Janice Forsyth music show forced off air to make way for sport

FOR Scottish music fans, it was the perfect accompaniment to their Saturday morning. But after almost two decades, Janice Forsyth’s weekend BBC Radio Scotland show is to be axed to make way for more news and sport.

Yesterday fans of the show, including crime writer Ian Rankin, expressed outrage at the move, which they described as “short-sighted”.

The two-hour show, a mixture of music and chat, touching on all aspects of Scottish popular culture, has run for 18 years. It has now fallen victim to the station’s emerging policy of broadcasting talk radio during the day and music at night.

The eclectic programme, with guests including David Bowie, Debbie Harry, Tom Jones, Billy Connolly and Kirsty Wark, will not be replaced. Instead existing news and sport programmes will be extended to fill the slot between 10am and noon.

Forsyth said yesterday that she felt the show had developed a strong following. “I am disappointed, but we’ve had a great run,” she said. “We know these things don’t last forever, and it’s been a great team effort.

“I’ve always said that it’s like having a Saturday job, because it’s great just to play music. We’ve had a lot of feedback over the years from the audience, so we know there is a dedicated audience who like the mixture of music and chat, and the big-name guests we get from whether it’s movies, theatre or comedy.”

The cut is the latest move by BBC Scotland, which faces losing £16 million from its annual budget of about £102m by 2017 as a result of an overall 16 per cent cut in the corporation’s funding.

However, fans of the show questioned the wisdom of the decision, warning that the BBC was cutting one of its most popular programmes.

Music promoter Mark Mac-kie of Regular Music, who has brought the likes of Prince and REM to Scotland, described the move as “an outrage”. He said: “I think it’s a decision made by somebody who doesn’t listen to radio. Daytime radio is one thing, but at the weekend the Janice Forsyth show is an institution.

“We get enough sport and news, we have 5Live already. If Radio Scotland insist on going ahead with this, then we’ll all just tune in to Radio 2.”

Rankin was similarly disappointed: “I think it’s very short-sighted,” he said. “It’s an ideal mix. She splices up the interviews with a choice selection of really good songs.”

Simple Minds manager Bruce Findlay was “flabbergasted” . He said: “I love Janice, she’s topical, intelligent – it’s rubbish to say that it’s just music, because there is a lot of speech in it. I really don’t understand the thinking behind the decision.”

The BBC said that the show would be ending as part of a schedule change starting with the launch of Olympic programmes in July.

“BBC Radio Scotland has been evolving to become more speech-based during the day, with music scheduled for evenings, which is in line with the BBC Trust-backed strategy of offering programmes that are different from commercial radio and other BBC stations,” a statement said.

“Janice is a terrific broadcaster and continues with her two current shows, The Movie Café on Thursdays and The Comedy Café on Fridays. We very much hope to be starting a new series with Janice next year.”