Vick and Arielle on drive next week
Vick won’t be flying solo after all!
Until a few days ago, we were looking at the prospect of Vick doing a week of drivetime on her own: not to be, now she will be paired up with Arielle Free. This settles the question of whether Jordan was being paired with people when Vick was absent, but not the other way round. Katie was never available because of her and Dean covering for Scott and Chris for that week, so Arielle gets a full week of exposure on drive time.
Next week should actually be a really interesting listen in the afternoons, you have two strong and different offerings: Dean and Katie followed by Vick and Arielle. Arielle has been used at the last minute in the past to fill in for Grimmy, but since then you haven't really seen her used on weekday daytime at all, and other people now cover the weekends. Given that she is the host of early breakfast she can't exactly be the supply teacher, because that would entail taking a long swathes of time off her show, but she does seem to be the second dairy supply teacher, went Katie isn't available, I expect we will see Arielle step up.
Next week the thing I'm most interested in hearing is help Arielle adapts to a personality intensive and high profile slot like drive, because you can be sure if she sounds good note will be made of it by management. See also: how Dean sounds, he's been much less annoying this weekend, and hopefully we're starting to see his style mellow and become more natural; it mustn't be forgotten that when Jordan started, he was pretty mediocre. People come a long way in a handful of years, and then there's no telling where they might end up on the schedule.
As I wrote the other day, but the thing about Arielle is I don't really know what her future at radio one will be - there are lots of people further up the line in terms of moving to weekday daytime, she isn't a specialist jock, and a move to weekends well higher profile would be a demotion in terms of hours on air. I think the thing Jordan North showed in contrast to Adele Roberts is that nowadays a Sunday slot and lots of station cover is more likely to get you noticed than a graveyard daily show.
The other really exciting piece of news over the weekend he is that on Monday Greg James will be revealing the Sunday headliner of the big weekend. This confirms what we all suspected, that there yet to be announced Sunday name/s were the main draw, considering the Sunday lineup so far had been a relatively mediocre and underwhelming compared to the steller Saturday lineup. I'm looking forward to seeing the approach to big weekend radio one take this year - last year they made the coverage on the radio very much about the presenters having a laugh and interacting, considering no festival was actually occurring. I hope this year they teach that personality element for the on-air coverage, the best big weekends have been those where the presenters have a laugh on air. The weekend is always at its best both a festival of live music, and secondarily a celebration of radio one, all that it does, and the presenters people know so well.
A few years ago radio 1 offered a stream in sync with the on-air audio, you'd see the presenters, music videos of the records they were playing, and live on stage coverage of the performances that the station took live. This was a big contrast to more recent (but pre covid) big weekends, where the live performances were generally played after they occurred, there was much less personality from the DJs and less stunts, and the only visual coverage was a clean feed of the stages on the iPlayer, detached from the output of the live of radio station. My guess would be that this year won't resemble either the last couple of big weekends before the pandemic, nor the big weekends before that: it'll be different, but it's anyone's guess exactly what they do, how the station will sound over the weekend, what iPlayer and BBC sounds will offer, how much of a prominent role the presenters interacting will have, and how exactly the build up will be promoted on air. Something to watch in the lead up to the big weekend and throughout the weekend itself - I'll be there on the Sunday, and more than anything else I'm looking forward to a great day of live music, hopefully some half decent weather, and maybe a few cheeky selfies with the DJs.
Tomorrow: is Eurovision really something the radio one audience care about? Plus, should radio one be doing more on politics in the lead up to the local elections?
