Radio 1 is 'hip and popular' shock

Rhys Williams on the station's new street cred

RADIO 1's attempts to hold on to listeners during the past two years have at times resembled an inverted frying pan clinging on to an omelette. But this week that changes, with the station expected to register its first significant audience gains this decade.

Whether this now leads to a vindication of the strategy adopted by its controller, Matthew Bannister, remains to be seen. It was his vigorous shake-up of the station's line-up and output in the autumn of 1993 that sent out the old and brought in the new.

One thing is for certain though: it will do nothing to improve relations with the not-so-dearly-departed old-timers such as Simon Bates, Dave Lee Travis and Gary Davies. Radio 1 has just produced a fly-on-the-wall-style film about itself, developing the "as it is" theme of its advertising campaign. One bit features the station's breakfast show wunderkind Chris Evans recalling some droplets of wisdom from Mr Travis, who was apparently suggesting that his duty as a DJ was to pass on to his listeners everything he knew.

"The thing is," Mr Evans tells the camera, "how can you pass on f*** all?"

Following Mr Bannister's revamp Radio 1 lost 5.2 million listeners, with its weekly reach languishing at 10.5 million by the first quarter of this year. Mr Davies predicted that it would become a minority station, while Mr Bates called for the resignations of Mr Bannister and Liz Forgan, head of BBC network radio. When DJ Steve Wright left earlier this year and Talk Radio UK looked on paper as though it would pose a genuine threat, pundits prepared to write Mr Bannister's obituary.

But now it seems Radio 1 is hitting back. The latest official industry statistics, to be released on Friday, will show that the station is finally winning back listeners - as many as 700,000 of them. So perhaps that is why the reconstituted Radio 1 is now saying what it really thinks about the old guard, and why Mr Bannister might be entitled to a round of I-told-you-so's.

For the moment, he is resisting. "In all the hoo-haa of the last 18 months, people have forgotten there was a problem with Radio 1. If you think it should be in touch with music that is happening now, in touch with what young people like now, it was clearly getting out of touch.

"It was growing older with its audience, its presenters were middle-aged people who lived the life of middle-aged people - they didn't go to clubs or see new bands, they went back to their houses and watched TV. It became the station your mum listened to."

By the early Nineties, Harry Enfield's Smashy and Nicey characters - two witless, egotistical, ageing DJs on the fictional Fab FM - were depressingly close to the reality of Radio 1.

A major factor in Radio 1's decline from the glory days of the mid-Seventies when 27 million people tuned in, has been the explosion in commercial radio. Now more than 170 stations compete where once there were just a handful.

That expansion, Mr Bannister says, has also resulted in a homogeneity of chart-based, adult contemporary output, from which Radio 1 had to break if it was to survive.

"I just think there is room for a station that takes risks, that experiments and supports new music, that is unpredictable, spontaneous, lively and has opinions. That is what Radio 1 should be, but I think it had drifted towards the safe, comfortable cardigan-type radio station, rather than the spikey hair and black jeans. But now it is the station more in touch with what's going on in current music than any other in the country."

His evidence for this lies not just in the impending ratings revival, but in the line-up he has assembled. In place of Messrs Davies, Bates and Travis have come Dannys Baker and Rampling, Pete Tong, Tim Westwood, Jo Whileyd and Steve Lamacq - hardly household names in the conventional, suburban semi-detached sense of the word, but that, of course, is the point. In their respective fields, they represent the experts - in dance music, rap and indie.

Mr Bannister is also immensely proud of the output, particularly in supporting new bands and live music, areas which mainstream commercial radio operating under different, more obviously financial imperatives, steer clear of. "You can switch around the dial and you know when you've hit Radio 1, because you're going to hear records that are not being played anywhere else, and not only that, they are becoming hits."

Supergrass's current hit single "Alright" began life several months ago on the Evening Session. Mercury prize-nominated Oasis, Pulp and the Boo Radleys only made it to commercial radio after they had chart success through Radio 1. And the station is broadcasting current live concerts by REM and The Cranberries, and did the Glastonbury festival last month.

That things have improved was acknowledged by the relatively hip mag Select as early last year when it reported: "Radio 1 is no longer crap shock." Until now though, ratings have resolutely refused to do anything other than nosedive. Mr Bannister says he always expected some listeners to bale out, but maintains that throughout it all there were never any doubts that his strategy was anything but right. What many also forget is that 1 million listeners had deserted in the quarter preceding the facelift.

Mr Bannister's analysis is shared by Sheryl Garratt, editor of style bible The Face, who says her magazine had to go through a similar shift in focus in the late Eighties to appeal to a younger, fresher audience at the cost of alienating older readers. "The weekend dance shows with Pete Tong and Danny Rampling now are excellent. At first, it was everybody's dark secret that they listened on their way to clubs. But now it's, 'Have you heard the latest on Danny Rampling?' It's much more focused. Things cannot grow old with their audience, or they die out."