perhaps, is a sign that it might be time for Radio One to review their breakfast show: the battle between Chris Evans and Chris Moyles for morning crown is now well over; instead, Chris Moyles is struggling to avoid being beaten by Today. MediaGuardian does the RAJARs:

BBC Radio 4's Today programme had an average weekly audience of 7.15 million in the last three months of 2011, a whisker away from its biggest ever listenership and just 90,000 behind Moyles on Radio 1, who had an audience of 7.24 million.

In other good news, 6Music again reported a record audience. If Mark Thompson had had his way, the station would have been off the air by now.

Quick radio listening figure round-up

That 6Music closure? The gift that keeps on giving for the network - it's had a year-on-year doubling of audience in this morning's RAJAR figures.

Can I just point out the Guardian's coverage of digital radio figures seems to have been written in a bit of a rush - it says 6 is up, Asian Network is up, 1Xtra and 5Live Sports Extra are down, and then that Radio 7 "bucked the corporation's digital trend" because its figures were up. Eh?

Also might have been worth mentioning alongside this:

NME Radio rose 17.7% on a year ago and was up 11.9% on the previous quarter to 253,000 listeners.

... that the station was canned during the period.

What's clear from these figures is that the digital audience appears to be volatile, which you have to suspect is down to the methodology of counting rather than the actual audiences:

Smash Hits was up 16.1% on the previous quarter, although down 14.3% year on year, to 990,000 listeners.

A crash in listeners you can believe. A rally in listeners you can believe. But this rushing up and down by such large amounts each quarter kind of undermines the credibility of the numbers.

In the battle between Chris Evans and Chris Moyles, Evans is winning the who can shed the most listeners race - Evans has misplaced a million in three months, Moyles just 200,000.

Daily Mail welcomes our new Ginger overlord

Nice email from James P as the new Rajar figures come in:

Thought you might be interested to read the Daily Mail's ReverseFerretMungous piece on how, actually, it turns out Chris Evans isn't a demonic egotistical megalomaniac dancing on Terry Wogan's grave (except on Fridays) after all:

To be fair to the Mail (who, after all, are all about the fairness), they've resisted the temptation to pretend their last six months' coverage never happened, and have instead printed a piece from a former critic admitting Evans has proved his fears wrong.

Being a Daily Mail piece about the BBC though, the article does crowbar in the obligatory reference to Jonathan Ross's 'vile call'. And, in an epic display of irony, this reminder of Andrew Sachs' existence takes the form of a quote from Evans; "Andrew Sachs doesn't want to be remembered for this. He wants to be remembered for what he's done brilliantly"

Words, of course, the Mail will remember. I'll bet they've already got the 'Hounded to death by the BBC: Sachs of Sachsgate dead' frontpage ready to roll.

6Music: Here come the listeners

The couple of Sonys might not have done much to protect 6Music from the long journey at sunrise, but the latest listening figures might. 6Music has broken the million listeners barrier for the first time, reports MediaGuardian:

6 Music had an average weekly reach of 1.02 million listeners in the first three months of this year, up from 695,000 in the final three months of last year, according to official Rajar figures published today.

It turns out the plans to close the network were more effective than any marketing campaign the BBC has tried so far.

In other RAJARs news, Chris Evans remains safely ahead of Chris Moyles at breakfast - both saw their audiences grow. So fears that Evans would lose Wogan's listeners were misplaced; nor, apparently, has Evans brought in a younger crowd. The average age of a Radio 2 listener is still 51.

Evan's figures, 9.53 million, gives him the largest radio audience since the current RAJAR methodology came in back in 1999.

Chris Evans ruins a thousand headlines

There's probably nobody more surprised than Radio 2 that Chris Evans' audience has increased from the level Terry Wogan left it. But there won't be anyone more disappointed than the tabloids, who must have already crafted their "TOG off" headlines and "thousands of Wogan loyalists desert smutty Evans show" standfirsts.

Still, there's a couple of months before the official figures come out - time yet for the Mail to come up with a way that this is A Bad Thing.

[Thanks to James P for the story]

RAJARS: 6Music finds listeners

It's feeling a bit grim for 6Music at the moment, a station which sits in the BBC Radio family knowing that if the going gets hard in the next couple of years (and by that, we mean "if Cameron gets in"), it's going to be very hard to survive. The sounds of idiots shouting "why not sell of Radio One and Two, because they're probably no different to Heart, I should imagine, if I'd ever listened to them" will be hard enough to cope with; you fear that a network which can only claim to be distinctive and interesting will struggle in such an environment.

