Why cut the Radcliffe and Maconie show?

By Marc Lee 133PM GMT eighteen March 2010

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Among the nips, tucks and swingeing cuts in awaiting at BBC Radio, the pleat of the Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie show on Radio 2 isn"t the majority savage, but my theory is that it will be the majority keenly felt in in between the listening millions.

Their dual hours of heterogeneous tunes and happy bonhomie now go out in in between 8pm and 10pm, Monday to Thursday. From subsequent month, however, they will lose the Thursday edition, that is to be transposed by a live song session.

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Which is a shame. In their friendly small low-pitched soires, Radcliffe and Maconie suggest a gratifying and didactic brew of old favourites, stream hits and destiny releases.

Frequently, the new things is drawn from the quirkier corners of leftfield. I listened what valid to be my prime songs of both 2008 and 2009 for the initial time on the show The Last of the Melting Snow by the Leisure Society and The Sailor Song by the Gadsdens, both of them weird and gorgeous. Their jot down of the week this week is likewise enchanting a swirling mini-epic called Spanish Sahara by Foals.

R&M"s all-embracing tastes have for a little startling juxtapositions, so that, progressing this week, for instance, the folk-pop of singer-songwriter Laura Marling achieved live was followed by the strutting Eighties swat of Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five. You can design to listen to anything from the Beatles to Corinne Bailey Rae around Captain Beefheart and a host of bands you didn"t know (but are blissful you do now).

However, maybe the majority critical part in the success of the show is the easy good dialog in in between the dual hosts. Their sensitive unrestrained is infectious, and the warm fooling around and surreal digressions have the air of a beer hall review but ever removing as well blokeish.

They"re additionally both unashamed northerners (in a show promote from Manchester), and there"s a lovely miss of London-centric due or condescension.

Listeners stick on the review around calm and email ("Steve from Todmorden"s only been on"), and you get the sense that, for immeasurable swathes of the country, the show is on condition that the low-pitched credentials as bottles of red are uncorked and the pasta simmers on the stove.

The assembly additionally phone in with suggestions for "The Chain", a long-running underline that links songs by the majority gossamer and resourceful connectors imaginable, so that, a integrate of days ago, U Got the Look by the petite Prince was followed by Elton John"s Tiny Dancer. Brilliant only the kind of thing that creates listening to R&M so most fun.

Their show is one of the most appropriate on the air, and it"s extraordinary that Radio 2 thinks there should be less of it. The hire is now undergoing a vital overhaul, carrying been educated by the BBC Trust to put some-more debate calm and social-action programming in to the daytime report and to retreat a tumble in the series of comparison listeners. The Trust is additionally recommending that humerous entertainment programming should be "refreshed" and "better differentiated" from Radio 4"s humerous entertainment output. If this is the case, R&M are not the viewable aim for shift they already suggest copiousness of (highly entertaining) chat, it"s consistently funny, and their playlist is wide-ranging (on Tuesday night, they played Hank Williams"s Move It On Over from 1951).

Their main appeal, it seems to me, is to a era who were teenagers in the Sixties and Seventies certainly the assembly that the Trust would similar to to be sketch in over the subsequent decade or so. Why let them trip afar now?

Last year, Radcliffe and Maconie won the Broadcasting Press Guild endowment for programme of the year, whilst Radcliffe was declared Music Broadcaster of the Year in the Sony Radio Academy Awards.

It"s weird that their prerogative for this approval should be a twenty-five per cent rebate in their hours. Rather than slicing them behind to 3 nights a week, Radio 2 should be bumping them up to five.