Radio 1: Still a country for old men

The Guardian has a fairly in-depth interview with Radio 1 controller Ben Cooper this morning, with a couple of interesting headlines.

The first is that Cooper wants Radio 1 to become "the Netflix of music radio":

“I want Radio 1 to be the Netflix of music radio,” he says, trundling out the catchy soundbite to back his latest plan: taking a leaf out of the hugely successful US streaming service’s book by making programmes available on demand.

But... the programmes already are available on demand, aren't they?

Turns out these are different programmes:

He is starting out with 25 hours of on-demand “phone-first” content, such as a weekly “Top 10 most-played tracks of the week” programme, but intends to seriously ramp up the hours next year. “In this job, you’ve got to keep across what young audiences are doing. They want content on whatever device they are using, increasingly the phone, when they want it, and that is the key for us to stay relevant and stay young.”

There's a few problems with this - if people aren't listening to Radio 1, why would they give a raspberry tuppence about listening to a programme which plays the 'most played' tracks? "Hey kids, those programmes you're ignoring? Want to listen to the sort of music they're playing that isn't encouraging you to listen to them?"

More importantly, if you were looking for a Netflix for music radio, you might think that's a space that Spotify are already in.

And Radio 1 as Netflix would only work if Netflix concerned itself solely with, say, romcoms and slasher flicks. If you're looking for something akin to Netflix, you'd need something that covers a range of styles and genres. Something like, ooh, iPlayer Radio.

To be fair, though, Cooper has had some degree of success at extending Radio 1 as a brand beyond radio - a large swathe of its audience never tune in on DAB or FM. On YouTube, Radio 1 is thriving, or at least doing as well as Zoella.

Then there's the Grimshaw question:

Meanwhile, shouldn’t he be more worried about Nick Grimshaw? Earlier this year, the station’s breakfast show audience reached its lowest level in more than 13 years. Grimshaw, who took over the coveted gig from Chris Moyles, is about to become older than the station’s average listener. After four years of trying, is his use-by date looming?

“I’m not operating Logan’s Run,” quips Cooper, referring to the 1976 sci-fi film where people get systematically vaporised when they turn 30. “Grimmy was asked to do a job and it was a difficult job. Chris’s job was to build the biggest audience he could, the most successful breakfast show Radio 1 ever had. The BBC Trust asked me to get Radio 1 younger so I brought in Nick to do that. Grimmy has come in and he is the No 1 youth presenter in the UK. He is knocking it out of the ballpark when it comes to connecting with young audiences on a daily basis.”

Is he the "number one youth presenter in the UK", though? If he is, why has he settled so comfortably into the X Factor Home for The Formerly Influential?

But then, the 46 year-old Cooper isn't going to willingly suggest the route to a younger audience is through a perpetually younger team, is he?

Djobit: Ed "Stewpot" Stewart

Ed Stewart, known as "Stewpot", has died.

One of the many who made the leap from pirate radio to the starting line-up of Radio One, Stewart wound up doing Junior Choice for years, playing Nellie The Elephant and the like.

Ah, Junior Choice. It's become a cliche to cough the word "yewtree" when writing about any DJ from this era, but his own autobiography - reviewed by Danny Baker for Rocking Vicar - did leave "Junior Choice" seeming somewhat appropriately inapproiate:

"I met my wife when she was 13, in 1970…" P.146 (He was 34 at this point)

"…my wife started on my stomach – and nothing else! – when she was 13…" P.147

"I arrived (at her parents) at 7pm and was greeted at the door by what I can only describe as a 13 year old apparition! She was simply stunning." (P147)

"…(the following year, so 14 now) I travelled to Italy to see her. I had just split from Eve Graham of The New Seekers and so, as the song goes, I was "Free Again"! P153

He marries the poor girl when she is 17. Elsewhere –

"We played a charity football match at a girls' school in Lingfield. After the match we visited some of the boarders, who were mostly epileptic. The pupils had just reached puberty and the girls wouldn't let us out of the dormitory. We had to be rescued by the staff!" (P 177)

But it's not all schoolgirls and cheeky winks. Stewpot also finds space to record his contributions to British culture, as Baker records:

And consider this. When you or I get to 66 years old and might, in a drunken orgy of self congratulation actually toy with penning something for the ages about our brief flit across these shifting sands – how much space shall we allow to that one edition of "Celebrity Weakest Link" we pitched up on. A line? A mention in the fulsome notes at the back?

