SO, it's all change this autumn at RTE. But haven't we heard this stuff - somewhere before - and better?

There's Morning Ireland (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday) trimmed down to its old fighting weight of 70 minutes - but listen, it's kept the three person anchor team from its flabbier days.

Thus, on a given morning, any two of the charming trio of David Hanly, Aine Lawlor and Richard Crowley share the "anchoring" of 40 odd minutes of flexible material. Is this not the jobshare we all dream of?

And there's more deja entendu on the same programme. Is that an unheeded echo of Dungarvan, as reporter Harry Magee goes after a chilling tabloid story that suggests a discarded syringe, found on waste ground in the inner city, is a likely incubator for HIV? Could he not, at least, have presented some expert advice on the question, rather than simply throwing another ingredient into the drugs panic?

Listen - there's Joe Duffy back, but in the late afternoon now. He's doing something vaguely similar to his outside broadcasts from the Gay Byrne Show days, but in a more restrictive format, so we're missing both the depth and the humour of the old Joe's work.

And who's that he's talking to back in the studio? Yes, it's Myles Dungan all right, but he's on a half hour early and he's sometimes using his golf commentary voice rather than his newshound sound. Otherwise, Daily Record RTE (Radio 1, Monday to Friday) is Today at Five with tunes.

You tell me if this works: Myles, his tone floating somewhere between the K Club and Ballybough, says, "Coming up, 17 people are arrested in the Guerin murder investigation. But first ..." And we re assaulted by four endless minutes of Bono vandalising Sinatra's version of I've Got You Under My Skin. This really happened, and I honestly don't suspect a deliberate and tasteless double entendre about the heroin links of the Guerin suspects.

But all is not lost. Let's stay up and listen to 98FM's Vincent Browne, now two spins of the dial away and available to the nation on RTE Radio 1. Yes, Tonight with Vincent Browne (Monday to Thursday) is strikingly similar to the brilliant, more oracularly titled Vincent Browne Tonight - similar portentous music, similar high ranking guests, same old aggressive, skip the formalities, trash the cliche's host.

In this case, perhaps, a listener (even a selfish Dubliner) can just about accept the trade off of a lesser programme for a wider audience. Browne is, after all, like no one who has ever grilled politicos on the national airwaves before.

Let's not fool ourselves, however. On the evidence so far, something has been lost in the translation. Sixty minutes, for one: the local show had two hours to do its thing. The other problems are of excess: too many guests, too many topics.

Sure, the first week's programmes had a few good verbal tussles, notably Browne versus Michael McDowell on the residential property tax. But the formats of big panels and maybe 20 to 30 minutes per issue are a bit too Saturday View for what should be a ground breaking show. For one, it doesn't give Browne enough time to flex his investigative muscles.

It also means scant time for listener participation, often the most frustrating yet invigorating element of Browne's previous show.

All is not lost, and it's a far, far better thing to have him there than not. But it's a sad example of the poverty of what passes for novelty on the national airwaves. In all the re arranging of deck chairs in RTE, there's hardly a new voice, excepting the not quite new but suddenly ubiquitous Pat O'Mahony, doing a good job in front of various microphones.