Scala Radio is being hollowed out – and listeners are furious
What on earth is going on at Scala? A week and a half ago, the Classic FM rival announced that it would “say farewell” to five of its top presenters – including the host of its much-loved Movie Music, Mark Kermode.
Listening figures are down, so the broadcaster is “evolving” by stuffing its schedules with presenterless muzak. Weekdays will feature a “mindfulness hour” from 1pm, followed by four hours’ more faceless music in the afternoon in More Music Afternoon.
This is howlingly stupid. The internet is already overstuffed with easy-listening playlists. Digital radio brands can’t beat them at their own game; the only thing that they have to set them apart is presenting talent, which Scala’s just lost. (As one unhappy listener wrote online: “If I just want music, I have Spotify for that.”)
Kermode – who’s writing a book on movie music – kicked off his bittersweet final show with “an atonal squonkfest” from Anna Meredith’s Eighth Grade soundtrack: the kind of challenging, idiosyncratic piece no algorithm would ever choose. His love for it was palpable. A year from now, listeners being force-fed Harry Potter or the Chariots of Fire theme for the millionth time will miss that passion.
I’m not alone in feeling annoyed.
Scala’s replacement Facebook banner, which features no presenters at all, has been plastered with negative comments. One reads: “I’m utterly disgusted… Been a listener since day one and a premium subscriber but not sure I’ll renew now. The whole Scala family is being ripped apart.”
Another complained that – as if “turning the knife” – Scala had “just removed all traces” of Kermode’s show from its site. Weirdly, as of Monday, his programme was indeed missing – reappearing on Tuesday, after that complaint. Only a conspiracy theorist would conclude this was a spiteful erasure followed by a swift U-turn; let’s charitably assume it’s merely that Scala’s website is a dysfunctional joke.
Speaking of subterfuge and murky machinations: British espionage is in crisis. James Bond is dead. Argylle was awful. Slow Horses is good, but sharing an office with Gary Oldman’s crapulent, curry-stained spymaster is nobody’s idea of escapist romance.
Where are the globe-trotting spies of yesteryear? Cometh the hour, cometh the podcast. The Spy Who… (Wondery, Tues), which launched this week, changes its title with each season. The first introduces us to The Spy Who Inspired James Bond: Duško Popov, Serbian playboy and doubleagent for German intelligence and MI5, who seems far more outrageous than Ian Fleming’s creation.
In the words of MI5’S “C”, who recruits him, he was “a wealthy man with a taste for adventure and beautiful women… ambitious, capable of extreme ruthlessness and thriv[ing] on a touch of danger.”
Non-fiction, though scripted like a pulp thriller, it is as ludicrous, and as gripping, as any Bond film. The best details – that “26-007” was his uncle’s phone-number; or how he shocked Ian Fleming by casually gambling £50,000 of British secret service cash at a casino – are still to come. But this first episode gave us plenty: gadgets, double-crossings, ruthless killings, a sexy French marquise.
At one point, “a woman with blonde hair and a figure-hugging dress” winks at Popov in a Lisbon cafe. He follows her into a car, from which she swiftly disappears; soon, he’s being menaced by the driver, who dumps him at a secret location, where he’s greeted with the words: “Mr Popov! Welcome to the city of spies.”
The whole thing is archly narrated by Indira Varma, playing every part as characters squabble in stereo, heroically resisting the urge to give anyone a silly accent. It’s a format popular for history podcasts, perhaps because it’s cheap: the past is breathlessly brought to life in presenttense prose by one narrator, aided by Foley effects for gunshots, footsteps, etc. (See also: Dan Jones’s Plantagenet chronicle, This is History.)
While some dialogue is invented, details hew close to the available sources, including Popov’s 1974 autobiography Spy Counter Spy
– praised by Graham Greene, but out of print. (On Amazon, one paperback is £247.99.) A canny publisher should put out a 50th anniversary edition – in invisible ink, or perhaps on microfiche.
One last tip: Jazz Emu: The Sound of Us (Radio 4, Fri). Preening pop star Jazz Emu – creation of comedian Archie Henderson – is the funniest musical comedy act since Flight of the Conchords. This sitcom doesn’t capture the magic of Henderson’s stage shows, and lacks the 1970s-cheese of his music videos, but at a svelte 15 minutes its first episode packed in more laughs than most do in half an hour. I defy you not to grin at his Bee Gees spoof.