No doubt he will want to make his presence felt and will be making changes soon enough. So it’s a good opportunity to have a look at where 5 Live has gone wrong and where it remains as good as ever. Scott’s post on the same topic last week is also worth a look.

I discovered Radio 5 Live in early 2001 when I began to outgrow the local music stations. The brash presenters and samey music began to grate to the extreme, and there was nothing for me to listen to. Scanning around the radio looking for something to listen to overnight, I discovered the amazing Up All Night and stuck with 5 Live permanently.

Before I start blasting right in, I should point out one thing that is so important that I will say it in bold red letters. Don’t touch Up All Night!

I can’t understand why the best programme on radio is shoved away at the arse end of the day. The programme is a fine mixture of laid-back but intelligent analysis of the day’s events and a number of excellent regular features.

Pods and Blogs, Dr Karl’s science phone-in, the etymology phone-in, Cash Peters (worth it just for all the awesome banter) and more are all practically must-listen material. Even stuff I am not usually interested in — world football, films, even Bollywood news — is perfectly enjoyable on Up All Night.

The advantage of Up All Night is that it was there on the first night of 5 Live and has been on for the best part of a decade and a half. Over the years, it has gathered up great features like a glittery tumble weed, experimenting now and again with new ideas and ways of approaching the slot. For instance, I remember the days when the hugely successful, 90 minute long world football phone-in was just a small five or ten minute slot about Brazilian football. It has evolved beautifully.

It’s difficult to imagine any of the other programmes on 5 Live, apart from perhaps Simon Mayo, managing this. I can understand why you can’t have a 90 minute long slot about Brazilian football in the middle of the day. The fact that news is happening all the time means that the daytime shows have to be more flexible. But that isn’t an excuse for them to be utter shit.

When I began listening to 5 Live I was really happy at first. I couldn’t stand Nicky Campbell, but given that I was still at school back in those days he was really easy to avoid. When he moved to breakfast I had to start looking yet again for a new station to listen to, at least between 6am and 9am.

I remember his first show on the breakfast slot. Ego-boy Campbell thought the whole show was his and kept on talking over his co-host. The frosty relationship between Nicky Campbell, Victoria Derbyshire and Fi Glover made for really embarrassing broadcasting and unbearable listening.

I have avoided the breakfast slot like the plague ever since. Inexplicably, the awful Nicky Campbell is still in the breakfast slot, still making a total arse of himself.

The rot began to spread over to the other slots. Once the excellent Fi Glover fled the station, allegedly unable to take Campbell’s bravado any longer, the morning phone-in slot went to Victoria Derbyshire. Derby-shite more like!

The decision was seemingly at attempt for the station to shed its “Radio Bloke” reputation. The fact that every single one of her stand-ins has done a much better job than Derbyshire ever could says it all. John Pienaar, Phil Williams and especially Matthew Bannister were a joy to listen to in the morning. But Victoria Derbyshire is just awful.

She so often sounds completely out of her depth. It is particularly cringe-worthy when she has to deal with a sensitive topic. It sounds like she read in a book somewhere that staying silent a lot is a good way to deal with a sensitive situation. But obviously you can’t just stay quiet on the radio. You have to say something as well. And she says the most banal things. “…It must be awful…,” she says trying to fake a quiver in her voice. No shit Sherlock.

A recent interview with Kenny Richey was one of the worst examples. Lots of silences and lots of “it must have been so difficult” interspersed with strange probing questions about the crimes of his fellow inmates, as if that had anything to do with it.

The very premise of the show doesn’t help. It is the stereotypical “Speak Your Brains” phone-in for knuckle-heads. It’s not much different to this video. There is a poll out today saying that no-one speaks for thick white working-class people.

The people who answered that poll can’t have listened to Victoria Derbyshire. And the irony of unemployed people complaining about immigrants getting so many benefits. At that time of the morning, you can safely hazard a guess that many of the callers are on the dole, and are also thick as pigshit. If this is what a BBC phone-in is like, I shudder to imagine what a station like TalkSport or LBC would be saying.

Thankfully, the rest of the day on 5 Live is okay. Simon Mayo is really good. I was never so keen in the past, but given that so many of 5 Live’s other great presenters have jumped ship he is like a shining beacon. Drive has changed little and remains as good and bad as it always has been. If anything, it has improved since Anita Anand became one of the presenters.

