voice + video blog
Official - the weekend starts on Friday
BBC Radio 1 has as announced a new schedule, marking Friday the start of its weekend line up.
From June, the regular week day schedule will run for four days and Fridays will see presenters and their shows from the weekend start a day earlier. The weekend breakfast show plus new mid morning and afternoon shows are all about attracting a new, diverse audience. By exposing weekday listeners to a new line up, it’s hoped they remain listening over the weekend.
Radio 1 controller Ben Cooper has said “Fridays are different from the rest of the week. You are in a better mood. You are planning how to have fun, who to meet up with and where to go.” It makes sense then that the beeb wants to capitalise on that Friday feeling and anticipation on air.
Back in 1997, 1Radio breakfast show presenter Chris Evans famously asked for Fridays off. He mostly wanted space to concentrate on his evening TFI show but also, he argued at the time, it was a great way to introduce listeners to the weekend presenters and attract more listeners. The then controller Matthew Bannister denied the request and Evans quit in a blaze of publicity and accusations of selfishness and inflated ego.
Twenty years on and Evan’s rationale now seems way ahead of its time.
Posted by Tim Longhurst on Wed 11 Apr 2018.
