Last week's announcement that Ann Marie O'Callaghan had been appointed Editor Radio 1 caused consternation in the Radio Centre in Donnybrook. No one knew who she was.
The official announcement that she was a 32-year-old music graduate from Passage West in Cork, and had produced programmes for BBC Radios 3, 4 and 5, only increased the mystery.
The appointment of Helen Shaw (35) last June as director of RTE Radio was surprise enough. She, too, came from the BBC but had been an RTE producer. Ms O'Callaghan has never worked in RTE. She had only worked in Ireland for a few months and that was at Radio Ireland.
It will be with Ms O'Callaghan that Gay Byrne will discuss his future when his current radio series ends. She speaks highly of his talent but faces the problem of the split presentation and lack of continuity in a crucial prime-time slot.
She will also have to come up with plans that will attract the elusive younger audience while maintaining Radio 1's strong position in the marketplace.
At Radio Ireland she devised and produced Entertainment Today, one of the few innovative programmes on the new station. Its presenter, Philip BoucherHayes, was let go. Ms O'Callaghan lasted a little while longer before returning to BBC Radio.
She is surprised at finding herself in charge of Ireland's national talk radio channel. She only applied to let RTE know she existed so that when work came up in the planned 24-hour arts radio channel she would not be completely unknown. She had little interest in radio management, she says, but became more enthusiastic as she wrote her application.
Ann Marie O'Callaghan's route into radio was via a music degree at UCC and the Cork School of Music. She did write to RTE seeking work but is not now sure if she received a reply. She had numerous jobs in the BBC but became a producer when she moved to Classic FM, the successful commercial national classical music channel, in 1993. She produced programmes on music and books as well as three hours of opera every Saturday night, which were put out on CD. She was always working.
She returned to the BBC as an arts producer in Radio 4. "My experience was so different," she says. "My colleagues were intrigued. They were only just aware of something called the audience, a word that was bandied about all the time at Classic FM."
She produced Kaleidoscope, Radio 4's flagship arts programme, and Night Waves on Radio 3, the station's hard-edged late night discussion programme. That, she says, was like studying for a degree, so intense was the background research.
If Radio 1 producers want to get an insight into their new boss, they could do worse than find old tapes of Entertainment Today. It gives a clue to her philosophy of radio. Entertainment Today was to be imaginative and provocative and offer a different sound, with different items. "You don't have to be in hard news to be journalistic," she says. "We went after what was new. We tried to spot trends and be pro-active and respond quickly to events. We wanted the big names before anyone else."
The culture of the BBC changed radically during the 1990s. Reforms such as producer-choice and the internal market made the BBC far more competitive and even commercial in outlook. The internal market allowed ideas to be sought right across the corporation. She produced Radio 3's In Tune when the Arts Department of Radio 4 won the Radio 3 drivetime slot.
She leaves a very changed BBC. Departments do not own programmes any more. The internal market allows anyone to bid for a programme, whether from the regions or across the network. Producers have to justify their work with audience figures. The system is "good but exhausting", she says.
The word "passionate" litters her conversation about radio. Now she is "passionate" about having editorial control over the national station. Radio 1 has the talent, she says, and she loves the way it can interact with its audience so immediately. There is a spontaneity in the relationship between Radio 1 and its listeners that the BBC can never have. "That must never be compromised."