Sport on 5 is not my thing, but it will be there until 5 Live shuts up shop, so there’s no point complaining about it. I don’t mind Richard Bacon as much as some people, but when you look at the roll call of the slot’s previous few presenters — Anita Anand, Matthew Bannister, Fi Glover — you can’t help but think we have gone down a rung.

Weekends are just one long disaster zone, with sirens wailing and smoke pouring out of the windows. Is Homer Simpson at the controls? I don’t mind the sport. That’s part of 5 Live so you have to live with it. Besides, they do Formula 1 as well so I can’t complain.

But what about all of the programmes around it? Saturday morning was one slot I was always iffy about. Even when the quite excellent Adrian Chiles was presenting that slot, the programme was inexplicably dull. It seemed to be aimed at boring sport fans who fancied themselves as amateur Stattos.

It hasn’t got much better under the control of Eamonn Holmes. Luckily Adam and Joe are on 6 Music on Saturday mornings these days, otherwise I would still be sleeping through until 1pm avoiding all of the dross.

And just what on earth has happened to Sunday mornings over the past few months? I hope there is a good reason for Julian Worricker’s disappearance, because his replacement Gabby Logan is terrible. Logan is yet another one of those stars that the BBC has poached from another channel at great expense without even knowing what to do with her (see also Johnny Vaughan, Graham Norton, Richard Blackwood). Is she qualified to broadcast about subjects other than sport? It doesn’t sound like it.

Then in the evening there is smooth, calm Stephen Nolan. That was sarcasm there. This loud mouth just approaches every topic from the most controversial and inflammatory angle. His treatment of sensitive subjects has all the tact and subtlety of a bulldozer knocking over a child’s sandcastle. When you factor in the fact that Stephen Nolan is from Northern Ireland, I should think it is a miracle that this audio arsonist is still alive.

To be honest, the only thing that keeps me listening to 5 Live so much is Up All Night — and the fact that all the other radio stations are even worse.

“Oh, that’ll be interesting,” I thought, so I stayed in bed and waited for it to come on. I was to discover that the programme wasn’t about blogging at all.

Blogging in the UK was originally part of ‘Your Five Live’, which I mentioned in my post about user generated content. Specifically, it was a feature of Five Live’s Breakfast programme.

The idea was to take a day during ‘Your Five Live’ week — the 22^nd of January — and encourage as many first time bloggers to write about their day. The results are predictably awful, reinforcing the stereotypes about how bloggers are just people who write about what they had for breakfast.

And it shows just how little whoever came up with the idea actually knows about what blogging is about. For a start, the entries were posted by users in the comments of the Breakfast programme’s blog. This isn’t blogging. This is just a list of people’s mundane day to day activities.

Of course, there are plenty of bloggers out there who write about their day to day life (to good effect or otherwise). The fact that blogging can provide people with such an easy way to express themselves and write down their thoughts is one of blogging’s greatest strengths. But this Five Live stunt is not blogging, and it shouldn’t pretend otherwise.

Blogging is a commitment. You put yourself out there and write posts on something resembling a regular basis and try to find like-minded people to share your experiences with. The people who appeared on the radio this morning were not bloggers doing it for the love of blogging. I get the impression that most of them were just looking for the chance to say how much they love their baby boy on the radio.

In fairness, there were a few interesting soliloquies in this half-hour extravaganza of first-time non-blogging. For instance, I was interested in the post describing a woman’s attempts to cope with her partner’s constant heavy drinking. That was a real window into a world I had never really experienced before.

Also, there did seem to be a few people who had a way with words. But for every one of these interesting posts there were at least three banal entries by people about dropping off their kids at school and breastfeeding the baby — and these were the ones that were selected to appear on the radio!

Furthermore, it completely lacks the interaction of blogging. Blogs are discovered, as I said, by like-minded people. Talented bloggers who put in the effort find themselves with a big audience, and many bloggers receive the odd comment and communities are built. The people who participated in this experiment got none of that. They were hand-picked by an editor to appear on the radio for a one-off.

This is not a celebration of British blogging, and I seriously doubt if anybody who wasn’t interested in blogging before would have been swayed by this morning’s lamentable programme.

