Are Matt and Mollie really the best pick for Breakfast deps?
Since 2019 Matt and Mollie have been the first choice to fill in for Greg on Radio 1 Breakfast.. are they really the best pick?
Matt and Mollie have been the main breakfast show deps for three years now, when they took that role over from Scott Mills, who'd basically been doing it for the best part of two decades. For a time this made some sense: are they were doing breakfast on a Friday, so there was a logical thing there, and it helped familiarise them with Greg's audience so they wouldn't switch off on a Friday. If you told me a few years prior to all this that Matt would be covering the breakfast show and even hosted it on a Friday for a spell, I'd have been very surprised. But it worked, the Fridays themselves were always a bit underwhelming, but when they filled in for Greg it was always pretty entertaining, and they suited the vibe of his show very well.
I think it's inarguable the as far as breakfast deps go it would be a step down from having Scott and Chris: they had the art of the breakfast supply teacher down to a tee, and which Scott's experience, at times during the Grimshaw era the Breakfast B Team sounded more on the ball than the main show itself. There's no reason Scott and Chris couldn't have done the same thing for Greg - Greg's format actually gives them much more time to be themselves and do nonsense features, which of course you can't do as much of in the afternoon these days. And now, despite Matt and Mollie no longer doing Fridays, and not even doing a weekend breakfast show any more, they're still the go tos for when Greg isn't available.
The question I'm going to put you here is one I want your thoughts on: are Matt and Mollie really the best option to cover breakfast when Greg isn't available? There's quite a few things going for them here: they're a proven force, we had plenty of them on breakfast radio and we know how they sound and we know they're more than capable of holding the fort. The added bonus is the fact that they are extremely unlikely to ever get the gig for themselves, meaning when they fill in it doesn't raise questions about the future of the breakfast show, it's just a safe pair of hands. And finally and critically: it gives them some primetime exposure they wouldn't get on the station otherwise, they're big talents, and they might not get their own weekday slot in the future, so in a sense this is as good as it gets for them. I do wonder if when they were moved from Friday breakfast it was put in their contract that they'd be the deps for Radio 1 Breakfast, and if so changing this would be an effective demotion.
You could of course revert back to Scott Mills - I don't think we'll ever know why he stopped covering breakfast, clearly something changed around 2019, because you had the whispers about Scott holding out for a better deal from the BBC rather than jumping ship to Global, and around that time he really did start doing some more regular cover on Radio 2, while also losing his position as the main R1 Breakfast dep; may be explicitly there was a shift from covering a slot on Radio 1 to being the go to for cover on various slots on Radio 2? Either way, Scott and Chris still cover occasionally, and they would be the ultimate safe pair of hands. You have the argument about the fact it disrupts the weekday schedule which makes sense that isn't entirely coherent considering it disrupted the weekday schedule when Scott covered breakfast for the best part of 20 years, so it can't have been that bad. It gives Scott a swansong period of covering the breakfast show before he moves on (let's not forget: his breakfast shows sound bloody good). I suppose the main dilemma is if he actually wants to do it; maybe he's much more interested in covering on Radio 2 and would rather stick to his afternoon slot unless explicitly needed (i.e. Matt and Mollie unavailable).
And you have the curve ball: let Vick and Jordan do it. They say the people that cover the slots never get the main gate, but there's no reason that has to be the case here - it gives them time to warm to such a format, it means when Greg is off the people from the second highest profile slot are on, and it would just be a very refreshing change. I have reservations about this: getting your drive jocks to do breakfast whenever the breakfast guy is off is very disruptive to the two core lots on the schedule, as you can see considering Sara Cox was all signed up as the main dep for Zoe Ball until she got drive, at which point this changed. And yes, in terms of succession planning it would mean Vick and Jordan taking over breakfast eventually wouldn't sound very new if they'd been on that slot every couple of months anyway.
What do you think? Let me know your thoughts on this.
On to competitions: it was heavily trailed with Vick and Arielle on Monday that the only way to get tickets to Big Weekend now is to win them and to listen out for details soon; this means, as predicted we have a ticket competition on our hands in the run up to the event itself. I'm a big fan of this, because Radio 1 don't get to do this a whole lot whereas with the likes of Capital it's seemingly all they do. In other words, it's a nice refreshing change to hear a competition on Radio 1, its novelty is what makes it good. Interested to find out the format for never they do, or whether they make it quirky or whether it's very straightforward. I'm a much bigger fan of the "listen out for the claxon and phone in" competitions they've done in the past that run through the daytime shows for a given period - a real live feeling of interaction, anything can happen, all the presenters involved. I'm much less of a fan of the very formulaic competitions we've seen more recently which are essentially "text in and listen to Greg at 8am" because it's very stable and predictable.
Radio 1 DJs haven't asked listeners to phone in on 03700100100 for a long time. I think because of covid they had (and sort of still have) less people in the building physically, hence less people to answer the phones. When I was on with Greg a while back for a little segment on his show, it was a notable there I was rung on a mobile number belonging to one of the producers and put through to Greg that way rather than called up on 03700100100 like you used to be. But if they've still got the capacity, a "phone us" thing could work well - or even just a "listen for a claxon and WhatsApp us". I'll be listening with interest.
