Rock of Ages

I thought age discrimination was now illegal in this country, yet the announcement that 38 year old Chris Moyles is to step down as the host of Radio One's breakfast show has resulted in another outbreak of ageist rhetoric from the station's management. Moyles' departure is all part of Radio One's latest attempt to reduce its average listener age to bring it within the station's 'target demographic'. Apparently these young people all want to listen to young and bland DJs playing the BBC's bland playlist. Of course, the Beeb would defend itself by pointing out that Radio One champions 'new' music which, apparently, only young people are allowed to listen to. At least that's the impression they are giving. We even had the controller of Radio One on Radio Four's PM programme yesterday telling us oldies that the problem lay with all these over thirties who refuse to 'grow up' and move on from Radio One to other stations more orientated to their demographic, such as Radio Two or Radio Six Music.

There are several flaws with this argument, not least that it is downright insulting to suggest that, magically, at age thirty one's musical tastes change so drastically that you can no longer appreciate anything 'new' and instead are fit only to listen to the easy listening snooze-fest that it is Radio Two. I'll concede that Six Music plays more interesting stuff and has more interesting presenters. The trouble is that it is a digital-only station, meaning that those of us who do most of our radio-listening in cars are unlikely to be able to hear it. But the biggest flaw is that you can classify music according to the age of the listener at all. That's just ageist. Which Radio One's management clearly realises as their strategy isn't to change the music they play, but rather to sideline any presenters with personality and move their blandest DJs into the prime time slots. Inane babble between records is far more likely to drive older listeners away than anything else. I know, I speak from experience. Still, I'm thinking of hitting back at this ageism by encouraging my mother, who is 80, to listen to Radio One. I also have aunts and great aunts in their seventies, eighties and nineties I could get to tune in. If we all got our elderly relatives to listen, we could push Radio One's average listening age up through the roof. I'd like to see what they'd do then.