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There's long been a call for Radio 1 and Radio 2 to be privatised, sold off or closed down because its license-fee funded position is detrimental to the success of commercial radio. Apparently (although I can find no evidence of this), the idea re-appeared in the Conservative Party manifesto in 2005, and was backed up a year later in a report by the think-tank "European Media Forum" (of which I can find no further information).

I want to re-explore this issue now, for three reasons. First, there's a posibility that the Conservatives could win the next general election (predicted in 2010). Assuming they win the election, as the current license fee settlement expires in 2012, renegotations for the following years would be between that party and the BBC. Second, Gcap, the UK's largest commercial radio group who own 42 'local' radio stations, London's Capital 95.8 and Choice FM, XFM, and the Gold network, as well as the 'third' commercial national license, Classic FM, have announced that they are pulling out of DAB radio, and have already closed some stations.

The third reason is that Radio 1 have made this promotional advert, and are currently showing it at cinemas around the country:

Consider the types of music styles promoted in the advert, and ask yourself when you last heard this mix of styles in the commercial radio sector.

Yet, night after night, Radio 1 plays specialist music until the wee hours of the morning. What do the One Network do? Continue playing the same music that's been on five times already that day, but in a different order and with different presenters.

When did you last hear a documentary on local radio? Substantial speech content? Religious output? Help and advice on the radio? (Late Night Love has now gone, along with Graham Torrington, pushed after broadcasting his unbenown-to-him final show, and embarassingly not updated on the Gcap websites). Comedy programming? (except, of course, the odd prank call...)

So, what could happen if Radio 1 and 2 were to be sold off?

Depleted talent
The new owners would instantly lose key talent, and be forced to re-negotiate contracts for those who stay. Terry Wogan, Jonathan Ross, Dale Winton, Jeremy Vine and Richard Hammond all appear on other BBC programmes, so would presumably opt to stay with the BBC rather than lose the extra work. Others, like Chris Moyles, Mark Radcliffe and Chris Evans would either stick to the corporation, or come at a large contract renegotiation fee and wage.

Introduction (and removal) of adverts
One of the positive things that always comes out of BBC focus groups is the fact that BBC networks carry no adverts. Not only would the quality of programmes suffer, and potentially audiences drifting (see below), but also the (already small) pot of commercial radio advertising revenue would be seriously depleted. Given the choice of a plethora of local radio stations (and the admin and contractual headache that brings) vs a single national station with larger audiences, why would Pepsi et al choose to advertise on the former? Thus, money would be removed from existing local stations, leaving them with the far less profitable local companies. A vicious circle would ensue where sales staff are cut to appease shareholders, leaving them with even less sales force, which brings in even less revenue, and so on until the station is bankrupt.

Content removal
I assume any new owners would strip out the expensive aspects of content and other activities; specialist shows which notoriously attract less listeners, and therefore less advertising revenue, replacing them with music jukeboxes overnight and at weekends. The extra-special stuff that Radio 1 and 2 do excellently now would probably be cut or axed; Radio 1's Big Weekends, special concerts (Coldplay at Brixton academy, Cheltenham Jazz Festival, Electric Proms...), Ibiza summer seasons, presence at the UK's music festivals, etc. The last time I remember Gcap doing anything like this was 2005's Summer XS series of concerts, ironically here covered by the BBC (and appearing as the first few results in a Google search).

Promotion
A large chunk of promotional opportunity would be removed. Whereas the BBC can now cross-promote from its other radio and tv stations, as well as online, the new owners would not be able to do this, meaning more money would have to be spent on advertising itself to draw in listeners, which in turn means money has to be cut elsewhere in the budget.

Audience loss
According to the latest (Q1 2008) Rajar figures, Radio 1 is listened to by 11m at some point during the course of the week - 22% of the population - and Radio 2 13.6m (27%). Of course, it helps being on the FM waveband and available nationwide, and presumably these factors would stay the same. However, the BBC branding conjurs up very powerful associations. How many would switch off or over if the company was in private hands, and with adverts?

Conclusion
So, what would we actually gain from selling these two stations off? Well, commercial radio - at least the groups who end up owning them - would be happy as there would be no competition. Until they realise that people don't listen any more because Moyles/Evans/Wogan no longer works there. They would then bring in other presenters, who would play music (that is, just highly-chosen-at-focus-groups records repeated over and over again), adverts and do a little bit of chatting, mixed in with the odd competition to win a chart CD. This would be repeated from Breakfast to evening, at which point they would hand over to the specialist schedule...

...Until, that is, Management realise that no advertisers want to advertise throughout the specialist schedule because of the lower audience figures, and replace all specialist music presenters with an automated playout computer at a fraction of the cost. This would run until Breakfast the next day.

Eventually, all the added-value stuff like going out and meeting your audience at station events around the UK would be condensed to just London, and then scrapped altogether after a few years, by which time the audience figures would be lower than the original local radio stations, which went bankrupt in year 2 because all their advertising revenue had switched to the 'new' Radios 1 and 2.

...And we'd be left with just another bog-standard music station, low in audience figures, talent, money and creativity, and wonder how we managed to let government squander a fine institution with the short-sightedness of a single decision to give big business some more profit... and possibly make some out of it themselves.