Does Creativity Count?

I've managed to have a listen to Ken Bruce's temporary replacement for Popmaster, "Celebrity Popmaster" where today's contestants were Beverley Knight and Sophie Ellis Bextor. Basically it was 20 minutes of guffawing and giggling but at least it showed how much Beverley really knows about music when under pressure, after seeing her endless tangents about Bowie, Marvin Gaye and many other performers as a talking head on several music documentaries.
Still enjoying her "Music City Soul" album though.

I've had a bit of a tidy up in my room and have come across a load of print outs from Media UK when Essex FM was taken over by GWR which saw the sacking of John Leech and the departure of the Sunday Night Carwash. Paul Chantler had left before he was pushed and in his place was Aussie programmer Jeff O'Brien who only the previous year had the same job at Invicta FM!
There's loads of arguments between forum members for and against the takeover and looking back at it I have to say that I'm still in favour of those against. I'm more than happy to listen to the station now on and off as a listener but nothing can beat the excitement and passion of the "Hotter and Fresher" days and I was put off wanting to get into radio for quite a while as every single station I listened to just ended up being compared to the popular Southend station and sounding weaker in comparison.
Especially Canterbury's 106 CTFM who had relaunched in November 2000 and I'm rather gutted that I didn't write to them or send suggestions on how it could be better without sounding like a moaner.

But to me this shows how the majority of radio stations in the UK are run by people who know fuck all about the medium itself and on seeing an interview with Chantler from 2003 I'm glad that people like him feel the same way.
This extends to hospital radio and RSLs, as lots of people on the radio course gave up BXFM last December after just one shift because they let the inexperienced ones get to them. To be fair though I knew exactly what I wanted to do when approaching them and tried to sound adaptable.

But do these so called experts have the personality to make great radio?
I won't answer that for fear that they may be reading, but co-ordinator Lawrence's charm and Heena my co-presenter as well as most of the other presenters gave me the buzz to continue and I'll keep going by trying not to let station politics get in the way of what I'm happy with.
And I'm more confident now about asking people what works and what doesn't but people need to be given time to find their feet before deciding how things can be improved.

Take SM:TV Live with Ant & Dec for example. They're more than happy to admit that their first series was rubbish but it did evolve by introducing original and fun features such as "Challenge Ant" and "Chums" and let the support from their families and close colleagues keep them going.
The same was the case for Saturday Night Takeaway as when that started as "Slap Bang" they were trying too hard to bring SM:TV to the evenings and they realised that what may be funny at 9:25 on a Saturday morning doesn't quite work in the same way at 6:30pm in the evening.

And that's the way to continue, not being afraid to try new ideas but not flogging the same old rubbish constantly unless it's a feature that can stay consistent. And even with the rather raucous celebrity contestants, I doubt I'll be tuning away from Popmaster for quite some time.