You can say what you like about the "dumbing down" of NewsTalk 106. But after all, as one of its suits muttered to me last year, in the week it went on-air: "It's a lot easier to start at the top of the market and work your way down than it is to do the opposite."
What impressed me this week about NewsTalk was its "spreading out". That was because I had occasion to drive to Galway early, and in my naivety believed that I would lose reception of the station licensed for "Dublin city and county" by the time the David McWilliams Breakfast Show (Monday to Friday) panel were finished reviewing the newspapers at 8.40 a.m. or so.
However, for more than two hours and five counties the traffic was clear, and so was NewsTalk. Around Kinnegad I could hear David Kinne-gabbing helplessly about home-birth statistics. As I negotiated my way around a tractor hauling sods of turf away from Kilbeggan, newsreaders negotitated their way around slow-burning NewsTalk-newsroom syntax. I crossed the Shannon not long after NewsTalk crossed over to City Edition (Monday to Friday) at 9.30 a.m., and still the sounds of the capital accompanied me.
It was well after 10 a.m. Presenter Declan Carty had recited, for the third time, the interminable intro to a long studio-and-phone-in item analysing the recent CSO figures; the discussion was starting to amble, and I was moving with rather more purpose through Ballinasloe (Co Galway!), when at last the radio signal began to fade. For the first time in my journey, I couldn't discern every word of this doubtless Socratic dialogue, though for several miles more I could periodically catch its gist.
For the radio-reviewer of a national newspaper, this is something of a boon; I can write less shyly about NewsTalk now that I know it's not really confined to Dublin listeners. However, I wonder what our environment editor, Frank McDonald, would make of this burgeoning suburbanisation, the rampant ribbon development of Dublin's airwaves across Ireland's girth.
The nation will hear a fair selection of McDonald's views in the coming weeks, if the truly excellent first programme of The State We're In: Transport in Crisis (RTÉ Radio 1, Monday) is anything to go by. McDonald proved a brilliant roving presenter, whether accompanying a commuter from Westmeath to Jervis Street, or teasing out the horrifying statistics about citybound bus journeys that have lengthened by three-quarters of an hour in just five years. His status as red-rag-to-a-bull in much of rural (or should that be suburbanising?) Ireland was confirmed on Wednesday's Morning Ireland (RTÉ Radio 1, Monday to Friday) when McDonald "debated" Jim Connolly of the Irish Rural Dwellers Association, but presumably "provocative" is part of what you want in a radio presenter.
But hello, what's this? Another Irish Times McCharacter presenting a new evening documentary series on Radio 1? Brendan McWilliams helpfully informed listeners to Weather Warning (RTÉ Radio 1, Thursday) that "in case you were wondering" he was indeed "yer man, Weather Eye". And yet, as you might expect from the man whose writings give meandering such a good name, his programme was quite a contrast from the direct, sharp bullet-pointing of McDonald.
McWilliams was a long-time sceptic about global warming and human responsibility for it. That healthy scientific scepticism shouldn't debar him from presenting a programme examining the topic, but you had to wonder whether it explained his fatal hesitancy about getting to the point. This first programme used a range of "expert" voices to explain rather pedantically what we know and how we know about climate in history and pre-history, and really rather understated ordinary punters' capacity to discern what's happening to our weather (Mont Blanc melting, anyone?). And no sooner would someone creep up on relevance than the show would cut away to McWilliams reflecting on, for example, the fascinating information about weather gleaned from medieval church records. The presenter's parting shot, "Now I hope that was all clear for you", was both sweetly charming and awfully patronising.
At a time when Radio 1's listenership is falling, it was hard not to think of such old-fashioned Reithian radio as part of the problem. However, that's not entirely fair. RTÉ management is packed as never before with people experienced in and committed to intricate and educational, even occasionally innovative radio. Perhaps they run the risk of turning Radio 1 into a station that pleases a tasteful and curious minority but turns off most listeners - the arrival of Garrison Keillor's Radio Show (Saturday) suggests that the American NPR model exerts a fatal attraction. But then, who am I to complain - when the nearest thing to a "national" speech-radio alternative sounds like NewsTalk?