So, let's just cheer ourselves up with listening figures for 6Music up 12.3% year-on-year.

Things are a bit more mixed over at NME:

Indie music magazine spin-off NME Radio was down 18.8% on the previous quarter but up 16.4% year on year to 177,000.

You suspect that this might be down less to any great fluctuation in listeners, more to the difficulty in tracking a national station with such a small audience to begin with.

Along the dial, the Asian Network, which is already on death watch has lost another 5% of its audience.

Back on the old radio, Absolute resumed the quarter-on-quarter declines which have greeted its change of name. And Wogan went out on a high, meaning that Chris Evans is going to have to prepare for headlines accusing him of 'losing' listeners in three months' time.

Penk flaps about Chris Evans

Steve Penk is the man bought and broke/fixed Oldham's 96.2 The Revolution, depending on if you think this sort of playlist offers variety and choice or not. (Note the 'wacky' pictures on the playlist replacing some of the artists, by the way. Hilarity in shoes.)

Now Penk is moaning to the BBC Trust about what he sees as "excessive" coverage of Chris Evans' debut on breakfasts at Radio 2:

In a statement from The Revolution he says of his decision to write to the Trust: "Under the BBC’s Charter, the Trust is required to have regard to the competitive impact of the BBC's activities on the wider market. The Trust has adopted a Statement of Policy on this.

"Last weekend’s unashamed promotion of the new Radio 2 Breakfast Show flies in the face of the BBC’s own cross-promotion codes.

"In developing its code, the BBC Trust made reference to Ofcom's Cross Promotion Code and also Chapter 10 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code (Ofcom's Codes).

"Ofcom's Codes outline principles for ensuring that cross-promotions on television are distinct from advertising and that promotions on television, including cross-promotions, do not prejudice fair and effective competition”.

He also noted that he saw the 'placement' of Evans on various BBC shows - including Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, The One Show “and, bizarrely”, according to him, the Sunday morning political programme The Andrew Marr Show - as unacceptable.

“I was half expecting to see him on Songs of Praise.”

Hahahahahahaha. Songs Of Praise. You kidder, Penk. You should be on the radio, you really should.

Man with new programme appears on some shows doing an interview: is that really so odd, Penk? Given that every national media outlet in the country thought that the changing of the guard at Europe's most popular radio programme was worth covering as a news story, is this really something that surprises you?

Interesting that you didn't get upset about the amount of Tenant on the telly around the Christmas Doctor Who. Almost as if you don't really give a hoot about the principle, except when it might lure one or two listeners away from your own programme.

Penk's apparent lack of understanding of what he's talking about is revealed by his description of Evans appearing on Andrew Marr's programme as "bizarre" - yes, how could someone involved in light entertainment be on a programme sharing screen time with, erm, Maureen Lipman? Marr's programme has always had the greasepaint and popcorn crowd nudging alongside the politicians.

Still, Songs Of Praise with a radio DJ on it? That's a crazy idea, right? (Although, actually, if Penk had watched this week's programme, he'd have seen Richard Coles, former presenter of Radio 5's Fabulous, doing the honours. You couldn't make it up, could you, Penky?)

Staying put: Radcliffe turns down Five Live

In the radio gadabout as Radio 2 shuffles to cope with the disappearance of Terry Wogan, there had been rumours Mark Radcliffe had been going to move to take over Simon Mayo's now-vacant seat on Five Live.

That's not going to happen, reckons MediaGuardian, because Radcliffe has decided he'd quite like to carry on playing records, and he wasn't thrilled that the plum slot, doing the movie programme on Fridays, was still going to be done by Mayo.

There's something delicious - given this about a shuffle required by Chris Evans moving his show - that a major BBC show has been turned down because the presenter wasn't required to work on Fridays.

Gloria enraged? Mail overstates Hunniford's stance

Now it's official that Terry Wogan is off to enjoy a lie-in, and Chris Evans is going to take over, there seems to be some confusion. Especially amongst Daily Mail readers, there seems to be a misunderstanding; an expectation that TFI-era Evans is going to turn up to do the show, with testicle jokes, beer and Kula Shaker over by the piano. This is the howl of anguish from Radio 2 "loyal" listeners who haven't bothered to listen to the more mellow Evans programme on the network.