Try NINE FUCKING PAGES! Nine fucking pages in a large print volume devoted to who said what on an edition of "The Weakest Link". That's a full life examined alright, Stewpot!

I swear I got through two complete highlighter pens. Wendy had to call me five times for dinner. Me! For dinner! Five times!

At Christmas 2014, the Daly Express caught up with him for a 'where are the now' piece:

I’m in touch with some of the old faces, including David Hamilton, Paul Burnett and Tony Brandon. We’ll either meet socially or at a convention, such as the tribute to pirate radio in Zurich five years ago

Not entirely convinced that people you saw at effectively a works do half a decade count as people you're in touch with.

He was alright on Crackejack, though. His role was presenter, effectively a headmaster whose idea of dress-down-Friday was to wear a blazer rather than a suit jacket. But somebody had to prove

What the pop papers say: Missing by Moyles

Week three of the car-crash that is Free NME looking for an identity, and it manages to make last week's Robert Pattinson cover look like a wise choice. For staring out of the front page this time round, it's Chris Moyles.

Now, a Chris Moyles cover by itself doesn't have to be bad, if it was leading into a piece about Chris Moyles written out of curiosity. Instead, it just waves off four pages of fawning.

Moyles kicks off by announcing he's a feminist; he underpins this by listing the women he works with and muttering about tax on sanitary products. They ask about the whole "offering to fuck Charlotte Church now she's 16" thing - Moyles' defence is that he "said it once. I moved on." And how does NME counter this? Er, by just moving on to the next thing.

The next thing is his homophobia and racism. Unbelievably, Moyles uses the human shield defence - "one of my best friends is transgender".

Does the NME point out that this justification - don't judge me on what I do, judge me on who I know - is incredibly weak? No. Just write it down, type it up, print it out, move it on.

His continuing beef with Radio 1 is given paragraphs of space - which could have made for some interesting commentary; Moyles at Radio X suggests a man who's still obsessed with his Radio Ex, using the platform to try and convince Radio 1 that he's having a great time and he's really glad that they split up. Is there any attempt to quiz him on his obsession with Ben Cooper? Nope.

His tax arrangements? Mentioned just to allow Moyles to trot out a "I didn't break the law, and I paid it anyway" line before moving on. Yes, given the chance to ask him about his second hand car business, the NME blinks. Any opportunity to explore the question is gone.

Even on the reformatting of XFM as Radio X, which you think the NME would have once cared about, is treated in a way that will have Global Radio PR purring:

Don't expect to come to Moyles to find obscure new grime artists or cutting-edge psych-rock bands. Radio X has retained new-music champion John Kennedy's late-night X-Posure show for that. Moyles is here for the express purpose of entertaining people as they battle hangovers, get ready for another mind-numbing day in the office or peel out of bed before going to college.

That radio station which was supposed to be the home of alternative music on British radio? Don't worry, they've kept a tiny rump of that late at night - presumably when the 'real' audience is out building up those hangovers for the morning.

Back when Radio One was shunting John Peel ever further into the night, NME called the BBC on the bullshit claim that you can support new music best by putting it where nobody is listening.

Why on earth would NME give such a free pass to the new Radio X?

Clearly, in part, because the idea of taking something that used to be a distinctive, alternative voice for new music and pissing it down to yet another chart-and-chat platform might resonate with NME. The token music piece this week is a very, very, very short feature on Wolf Alice. They're dubbed "the best new band in Britain". The NME first wrote about Wolf Alice three years ago. The proper NME did. If they're pretending that Wolf Alice are a discovery now, no wonder they'd think John Kennedy is more than enough of that cutting-edge stuff.

