Andy Parfitt, The Evening Standard

Wednesday, October 24, 2001

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THE DAYS OF BACKBITING ARE LONG GONE
By JAMES SILVER

GETTING publicly monstered by your stars comes with the territory for Radio 1 controllers. Matthew Bannister, who held the post until 1998, was always referred to on-air as "the Fat Controller" by Chris Evans. In October 1996, Evans ranted to listeners: "How ungrateful is this guy? We saved his job ... We turned the station around. And now yesterday, after 18 months of doing the show, he decided to give us a pep talk all of a sudden. Well thanks a lot, Matthew."

Five years later, it is Andy Parfitt's turn. Chris Moyles, the station's motor mouth, drivetime jock, was particularly livid after he was called in to receive a dressing-down over comments he'd made onair about The Mirror's 3am gossip columnists. Of the Radio 1 management he said: "I save their ailing radio station and this is how they repay me." It cannot have helped that Moyles was passed over in favour of Sara Cox when Zoe Ball left the weekday breakfast show.

Now the rumours are swirling around that Moyles, who is being lined up to present Channel 4's Big Breakfast replacement if Planet 24 wins the commission, may have had enough. Parfitt does not rule out a departure. Moyles has a contract until next summer, he says, but "it would not be an unusual occurrence for a Radio 1 presenter to choose to branch out in his career". Make of that what you will.

Moyles may be a mere local concern, for Parfitt, like every other radio boss in the kingdom, is thinking only about one thing: tomorrow's Rajar audience figures. "I'm not going to guess what they are going to be like - only a fool would," he says, "but I am very confident we had a terrific summer." He points to the attendance at a Radio 1 concert in Leicester. "We had 100,000 people turn out. The whole area ground to a halt."

Sensibly, from his point of view, he says the previous quarter threw up very encouraging figures - Radio 1's audience was up by a million on the preceding season, and Sara Cox's Breakfast Show drew 7.8 million, beating her higher-profile predecessors, Zoe Ball and Chris Evans. "If our weekly reach for 15 to 24-year-olds remains over 50 per cent I will be very pleased," he says. (Last time, 54 per cent of all 15 to-24-year-olds tuned into Radio 1 each week.) But how does he explain the fact that Radio 2 is now the UK's most listened-to station - unthinkable a few years ago given Radio 1's historic dominance?

Parfitt's answer sounds painstakingly rehearsed. "It's a delight that two national BBC radio channels can work in tandem for different audiences," he says, without deviating from the script. "Radio 1 is, by and large, listened to by the under-30s, and Radio 2 by the over-40s, so we're working together for the BBC's overall benefit, which is strategically the right thing to do. Radio 2 is targeting a much bigger group of people so it should not be all that surprising that it will reach more people."

He claims to have introduced a new ethos at Radio 1, ridding it of its infamous back-stabbing culture, in which DJs clashed, production staff grumbled and everyone leaked information to the press. "The days of internal tension and backbiting are long gone," he declares. "And that's the way it should be. No one presenter can ever be bigger than Radio 1 itself."

A lean, young-looking 41, Parfitt has spent his entire BBC career in radio. He joined as a studio manager in 1979 and went on to become an arts and features producer at Radio 4. After helping to launch the "old" Radio 5, he crossed over to Radio 1 and made his name during the bloody purges of Bannister's era.

When Parfitt took over Radio 1 early in 1998, the BBC's director-general at the time, John Birt, said: "We're not looking for a revolution now; we've had the revolution." It was Parfitt's job, he implied, to restore calm and focus on new music, pulling in the elusive youth audience.

"I think what John meant was that the drama of those years in the mid-Nineties, where the great changes were made by Matthew Bannister, was going to be a thing of the past," says Parfitt. "In retrospect, the channel probably changed too quickly in those years. I think even Matthew and John would say that. Some of it, I have to add, was to do with circumstances at the time, outside of anyone's control."

Earlier this year, before the listening figures began moving in his direction, Broadcast magazine reported that Parfitt would soon be moved. So how long does he plan to stay? "I've been controller for three years and I think there's at least a five-year job to do at Radio 1. So, I'm not going anywhere right now." All being well tomorrow, it's likely he will outlive Moyles.

(The Evening Standard, October 24 2001)

Posted by James Silver - On Wednesday, October 24, 2001

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