Pairing Simon and Jo is a big turn-off
WHAT on earth possessed Lewis Carnie, Radio 2 Controller, to change the successful format of the Simon Mayo show? On weekdays from 5pm to 7pm, it had more than six million listeners, but it’s been ripped apart and replaced with a dreary, embarrassing and painful-tolisten-to pairing of broadcasters Simon Mayo and Jo Whiley, which is a marriage made in hell. I listened to the previously separate Simon Mayo and Jo Whiley shows, which were fantastic, but very different types of entertainment. Mr Carnie has not given a reasonable explanation for the change, apart from insisting it was not to do with the gender pay gap row. In fact, during interviews, Simon Mayo has been keen to mention that he and Jo Whiley are paid the same. What is the reason, then? It cannot be falling listener numbers or Mr Carnie would use that defence straight away. He says listeners should give the new show six months before we make our minds up, but many like me will have turned off long before then. If a restaurant changed its menu and the customers voted with their feet, do you think the chef and waiters could afford to wait six months for them to return? Mr Carnie can wait this long because it is taxpayers’ money he is playing with. He should explain what was deemed to be so wrong with the show to necessitate all the changes and have the decency to admit he got it wrong. I believe it is change for change’s sake. Mr Carnie was made Controller at the end of 2016 and wants to make his mark — a bit like buying a house and ripping out a perfectly good kitchen to put in a new one at enormous and wasteful expense. If Mr Carnie is so keen to make changes, why not replace Chris Evans on the breakfast show with the brilliant, funny and great-to-listento Sara Cox as opposed to her being stuck on the Saturday graveyard shift?
ZOE BARTLETT, London W9.