Killjoys

The Radio Centre has enjoyed itself with its submission on the performance of Radio 5 Live to the BBC Trust. 30 pages long, it exhorts the station to cover women's netball, move to DAB only, and bring in a Myers-style trouble-shooter to prove that it can all be done much more cheaply.  Moz Dee, I presume.

It wants the categories of content moved from the current 75% news, 25% sport.   It proposes four categories - News, majority sport, minority sport, and other content - and leaves the Trust to fill in new percentages, apart from one.  Other content should, apparently, be 0%, and people should be disciplined if that rule is broken.

The Centre's current target is the Richard Bacon show, for doing too much "celebrity and entertainment news". I suspect the authors of this report are only recent listeners to the station, and may be quite young.  It's always been there.  Hark back to The Magazine, with Diana Madill.  Remember Eddie Mair's jousts with Cliff Richard - or indeed, attempts to assemble flat-pack furniture in the studio. John Inverdale's tv previews with Ruth Leon.  Richard Arnold and Tina Baker.  Nicky Campbell's brilliant interview with Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson.  Then, and now, the station wins awards for its accessible and popular news coverage - and it's news about the way we live, here and around the world.