The more prosaic reason for the free passes handed to Moyles and Radio X is probably the two page advert that appears immediately before the interview.

One other sign that the NME has lost its mojo quite badly - the person who used to maintain Wikipedia's list of NME covers hasn't bothered to update the list with the new ones. You can see why.

What to do with the new space opened up by the moving Chart Show

With The Chart Show disappearing down a hole round the back of old Mel's place ("moving to Friday teatimes"), Radio One suddenly has a two hour gap in its schedules on Sunday nights.

How would you fill such a space in the schedules?

I can't think of an idea.

Nor could Radio One, it turns out:

Radio 1 has announced a new Sunday show which will replace the current Official Chart slot when it moves to Fridays next month.

Hosted by CBBC presenter Cell Spellman, the new show will split into two parts, one devoted to new pop music with the other playing number one hits.
[...]
Spellman said: "The best station on national radio has been responsible for introducing me to so much incredible and varied music over the years, I just hope I can return the favour and help make those car journeys a little more memorable for the listeners with a mix of fun, top tunes and a little bit of cheeky chat!"

The reference to car journeys is a little odd - six on a Sunday is hardly prime Drivetime, is it?

BBC Trust agrees to kill the distinctiveness of Radio 1

Radio 1. What makes it difference from commercial radio, and - come to that - from streaming stuff over Spotify?

It'd be the live music and the sessions. There's something you can point at and say, there's something that proves the value in having a station like that, funded by licence fee.

The BBC Trust agree.

Except, they don't agree enough to protect that part of the service:

BBC Radio 1 is to make dramatic cuts to its live music output, with the number of sessions by pop and rock bands dropping from 250 to 160 per year.

The station will also reduce the number of live events it covers from 25 to 10.

The BBC Trust has agreed to the changes, despite audience research showing "that live music is seen as a key strength of Radio 1".

"Yes, you're very good at what you do. Play some more records instead, eh, that's cheaper."

The BBC Trust is chaired, you'll recall, by Rona Fairhead, who seems to be bringing the same sure touch she shows at her other job at HSBC to the work she's doing at the BBC.

What else is in the Trust findings? Well...

Radio 1 and 1Xtra's roles supporting musicians and djs with career advice is now mainly going to be picked up BBC Introducing - a change which reflects what's been happening anyway;

Radio 1 and 1Xtra will share more documentaries; 1Xtra's requirement for 20% speech programming has been dropped as a result (although the worry is that 'repeating Radio 1 documentaries' isn't the same sort of thing as creating the crafted speech programmes it has been doing.);

1Xtra can now do dj mixes instead of club nights;

Radio 2 will no longer have to do 'readings' as part of its remit, on the grounds that who knew Radio 2 had to do readings?, but it still "should" do readings. That's clear, yeah?

The need for "regular" comedy programmes on Radio 2 has been watered down to just "comedy programmes";

6Music comes off largely untouched, although the previous target of "15% of concerts and session from archives" is turned into a more easy to track "Broadcast at least 6,500 concert tracks or sessions from the BBC’s music archive each year, with at least 1,150 in daytime". You might wonder why, if the Trust wants to see 6Music using the BBC Archive so widely, it's just signed off on proposals to limit the size at which that archive grows in the same sodding document;

Radio 3 has to do more jazz;

and less drama;

and Asian Network has to provide at least 24 hours of news and current affairs every week. Not clear if this includes sticking Five Live on overnight.

The worst thing in these new rules is that Radio 1 is going to mostly cutback the sessions and live music out of the mainstream; it's a double blow to distinctiveness.

Madonna now peers with Status Quo

Oh, dear. Madonna now finds herself rubbing shoulders with Cliff Richard and Status Quo, shut out of the Radio One playlist and waah-waahing that it's sooooo unfair:

Pop star Madonna has called Radio 1 "discriminatory and unfair" after it declined to play her latest single.

Living For Love failed to make the station's playlist, which dictates its most-played songs, when it was released last month, leading to accusations of ageism from the 56-year-old's fans.

Speaking to The Sun, Madonna said she was "shocked" by her exclusion.

