'Drivetime' on the road to nowhere

RadioReview: It was technicolour taoiseach time again on Monday. He's not a pinko any more, he's green. The environmental message was the first to emerge from the Fianna Fáil PR beano - or as they call it, think-in - in Westport and the airwaves lapped it up with far too much coverage.

All I wanted to know was, couldn't they have met during their long summer holidays and are the taxpayers going to be stiffed for the mileage? There wasn't much talk about eco footprints during Áine Lawlor's interview with Bertie Ahern on Tuesday's Morning Ireland (RTÉ Radio 1), it was more about pounding pavements on the election trail. Lawlor did a good job cutting through the flannel, or as she called it "reciting your successes", reminding him that a lot of voters on doorsteps will think "for every thing you have done there's a lot you have not done".

So Fianna Fáil has hit on the "look-what-it's-done-for-Al Gore" strategy of the environment. Listening to it must have given a hollow laugh to the thousands of commuters forced, through shockingly inept planning policies, to travel in their gas guzzlers for hours on end between their place of work and their poorly insulated new houses.

But what do those commuters listen to in the evening? The battle for the evening drive-time audience is hotting up with Today with Matt Cooper (Today FM, weekdays) gaining in the latest round of listenership figures. While his show has a way to go in terms of numbers, it must see itself as serious competition to RTÉ Radio 1's drive-time offering which is now called, with a staggering leap of imagination, Drivetime. In the main, it's the old Five Seven Live formula, but instead of going from 5pm to 7pm - or more logically going head-to-head with Today FM and starting at 4.30pm - the new programme notionally goes from 5pm to 8pm. But it does no such thing. It's three separate programmes - Mary Wilson with news, Des Cahill on sport and a programme presented by Dave Fanning that doesn't quite know what it is.

The only things linking them is the name, the long list of contact details the presenters read out and the weird musical ident that interrupts every now and again and sounds like a mistake. It's an odd formula because there's such a high potential for switch-off at the end of each segment.

Mary Wilson is going to be great though, and not just because she has a fantastic radio voice. She's familiar to us as RTÉ's legal affairs correspondent, where she skilfully reported on the most complex of cases and showed a most unusual facility for maintaining absolute reporter impartiality while coming over as a warm, empathetic person.

But she's going to have to toughen up and show a little bit of attitude. She learned a hard lesson on her first day, Monday, from Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Micheál Martin, whose ability to talk at length without actually saying anything is a wonder to behold. He gave his full "we're great and without us ye'd all be barefoot and starving" spiel, and Wilson didn't seem able to interrupt him or even get some of her questions across.

Pat Rabitte turned up with Matt Cooper (Tuesday) to talk about the Fine Gael/Labour "if-you-can-have-a-think-in-so-can-we" meeting in Mullingar. Cooper was straight in with "this is just Punch and Judy politics" - an opening salvo guaranteed to draw listeners in. Rabitte sounded curiously muted - maybe someone has advised him to quieten down in an effort to try to sound more statesmanlike, but he simply sounded bored. On Thursday's Morning Ireland, Cathal MacCoille fetched up at the Green Party's think-in (they're all at it) and gamely tried to get Trevor Sargent to name a single, specific policy. Despite MacCoille's trademark forthright questioning, the Green Party leader remained determinedly and frustratingly vague.

Des Cahill's Drivetime segment had good interviews this week, particularly Michel Platini (Tuesday) and Nick Faldo (Wednesday), but he's also on during Wilson's precious 90 minutes, giving tedious sports reports after every news bulletin. That's a lot of sport.

Some months ago, head of radio Adrian Moynes, during an interview, made a right bags of describing Dave Fanning's new programme - it sounded like they were making it up as they went along. There's a bit more talk, but it's the same music-dominated show Fanning has been doing on 2FM, so why move it? And to a time slot that's ideally suited to a straightforward arts and culture show. Surely it can't be too late for another think-in in Montrose?