Discotheque: Many of those who earn their corn sitting in front of a microphone on the RTÉ campus will have had some anxious moments of late.

Last week's wholesale schedule changes at RTÉ Radio One and the continuing half-hearted attempts to stem the prevailing listenership tide at 2FM will have sent many broadcasters scurrying to scrutinise their contracts in depth. Radio One chief Ana Leddy, it seems, has a touch of the Helen Shaws to her after all, while 2FM's John Clarke continues to be, well, John Clarke.

As with former RTÉ Radio One head Shaw's seismic changes when she was in charge, Leddy's decision to axe Rattlebag, Mystery Train and John Creedon's hugely popular afternoon show in one swoop has caused various degrees of consternation. Moving the station's token arts show to a later slot will inevitably elicit the usual shower of hand-wringing letters from the outraged arts mafia to this paper, but it's the loss of John Kelly's Mystery Train which should be truly mourned.

Quality, interesting, idiosyncratic music programming of this ilk has become a rare commodity on the Irish airwaves and no one could match Kelly when he was firing on all cylinders. However, the show only received minuscule amounts of internal and external promotion in recent times, indicating that the station really had no idea what to do with one of its crown jewels.

Which is where digital radio comes in. A show like Mystery Train would thrive on a digital platform because it would bring existing listeners to a new medium and it would have the space to expand beyond its current boundaries.

But RTÉ's digital radio strategy remains something of an enigma, even though there are continued mutterings about some kind of launch in 2006. You have to hope they have some plans up their sleeve, other than a dedicated channel where people can talk to Joe day and night.

Across the corridor at 2FM, it's more card-shuffling at the station where a night of the long knives rather than an evening of the short daggers is overdue. The latest round of musical chairs brings yet another new slot for Rick O'Shea (the jock admitted online that he only found out about the change an hour before it was announced, which shows just how much thought has been put into his new programme), a free transfer to Radio One for Dave Fanning and a lunchtime show for Nikki Hayes.

The morning dullness continues as the station fails yet again to address the issue of Gerry Ryan and his remarkable talent to keep losing large chunks of his audience. While the troubled broadcaster has

now taken to publicly blaming everyone else for this drop in numbers, the real problem lies squarely at the door of Mr G Ryan. A huge proportion of the Irish radio audience has decided that they don't want to listen to Ryan bleating on about his underpants any more. It's time for Ryan and his underpants to go.

Then there's 2FM's failure to do anything with the bright new talent it has brought in over the last five years. Aside from Hayes, where are the primetime slots for Jenny Huston, Dan Hegarty and Mark McCabe, to name but three of 2FM's new school? In the press release to announce the changes, station boss John Clarke spins a line about how the new changes "will be supported with a nation- wide search for new talent and I am greatly excited about the prospects this could yield for 2FM". For God's sake, man, do something with the talent you already have at your disposal! What will this "new talent" end up doing? Trying to control Marty Whelan's gaffes?

While Leddy has indicated that there are more changes to come at RTÉ Radio One (probably when NewsTalk poach some of the national station's broadcasters), it's hard to see why 2FM would bother with any more schedule shifting. The station requires gigantic, seismic changes. Unless that happens real soon, advertisers may decide their money is better spent on Today, Beat, 98, Phantom, Red or Spin. After all, 2FM's target audience is already moving that way.