"I was like, 'Wait a second. Shouldn't it be to do with whether you wrote a good, catchy pop song?"

Come on, Madge, if you were being judged on quality alone, you'd not have been heard on Radio One since 1999.

It's hard to admit, obviously, but you're just not relevant to the target Radio One audience. It's not because of your age. It's because you sound tired.

In the Guardian a couple of weeks ago, David Connor - who saw Madonna play the Haçienda - summed up the problem she faces before she even faced it:

This story still definitely impresses people. I now teach electrical installation to 16- to 19-year-olds and, whenever I’ve mentioned it, they ask, “Who’s Madonna?” Although one of them once piped up, “I know who she is – she’s that old bird.”

I think Status Quo demanded some sort of parliamentary enquiry or something. You could try that.

It won't do any good, but it's important to keep busy as you enter your golden years.

Cotton gone: Fearne leaves Radio One

Fearne Cotton - who, with her Very work is very much the Marshall Ward of our times - is leaving Radio One:

"I have had the most incredible decade broadcasting on Radio 1, meeting wonderful people, helping break artists and watching live music from the world's best," she says.

In her ten years on the station, not a single record or live performance she introduced was anything less than "really, really, fantastic".

Fearne's replacement is, surprisingly, Simon Bates. "I did this show before and I absolutely ruled," explained Bates at a press conference, "and I'm delighted to be returning to my spiritual home." The press conference broke up when he realised he was speaking to an empty room, and that the call from the BBC had actually been a dream. A beautiful dream, but... a dream nevertheless.

Clara Amfo is actually taking over the slot, and this feels like a significant moment. With Zane Lowe also moving on, it looks like the era when Radio One recruited by picking high-profile names off TV and dumping them on the air is now behind it. Amfo - despite already having landed the chart show job - is so (relatively) obscure that she doesn't yet qualify for a little box on the side of her Google search results, and her Wikipedia page is a bit of a mess.

I suspect that won't be the case much longer.

Lowe goes; Mac moves up: Radio One shuffles the evening

I never really thought Zane Lowe would stick around long at Radio One. I was wrong - he's been doing what-was-the-evening-session for twelve years now. That's as long as the entire Goodier/Whiley/Lamacq version lasted.

Not bad for a man who until then had been shouting on MTV2 for a living.

He's off now, though, into the wilderness ("to join iTunesU radio").

The good news, though, is that Annie Mac is going to take over the slot - which is an excellent decision.

The handover comes at the end of March.

25 years ago today: Bates on the wall

If yesterday was the 25th anniversary of the fall of The Berline Wall, that makes this morning the 25th anniversary of Simon Bates turning up in the city to do the Golden Hour from the midst of history.

This was most memorable because, arriving too late to get a good spot, Bates explained his position like a person who'd inadvertently booked a fortnight in Boppard rather than Cologne. The people you saw down at the Brandenburg Gate were just the sort of people who want to get on TV, revealed Bates, but here - further down the Wall - was where the real Germans were.

It sounds less and less convincing with each passing year, doesn't it?

6Music nears 2 million

There's a new set of Rajar radio audience figures this morning, and they're lovely for 6Music. A weekly audience nudging two million, and - says MediaGuardian:

Laverne, the station’s mid-morning DJ, presented its most popular show with 868,000 listeners.

In a sign of the changing way people are listening to the radio, a record 27% of listening for 6 Music was online or via smartphone and tablet apps, the most of any station and more than four times the industry average of 6.4%.
[...]
A number of its presenters all had record audiences in the last quarter, including Shaun Keaveny’s breakfast show, Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie’s afternoon programme, Marc Riley, Huey Morgan and Mary Anne Hobbs.

Elsewhere, the Nick Grimshaw figures have been spun so much it's hard to tell if either nobody or everybody is listening; Ben Cooper has made a stab at putting a candle on some lukewarm Radio 1 figures:

Cooper, who also oversees digital sibling station 1Xtra, said Radio 1 was “leading the industry in becoming a multiplatform youth brand”, including a YouTube channel with more than 1.6 million subscribers and plans for a Radio 1 channel on the BBC’s iPlayer.

