Following Newsnight editor Ian 'Cool' Katz's widely-publicised calls for a lighter, less aggressive kind of political interview - and his own determined steps to lighten Newsnight - it looks as if another top BBC editor is thinking along the same lines.
According to the Guardian, BBC Radio 4 Today editor Jamie Angus is concerned that his programme isn't appealing to "younger audiences".
These younger audiences "tell us sometimes they have to pay too much attention to Today, some of the items are difficult to understand, some of them are too long"...
...so expect poor John Humphrys to be forced to follow in poor Kirsty Wark's footsteps and have to do something daft like rappin' 'n' gettin' down wid da yoof...
Mr Angus is also looking for new ways to report "bad foreign news", like Ukraine, Syria and Gaza, as some Radio 4 listeners just can't cope with it all, and have fled to to Radio 2 instead (apparently more than 300,000 of them over the summer).
Such people feel there was far too much "distressing foreign news" this summer, and they didn't enjoy being upset by it.
Nor, said Mr Angus, did they enjoy angry Israeli and Palestinian spokesmen shouting down the phone at John Humphrys.
So the Today editor is thinking of changing "how we do the storytelling, how we do the interviews.”
I have some suggestions:
- Maybe they could shorten the reports to something manageable, like tweets (eg "This is Jon Donnison in Gaza. Won't someone pls think of the children #Israelsucks").
- Maybe Yolande Knell could 'do all the voices' in her reports, like Martin Jarvis. Or maybe Martin Jarvis could do them for her.
- Maybe Mark Regev and Mustafa Bargouti could be asked by Sarah Montague to guess each others thoughts and then mime them to each other over the phone (in the spirit of a modern-day Educating Archie, or I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue).
- Maybe the Cookie Monster (apparently set to replace Evan Davis) could start spelling out the name 'Benjamin Netanyahu' for Mishal Husain, and then going 'Om nom nom nom' as he consumes the letter 'B', the letter 'E', the letter 'N' (etc).
That would bring 'em all rushing back from Radio 2.
