Take 2 minutes

As is said on Allan’s blog today, we’re asking fans of good radio and specifically Rick’s show to email complaints@rte.ie today. Here’s a bit of background if you’re not familiar with what they’ve done to his show. Now I know there’s only two hours of today left (I got in the door an hour ago) but even if your reading this on Wednesday your email will have some affect. There’s been quite a concerted campaign over this and rightly so. AJ has even put all of the responses together in an e-book format for easy reading. A Facebook group of 300+ people, numerous emails, lots of blog posts and press articles should not be ignored. The email I sent a few days ago is listed in the extended entry.

Dear Sir/Madam,

I’m writing in relation to the change in format for Rick O’Shea’s show on 2FM, daily from 2-5pm. In quoting directly from the show page on the rte.ie/2fm site, it says:

“Mostly though it will be all about YOU – your texts, calls, ideas, problems, needs, loves, hates, passions, confessions, whatever!”

What happened to that thinking? The new show is severely stunted due to the changes made over the past couple of weeks. From a purely financial perspective, the decision to axe researchers will save money in the short term. Undoubtedly. What 2FM are not taking into consideration though is the value of the format Rick was adopting. He fostered genuine communication and banter with the public via a number of different channels (text, Twitter, his blog etc). In an age where every young person has an MP3 enabled device (phone, iPod), the key advantage that radio has is personality and interaction. That’s what Rick brought to his afternoon show. That’s the very thing you’re removing from the show. I can’t understand how the audience he’s drawn to the show over the past months will be anything but alienated.

I hope 2FM management will see the error they’ve made.

Regards