Cooper said the Rajar figures “only tell part of the story. I’m very pleased that in the traditionally difficult summer quarter, the Radio 1 Breakfast Show has 240,000 new listeners in the year."

If you're pointing to your YouTube subscribers as a metric on the day actual listening figures come out, it's pretty clear you're disappointed by your listening figures.

But at least Cooper wasn't reduced to mentioning the number of retweets Zane Lowe gets. That's when you know you're nearing the endgame.

What the pop papers say: Legacy and stances

In a week when it's been announced that the entire NME readership is lower than the average home gate at Portsmouth, it's time to take one of our semi-regular dips into the magazine.

This week, it's another backward-looking issue - 20th anniversary of the Holy Bible, which is covered in depth, and actually feels like there's something still to say about a record. It helps when the LP has some depth to it. And as a one-off, irregular thing, why shouldn't you mark two decades since a band released something so rich?

Trouble is, they're trailing that next week will be a 20th anniversary issue again. This time of Oasis. The trailer line for that is a quote from Noel in 1994 saying that the album would be what will be remembered in 20 years' time, "not incidents on ferries or drug busts or whatever". Yeah, good luck with that, Noel out of Wibbling Rivalry.

It's not just the Manics' legacy that the issue has explored. There were other questions of history to be addressed, not least the NME's cover this week:

That @NME @Manics cover? That photo of Richey was a MELODY MAKER photo by Tom Sheehan. I was there. My idea. Fucking history-stealing fucks.

— Simon Price (@simon_price01) August 16, 2014

Price - understandably - was upset that there wasn't even mention of the Melody Maker's contribution to the history the one-time rival was rifling. He suggested a though experiment:

I'll never forget the time Richey cut 4 REAL into his arm in front of me as I was interviewing him for Melody Maker. How do like THAT, @NME?

— Simon Price (@simon_price01) August 16, 2014

A point well made, although... not everyone seemed to grasp it.

@David_C_Lewis @simon_price01 Doesn't Steve Lamacq also claim he was interviewing him when he did that? Said in a BBC doc on the Manics.

— Craig Brown (@sloan1874) August 16, 2014

Who knew, though, that the MM-NME war would still be raging this long after one of the flags was lowered for the last time? Even British communists would be surprised at the longevity of ill-will emanating from IPC veterans.

With this week's ABC figures suggesting that the print edition of NME might be reaching an event horizon, you'd have thought the team on the magazine would be taking more care about how they look after the work of former associates, lest one day an NME.com team thinks it's okay to, say, pass off the Brett Anderson and David Bowie photo as their legacy.

Elsewhere, there's good things for readers to explore - Laura Snapes uses a response in Sounding Off to raise the question of why Radio 1 didn't playlist La Roux on grounds that there's a lot of "female-fronted pop acts" competing for airtime. Yeah, 2014, and apparently there's still a quota for women to get onto formidable One FM.

Equally strong is Dan Stubbs call for Insane Clown Posse to either own or condemn the Juggalos:

If Juggalos behave like a gang, then Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope are their de facto leaders, whether they like it or not. And if violent crimes are being committed not just in their name, but in their honour, they need to issue a decree to the faithful telling them that it's simply not cool.

There's also a great piece on Howling Owl and how they've worked round a ban from Bristol venues. I'd have liked some more around how The Louisiana had ended up on the wrong side of scrappy pop history, but otherwise Hazel Sheffield had delivered a celebration of DIY culture that could have graced Maximum Rock & Roll. Or Punk Planet, at least.

There's a lot of heart and vibrancy in the NME at the moment, even though it's starting to get lost again in a sea of Uncut-lite jubilee articles. If they can channel that voice, and find a way to celebrate the past without just getting a Google alert that it's 20 years since X and choosing a cover based on that, there's a magazine worth fighting for there.

DJobit: Mike Smith

Mike Smith - who died yesterday - was the Radio One breakfast DJ at the point where I stopped listening to the Radio One breakfast show.

