This is what happens when broadband comes into your life. Every day for the last couple of weeks, 5 p.m. is Morning Becomes Eclectic time in my house.
At 5 p.m. in Dublin, it's 9 a.m. in Santa Monica, and Nic Harcourt is turning up for work. Over the next few hours, he puts together what is the finest show on the dial, a programme which makes you realise just what music radio can be when a maestro is given free rein.
Best of all, it's a morning show and not something tucked away in a dark corner of the schedules. Over here, morning music radio is lowest-common-denominator programming, a battle for ears between commercial radio stations (and 2FM, the station with the alleged public service remit), each vying to out-dumb the other.
Over there, Morning Becomes Eclectic is a tonic for the ears, a radio show where you tune in to hear the music rather than endure personality jocks, fat-ass sports guys who think they're hilarious, or sketches which raised a slight chuckle in 1988.
Harcourt simply plays records and leaves the listeners to join the dots and make the connections. A show can start out with Boom Bip or John Martyn, find its way to Can or Jill Scott, take in some Skalpel or Craig Armstrong, and end magnificently with a live session from PJ Harvey, a guest DJ spot from Neil Young or simply some Elmer Bernstein.
Of course, we have DJs over here who do that too, but we don't have radio stations which allow them to do it first thing in the morning or at any other time while it's still daylight outside.
While much has been made of Harcourt's fondness for Irish acts - the likes of Snow Patrol, The Frames and especially Damien Rice have built strong profiles on the back of his patronage - much should also be made of the general freestyle form of his playlist. Yes, KCRW is a college radio station and so not subject to the same constraints as their commercial contemporaries, but there can be few stations or presenters anywhere (aside from John Peel, who's still trucking away on BBC Radio 1) which enjoy such widespread global recognition because of the music played.
KCRW and Morning Becomes Eclectic are what you get when music fans rule the airwaves. For a look at the kind of radio you get when businessmen dictate the sound of your wireless, take a trip to www.bci.ie, the online home of the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI). There, you should still find the applications for the alt.rock music raffle for Dublin city and county. Only Phantom and Zed have survived the initial cull, but it's educational to download all five applications to get a picture of what prospective radio bosses thought an alternative rock station should be.
The programming is largely bland, predictable and unexciting. The soundbites are familiar and the design makes your eyes sore. One of the applications reads as if someone took a dance licence application and just substituted rock and guitars for dance and clubs. We mentioned this a few months ago as a joke; we assumed nobody would think it was a good idea.
It goes without saying that there's as much chance of a show like Morning Becomes Eclectic getting a primetime slot on the winning station as there is of me signing for Real Madrid. The BCI's spin has always been that a new station should be about job creation and financial viability. Thus the applicants throw out the platitudes they think the BCI wants to hear. Exciting, cutting-edge, extraordinary programming - sure who wants that?
The new station will, unfortunately, be where dullard indie rock rules the roost because that's seen as alternative music. Irish indie rock by the bucketful, of course, but largely dullard indie rock.
Maybe it's time to accept that we get the radio we deserve in this country. If you want something else, you have to look somewhere else. Start with www.kcrw.com and see where that takes you.
