A live arts show without enough life

Radio Review:  It wasn't exactly an outcry - that'd be a bit on the dramatic side - but, when Rattlebag was cancelled two years ago, there were many expressions of public disquiet about the national broadcaster's commitment to arts coverage.

The dire scheduling of Rattlebag's replacement, The Midnight Hour, at 11pm effectively meant the programme had no chance of building any sort of audience and indicated that the powers that be considered arts and culture a minority interest.

The launch this week of The Arts Show on RTÉ Radio 1, a new, five days a week, hour-long programme at 8pm, however, does show a welcome U-turn.

It didn't start with the new autumn schedule in September, which I took to mean that they were taking their time developing a new format, trawling for new voices or devising something a bit experimental. Well, there must have been another reason for the delay because the show is as plain as its name - and no harm in that. It's just that after all the talk and the long wait it's a little disappointing not to hear something more adventurous and innovative.

Veteran presenter Vincent Woods is at the helm of a straightforward, studio-based show that interprets arts and culture categories in a traditional, narrow way. On BBC Radio 4, Front Row, the superb daily show, has the confidence to mix all facets of arts and culture, so you're as likely to hear a discussion of a cheesy new drama on ITV as you are a review of an opera in German, and it looks outside its geographical boundaries to bring news of what's happening on the cultural scene in New York or Paris or wherever is big that week. Woods's show is - on the strength of the first week's offering - a much more serious affair, committed more to analysis than to keeping listeners up to speed with what's on.

On Tuesday there was an interesting but far too long discussion on the writings of Kate O'Brien for no particular reason, as well as a look at the exhibition of Polish painting in the National Gallery of Ireland. But surely there was an art opening or the first night of a play or performance on Monday somewhere in the country that could have been reviewed on Tuesday's show? A daily, live arts show simply has to have a strong review element.

On Wednesday, Woods devoted the entire hour to a discussion of the concept of "the road" in literature, movies and music. It was great to hear John Kelly's contribution, but the rest was deadly dull and academic. And why bother taking up a precious hour of live radio with a programme that could have been made, left on a shelf and broadcast at any time?

I suspect the problem is the knock-on effect of the hopelessly ill-conceived Drivetime format. Dave Fanning's leg of that show has a strong pop culture/movie content, so basically he gets all the fun stuff. But that's the sort of content an arts show needs if it's to be lively and relevant. For example, yesterday's launch on this side of the Atlantic of the iPhone is a cultural phenomenon and Fanning, not Woods, got to cover it. The same goes for the impact of the screenwriters' strike in Hollywood - Fanning got that too. Something's got to give.

Kate O'Brien, whose novel The Land of Spices was banned, was understandably against official censorship and we heard her voice on The Arts Show saying she supported "the ordinary censorship of decent society".

What then of Nob Nation? Gerry Ryan and 2FM are plugging the CD compilation of Oliver Callan's sketches at every turn, and if you think that Monday's sketch in which "Bertie" used an unprintable, offensive homophobic term to insult "Enda" is hilarious, cutting-edge satire, laugh on. In the absence of a truly clever comic idea, Callan over-relies on crude language and innuendo to pad out his sketches - grand if you like that sort of thing, pathetic if you don't. The CD cover reasonably warns that it contains "adult" material, so why does RTÉ broadcast Nob Nation at 10am during the Gerry Ryan Show when an adult-only listenership is not a given?

It all smells horribly of desperation at 2FM - the way saddo teachers in my day would drop the odd curse into a sentence in a pathetic attempt to be cool. Callan is a talented mimic but he needs to team up with a decent scriptwriter fast - it's not as if the current Government isn't providing daily material for scorching satire.