It wasn't because of him - in fact, his reworking of the programme with a soft-but-still-noticeable news agenda was rather well done and arguably lives on in Five Live. It was just reaching that point where you find Today a bit more compelling. (And then, during its glorious reign, Danny Baker's Morning Edition; and then Today again.)

You wouldn't say he was the most exciting of broadcasters, but his hands were definitely safe. (And, knowing what we know now, who could blame Radio One management for wanting someone a little more trustworthy?)

A series of solid performances - across CBTV, Radio One, Breakfast Time, sidekicking for Noel Edmonds and straight-facedly spooking the nation on Ghostwatch - before deciding he'd had enough of being on the presenter side and took to doing aerial photography work instead. For a full, generous overview of his work, you could do worse than dip into TV Cream's appreciation of Mike Smith from a couple of weeks back.

Mike Smith was 59; he died following complications after heart surgery.

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.

Radio 1 launches cull that Owen Paterson might think a bit much

There's been the sort of cull of Radio 1 presenters which, in the past, would have triggered a thousand 'whither pop radio' think pieces but seems to have slipped by without much comment at all.

There's some big names going, too:

BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra are to axe DJs including Edith Bowman, Rob Da Bank and Nihal in a schedule shake-up driven by the need to cut costs.

Controller Ben Cooper admitted that the cull of presenters – which includes Mike Davies, Jen Long, Ally McCrae, CJ Beatz, Crissy Criss and Robbo Ranx – have been driven by cuts across the corporation introduced after the last licence fee settlement.

This boils down mostly to Huw Stephens being asked to pick up a lot of the slack, with him getting a programme that sounds a bit like Colin Murray's post-Zane Lowe slot.

Da Bank going is something of a hit; and in terms of losing interesting people do worthwhile things, Davies' punk show has been a quiet gem in the Radio 1 schedule.

Difficult times at the BBC, of course, but it's a pity that the savings are coming at the cost of the diversity which makes Radio 1 worth keeping.

'pon the playlist

There's something a little worrying about the report in The Observer which watches a Radio One playlist meeting. Can you spot it, I wonder?

A snatch of each song blares through speakers before Ergatoudis lists the artist's YouTube views, Soundcloud hits, Shazam ratings, Twitter followers and Facebook likes. "[Indie foursome] Wolf Alice's Moaning Lisa Smile video has had 15,000 views on YouTube and they've got 11,000 followers on Twitter," Ergatoudis tells the room. "James, you want to go first?"

There's a lot of this - records being weighed on how many Twitter followers the band has; the number of times a YouTube video has been played by man or machine; and so on.

A snatch of music, a bellyful of statistics. Surely that's the wrong way round? Surely Radio One should be playlisting music based on the track itself, rather than because it's already popular elsewhere? If YouTube views are the new chart, then this is like the playlist meeting in 1993 choosing records based on what Bruno Brookes had read out on the Top 40 the previous Saturday.

The Observer's Nadia Khomami asks Radio One's George Ergatoudis about this point:

It's faintly depressing to hear bands referred to as "brands" with their worth determined by online data. Stats is business talk. It isn't creative, it isn't art, it's box-ticking. It's playing people the kind of music that they're already listening to. Harding says, though, that there are exceptions to this rule. "There have been moments where we've been tempted to completely go against data. Clean Bandit have had the biggest single of the year so far and we booked them for a live lounge in January last year, purely on the basis that we had a feeling they were doing something special. They didn't have very much in terms of stats. And it took a year of us playing a sequence of singles for people to jump on to them - a lot of people think Rather Be was their first single but actually it was their fourth that we playlisted on Radio 1."

That this is an exception, rather than a rule, is something of a problem. Because if Radio One is basically deciding what to play using a 'what's already popular' formula, you might wonder why its target audience would bother tuning in.

"Hey, kids, listen to the radio - we've got all the songs you liked a fortnight ago, right here."

It's not the most exciting proposition, is it?

"Radio One: In YouTube's statistical integrity we trust."

Isn't Radio One's job to build the talent, rather than count the numbers?