Still, it's good news for the Mail who haven't had anything to wrap up in a horseshoe and throw at the BBC for, ooh, hours. And it's not just their readers who are struggling to contain their rage, oh no:

Chris Evans tells Terry Wogan fans he'll deliver 'first rate family show' as Gloria Hunniford leads campaign against 'childish' successor

She is, is she? What's Hunniford doing, then? A petition? A march on Broadcasting House? Civil disobedience? How does she intend to be the Joanna Lumley of this campaign?

They include 'shocked' veteran broadcaster Gloria Hunniford, who said: 'I would have reservations. But that's only a personal opinion. He's a good broadcaster, but I personally don't think he's of the same calibre as Terry.'

So she has said "personally, I don't think he's quite good enough" - that hardly seems to be "leading a campaign", does it?

Farewell, Terry: Wogan quits Radio 2

Terry Wogan just announced that he's leaving the Radio 2 breakfast show with, as widely predicted, Chris Evans taking up the slot from the New Year.

An on-form Evans against a fading Moyles? That, simultaneously, is a hell of a personal grudge match and a rather abrupt truncation of choice for people who like unchallenging pop at breakfast.

Wogan is - if rumours are to be believed - going to resurface at weekends on Radio 2.

Sony Awards: The winners

So, we know that Chris Moyles was mocked - mocked - by being told that he's one of the very best broadcasters in Britain. But who else won Sony prizes?

Vanessa Feltz won speech personality of the year, although she beat Ian Wright on TalkSport to that one, so maybe not quite so unusual. Nick Ferrari won speech broadcaster (a subtly different category), which was more surprising

David Rodigan's Kiss programme won best specialist music show, Chris Evans took both music radio personality and the entertainment award, which seems to confirm the theory that Evans does his best work when he's not trying to be "Chris Evans off the telly".

Radio 3 was, as Gordon Smart pointed out, station of the year. Kerrang was best station broadcasting to an TSA of a million plus, somehow being specialist and general at the same time according to the judges (no, us neither.) BBC Hereford & Worcester won the station prize at the next tier down, and Beacon Radio in Shropshire picked up the best small station award.

Fun Kids - perhaps the most godawfully named radio staion in the entire world - picked up digital station of the year.

Music broadcaster of the year went to Mark Radcliffe, which is well-deserved. Although you have to feel sorry for Stuart Maconie who seems to have been inadvertently labelled a sidekick by the Sonys. Which isn't fair at all.

Winners in full:

The Music Programme Award

Words and Music – BBC Radio Arts and Radio 3 for Radio 3

The Specialist Music Programme Award

David Rodigan – Kiss Specialist Production Team for the Kiss Network

The Music Radio Personality of the Year

Chris Evans – BBC Radio 2

The Music Broadcaster of the Year

Mark Radcliffe – Smooth Operations for BBC Radio 2

The Music Special Award

Vaughan Williams: Valiant for Truth – BBC Radio 3

The Entertainment Award

Chris Evans Drivetime – BBC Radio 2

The Music Programming Award

Classic FM

The Drama Award

Mr Larkin's Awkward Day – BBC Radio Drama for Radio 4

The Sports Award

5 Live Olympic Breakfast – BBC News Programmes and BBC Sport for 5 Live

The Speech Award

Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode – BBC News for 5 Live

The News and Current Affairs Award

The World Today – BBC World Service News and Current Affairs for the World Service

The News Special Award

The Investigation: Never Too Old To Care – A Stark Production for BBC Radio Scotland

The News Journalist of the Year

Gavin Lee – BBC News for 5 Live

The Speech Radio Personality of the Year

Vanessa Feltz – BBC London 94.9

The Speech Broadcaster of the Year

Nick Ferrari – LBC 97.3

The Breakfast Show Award

5 Live Breakfast – BBC News for 5 Live

The Listener Participation Award

Electric Radio Brixton: Daily Show – Prison Radio Association and Electric Radio Brixton for Electric Radio Brixton

The Comedy Award

Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show! – Komedia Entertainment and Smooth Operations for BBC Radio 4

The Feature Award

Between The Ears: Staring At The Wall – BBC Radio Documentaries for Radio 3

The Interview Award

Feargal Keane interviews Lana Vandenberghe – Taking a Stand, BBC Radio Current Affairs for Radio 4