I wouldn’t have minded this at all if the programme wasn’t billed as being about “Blogging in the UK”. If they had called it “Bores ranting away about mundane subjects” it would have been a more accurate description. But then Five Live’s Breakfast programme wouldn’t have been able to hop onto the blogging bandwagon.

To add insult to injury, because it was done by Five Live Breakfast, this project involved Nicky Campbell. I could have just deleted this entire post and replaced it with the words “Nicky Campbell” and it would have been just as valid. I’ve never listened to Radio Five Live that early in the morning ever since he started presenting the Breakfast programme. I can hardly think of a less pleasant way to spend the morning.

Radio Five Live can and does understand blogging. In fact, I seem to remember Julian Worricker’s programme profiled a few prominent bloggers a year or two ago. But best of all is the weekly Pods and Blogs segment on the wonderful Up All Night programme. Pods and Blogs is made by people who really get what it’s all about, and their segment serves as a reminder of just how much wonderful stuff is going on in the blogosphere (putting the musings of someone like me somewhat into perspective).

As an aside, am I the only person who gets a bit annoyed whenever somebody (almost always a non-blogger) calls a post a “blog”? (See how many people talk about “writing their first blog” in the Breakfast comments.) The blog is the whole thing, surely? People must think it is like “Captain’s Log” or something. (“Captain’s Log, Date 11/03/2007. Today I had four Weetabix for breakfast.”)

But back in the old days when people had to do truly awful things like write stuff down with a pen and paper, I seriously don’t think that anybody in their right mind said, “I am just writing a log now,” or, “It took me fifteen minutes to write that diary!” Diary entries have their modern equivalents: blog posts.

I officially gave up on music radio when Beat 106 went to shit about five years ago. I spent some time in radio limbo looking for the least worst radio programmes. Overnight was particularly bad. I remember even listening to Virgin Radio overnight at one point — a true low point.

But then I discovered Up All Night on Radio Five Live. Up All Night is the best radio programme in the world. There are a number of must-hear (if you can stay up late enough) regular slots on this programme including one about blogs and podcasts. I don’t know why the rest of Radio Five Live isn’t like that — probably because people who are awake during the day are stupid.

So I decided to stick with Radio Five Live all day round. It was okay at first, but the little chops and changes that have happened to the station over the past five years since I started listening to it have not always met with my approval. It began when Nicky Campbell was moved to the Breakfast programme. If you want to wake up pleasently, don’t listen to Five Live. It’s bad enough that Nicky Campbell is on the radio at all, never mind when you’re trying to eat your breakfast.

Then when Fi Glover left the mid-morning phone-in they chose Victoria Derbyshire to replace her. This was probably part of their attempt to shed the ‘Radio Bloke’ image, although she is quite a blokey woman so I don’t think they thought it through. Anyway, phone-ins are bad enough, but Victoria Derbyshire is just terrible. Sometimes she doesn’t even attempt to sound interested. She makes it obvious that she’s just going through the motions. Like a robot sometimes. Whenever Julian Worricker or Matthew Bannister sit in the programme improves enormously. When Derbyshire is at the helm, though, it becomes practically impossible to listen to.

So in general, I avoid Five Live in the mornings. But weekends are off the scale. I know Richard Bacon got a lot of criticism when he presented the weekend programme, but I’ve got a fair bit of respect for the guy and I thought he did a pretty good job on it. When Bacon left he was replaced by Stephen Nolan, who I simply cannot bear. All he does is shout all the time, and he is often quite rude to the callers. Every conversation, no matter how trivial, is turned into an all-out war due to his style. It’s awful.

The Saturday morning programme on Five Live (currently presented by Eamonn Holmes) is very boring unless you are very interested in “quirky” “sport” “stories” along the lines of some old bore who cycled backwards across Europe whilst juggling eggs. Can’t stand it.

Brian Hayes on Friday nights used to send me to sleep (possibly a good idea at that time of night anyway), but I became used to his programme. Now I have read on Iain Dale’s blog that Hayes is being replaced by Stephen Nolan because of some pissy regional quota.

A huge amount of Five Live’s schedule is a complete no-go area for me now. So what can I tune into now? That’s another post for another time. Ha!