Chart to be inundated by rising tide of streams

Apparently, last night at a Radio Academy event, Radio 1's George Ergatoudis let slip plans for the UK charts to count plays on streaming services as part of the calculations.

The cynic might wonder how come it hasn't happened yet, given that it's February 2014 and not, say, 1998 or 1965.

The supercynic might just express surprise that they're still making a chart of records to play on the radio.

The hypercynic, though, would just wonder if including figures from Spotify and the others is just a cunning way of disguising how few sales it takes to get into the charts these days.

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?)

When is a Mandela joke not a Mandela joke? Stop asking and just say you're sorry

Simon Amstell was on Radio One yesterday morning, and made a joke at the network's expense:

Amstell said: "What is going on? We're next to 1Xtra, it's so white in here. Mandela would not approve of the situation at the BBC."

When Nick Grimshaw asked why, the guest replied: "Look at all these people in here." Grimshaw answered: "There's a lot of people."

The comedian then said: "Yeah, but look at the segregation that's happened."

He then laughed when the producer of the Breakfast Show, Matt Fincham, said: "I don't think that's the right thing to be saying right now."

Amstell added: "Well, someone had to say it. Mandela would say it if he was here."

Apparently, this silly joke about how the BBC created a station for black music was offensive, somehow, so Amstell has been made to apologise:

"It may have been unclear this morning, as things often are but what came out of this mouth today was silly. Apologies to everyone involved."

Radio One will be saved by, er, rebranding 60 Seconds on BBC Three

Radio One is suffering something of a decline in listening - in part because Chris Moyles' departure took a chunk of audience who weren't core, but still counted; in part because young people have their phones and Twitter Music and cassette tapes and have no need to listen to radio at all.

Time for a fightback. MediaGuardian's got the plans:

The BBC's director general, Tony Hall, has also indicated he wants to see more collaboration between the station and its similarly youth-oriented TV sibling, BBC3, including the rebranding of BBC3's news as a TV extension of Newsbeat.

"Hey, kids, put down your Spotify playlists, because this radio station has a news bulletin the same as the one that interrupts American Dad marathons."

Here's what Hall said when in front of the Commons media select committee:

"One of the areas I want to develop is how BBC3 and Radio 1 can work much more together, with Radio 1 concentrating much more on music and BBC3 on other genres," Hall said. "We have a news service on BBC3. We don't call it anything, yet we have Newsbeat on Radio 1. Why not take Newsbeat and run that across the two? The controllers of BBC3 [Zai Bennett] and Radio 1 have more work to do to see how together these two channels, stations, can [find] a younger audience."

Pssst, Tony... your news service on BBC Three is called "Sixty Seconds". It's been called that since before there was a BBC Three. Still, twelve years isn't much time for that name to stick, is it?

The other big plan is for a Radio One channel on iPlayer. This idea - that digitally, a Radio One TV service would be possible - is even older than Sixty Seconds; it was part of the original proposals for BBC Digital services back in the early 1980s. Still, baby steps, eh?

Robbie sobby, undone by One

Apparently Radio One has taken a bite out of Robbie Williams' arsenal:

"I'm very ambitious," he told BBC Radio 4's Mastertapes programme. "So when Radio 1 goes and is taken away from you, a huge bit of your arsenal goes."

"It's your main oxygen to get your stuff out there."

To be fair, Robbie, you've just released an album of swing covers. It's like sticking out a porn video and wondering why Blue Peter won't invite you on talk about it.

In the BBC News story, though, a much more interesting detail is hanging about:

The station's head of music has also said rock groups Green Day and Muse may have outgrown the station.

"The last Green Day project simply wasn't good enough," George Ergatoudis told trade magazine Music Week.

Muse, meanwhile "are approaching a crossroads" - their last single was the first one not playlisted by Radio 1 in a decade.

"The door remains open to them but we'll have to think carefully about their next album."

Yes, we've now come so far through the Rock & Roll Years that Muse have effectively turned into Cliff Richard.

And Green Day are Status Quo, but that's hardly breaking news.