Culling the over 30s from Radio 1

The axing of Chris Moyles from the breakfast show came as a response to the need to attract a younger audience. BBC Radio 1‘s remit is to cater for people aged under 30, full-stop.  The average age was 32.  Many people who probably were under 30 eight years ago most likely got old with Chris Moyles.  How romantic, ‘growing old together’, eh?

However, and I don’t have any negativity towards this concept, these damned over 30s were listening to Radio 1 whilst the under 30s weren’t, and so a culling had to be done.  Radio 1 is not for the over 30’s, okay?

In an ideal world the over 30s should be horrified when their ears accidentally get infected with a bit of Radio 1.

Back in 1967 the over 30s were horrified when their ears accidentally got infected with some of that awful pop music from the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, or when they accidentally tuned to the young people’s pop pirates of the day.

It is the unconditional job of the over 30s to sneer at the under 30s, and to moan about how the youth of the day are not like the youth of their day.

So, anybody over 30 tuning in to Radio 1 should immediately need hospital treatment.  Yet they didn’t.  Quite clearly they weren’t vomiting at what they heard, and, since hunting them down individually and shooting them would be too costly for the BBC licence fee payers, it was better and cheaper to tell Chris Moyles to fuck right off and to take his damn over 30s listeners with him.

It’s not the first time Radio 1 has had to cull old presenters, or should that be ‘old-style’ presenters, in order to re-attract a younger audience.  During one of the most high-profile cullings two decades ago, Dave Lee Travis pre-empted the non-renewal of his contract by doing a rambling on-air resignation, waxing on about his conspiracy theories, rather than just accepting he was no longer relevant to the youth of the day and hanging up his headphones quietly.

The more recent culling of Scott Mills from drivetime and then Chris Moyles from breakfasts went a lot smoother because culling has to happen and everybody knows it these days.  Working on Radio 1 is a bit like being a Premier League footballer, where you get less than a decade before retirement becomes the only option. This might seem a little harsh for the listeners that were young once, when their favourite radio presenter was young, and have grown old with him, but they have to move on too. I assume Dave Lee Travis fans moved with him to the various oldies stations he subsequently inhabited, as will Chris Moyles fans follow Chris Moyles when he’s no longer anywhere to be found on Radio 1.

By the way, this isn’t just a Radio 1 thing.  Radio 2 also regularly culls the old presenters.  To be more precise, they usually drop dead before they are culled, and are then replaced by people young enough to be their grandchild.  Radio 2 is trying to appeal to an audience in their 40s, 50s and 60s, so as with Radio 1, the programming it broadcast, say, 20 years ago, is no longer relevant to today’s Radio 2 audience either.

So, back at Radio 1, the whole #TeamGrimmy thing is excellently designed to appeal to the youth of today.  As it should.  And, in the medium to distant future, Nick Grimshaw will have to be replaced by a young person once he too (and his audience) has gotten too old for Radio 1‘s remit.  And so on.

However, back to now and that all begs the question about exactly where these old people no longer able to listen to Radio 1 because there’s now no Chris Moyles to keep the buggers there, should actually go.

What radio station bridges the gap?  If a listener is too old for Radio 1 but too young for Radio 2, yet they want to carry on listening to personality led radio, what should they tune to?  And why isn’t the commercial sector vacuuming up these poor people?