The Breaking News Award

The Rangers Riot – BBC Radio Manchester

The Live Event Coverage Award

Absolute Coldplay – Absolute Radio and TBI Media for Absolute Radio

The Community Award

A Sound Fix (Spots) – Prison Radio Association for Electric Radio Brixton

The Themed Programming Award

Family Life – BBC Hereford and Worcester

The Promo Award

Kiss The Planet – What Will You Do? – Kiss Imaging Team for the Kiss Network

The Competition Award

Facebuck – Galaxy Network Imaging for Galaxy (Manchester, Birmingham, Yorkshire and North East)

The Station Imaging Award

1Xtra

The Internet Programme Award

The Budgerigar and the Prisoner – Clifton Diocese.com

The Multiplatform Radio Award

Wimbledon – BBC Radio 5 Live Interactive for 5 Live

Station of the Year (Under 300,000 listeners)

Beacon Radio (Shropshire)

Station of the Year (300,000 – one million)

BBC Hereford and Worcester

Station of the Year (One million plus)

Kerrang 105.2

Digital Station of the Year

Fun Kids

UK Station of the Year

BBC Radio 3

Sleeper weekend: Louise Wener

A quick scrabble round some desleeperbloked Louise Wener stuff.

First, here's Lou playing Poker with the bloke out the Barclaycard Advert and the bloke out the Pimms advert. Presumably she must have creamed them, which would explain why they did the adverts. If you don't want us to spoil the result, don't worry, it's got something to do with cards: Not embeddable, unfortunately

Next, a brief snatch of Louise pre-guest seating on Shooting Stars, Vic and Bob's welcome-wearing-out gameshow:



Finally, her doing what she does every bit as well as playing snap for money and standing on a revolving disc - singing, inevitably, on TFI, doing Life's A Gas:



[Part of Sleeper weekend]

Sleeper weekend: Click... Off... Gone

The number of times Sleeper appeared on TFI Friday, you might almost suspect that Chris Evans had a small part of his heart that would, forever, be at Lou Wener's beck and call. This is from Christmas 1996 - we're guessing, based on Evans' gear, although it could also be from the period when he started to believe he was Lord Of Entertainment.



[Part of Sleeper Weekend]

Radio One More Time: Steve Wright's Fridays off

Legend tell us that it was Chris Evans' demands to be allowed Fridays off that led to his departure from Radio One - Matthew Bannister feeling that having a different breakfast show on Friday morning would be a something of an oddity. Evans insisted it was either Fridays off, or he was, and so he went. The sudden vacuum in the network's key slot sucked in Mark and Lard and made the uproar over Danny Baker seem like the polite mutterings of disgruntled parish council.

However, Evans' request wasn't quite so odd set in the context of some of the network's earlier schedules, not least the inexplicable time in the 1980s when Steve Wright was catapulted from his "in the Afternoon" slot into Sunday mornings. To make up for the horror of having to get up at, ooh, eight o'clock, Wright's hitherto Monday-to-Friday programme became a Monday-to-Thursday affair.

You can almost see the logic at work here - Fridays have always been slightly different on Radio One, with a weekend-starts-here approach, but the traditional switchover usually came in early evening - Andy Peebles banging on about sport instead of Kid Jensen, the Friday Rock Show where you'd normally find John Peel, Roundtable in Peter Powell's shoes. Pushing the start of the weekend schedule back to 2pm on a Friday gave the sense of arriving way, way too early at a house party.

It also meant Radio One had a problem trying to work out what to do with the slot - it was still a prime, daytime programme, so needed someone with enough profile to carry the audience along; indeed, with only one programme a week at this time, the challenge was to find someone capable to connecting quickly with the listeners while making up for the disappointment of the usual host being away. Trouble was, there wasn't a great deal of spare capacity in the network's presentation team - which is probably why they'd needed to get Wright on to Sundays, with his "we've just got back from the church" jingles and all - and so, at first, they tried propelling Early Show host Adrian John into the mid-afternoon. Our memory suggests that he used to do the early show and the afternoons on Fridays, but surely this can't be right, can it?

John tried to make the slot his own - his Beadlesque It's Only A Wind-Up could be quite inspired, as when he took advantage of scaffolding on Big Ben to ask tourists what they thought about the new digital clockface being installed - but it always felt like he was a housesitter.

After John, the Friday vacancy was used as a testing ground for new presenters - some with a degree of success (Mark "meMarkPage" Page) and some without (Paul Jordan, who eventually returned to Red Rose's deconsecrated church studios in Preston) before the idea that Sunday mornings were the new Friday afternoons was quietly dropped and normalcy returned.