Winds of change by Darryl Morris
I’m always quick to dismiss any claim that I get my ideals & principles from family but the truth is… I mainly do. I’ve mentioned in the past my Grandad’s love for the BBC & his efforts to make me listen to radio at a time when I was far from interested. I understood the value & power of the BBC but it took a little more to kick start my love affair as it stands today.
After I wasn’t invited back to Tower FM, I started to get the feeling I’d fell at the first hurdle. Just as I had set sail on this great exciting voyage & managed to get a few sceptics on board with me, my own stupidity drove me head first into a radio iceberg. Harbouring inside me was a deep concern that many other station bosses where watching the radio forum & that I’d really nailed my coffin shut. During my brief time at BBC World Service, I spoke to one of the producers about the chance of working at BBC Radio Manchester. He said he would look into it but very little materialised. I managed an on air interview about the World Service programme & as fantastic as it was, they had me in and out in twenty minuets. I made the effort to email BBC Radio Manchester myself, themanaging editor John Ryan. The days, months & weeks past and I eventually forgot all about it. I powered on with the Breakfast Show at school & Bolton Market Radio was still hogging my Saturdays. I figured the best thing I could do was keep my head in the game, keep practising and working hard. By this point, I’d reached a year on the Breakfast Show & started to look back at how I’d developed. It was clear that I’d come a long way and I was making less mistakes. I soon realised that maybe I’d been trying too hard. My efforts to push myself & get my name out had backfired spectacularly & I came to the conclusion that all I needed to do was put the hours in and the rest would look after itself. I was still as hungry and passionate as ever before, but lessons had been learnt and I was clearly growing up.
I was starting to look at commercial radio in a different light and was becoming largely dismayed as it hurtled towards a sinister future of cutbacks and a watering down of its personality. I was probably more cynical than I ought to have been but I was becoming more & more in love with the BBC. I was won over by the facts and figures I was given during my flirt with the World Service. In many countries the BBC is the only impartial news service in a sea of dangerously corrupt news outlets, in war torn areas this can literally be a life saver. I’ve mentioned before the respect it commands across the world, simply having a BBC lanyard feels like a mark of respect. If the newspapers & news networks taking sides during the recent general election has shown us anything, it’s how important the impartial BBC is. It’s going through a hard time at the moment. In the thick of a worrying economic time its enemies are turning up the heat. It has to be bold in the face of this and stand up and defend its worth. Several years ago Stephen Fry gave a lecture on what the BBC means to him and made the point that “The BBC enriches the country in ways we will only discover when it has gone and it is too late to build it back up again. We actually can afford the BBC, because we can’t afford not to.”
Doing radio six days a week fulfilled the hunger that made me (and many other aspiring presenters) call up radio stations. Although I’d grown more aware of other stations, Century FM still held a special place in my heart. Things had changed a little & a guy called Umberto was doing a daily phone in show late in the evening. It was a good listen but I often resisted temptation to join in. One night however, I decided I would. He was talking about the smoking ban and I had a point I wanted to make. I called up and got on the show. I made my point and enjoyed my quick outing on an actual station with real listeners. The following day I opened my inbox to a massive surprise. 1 new email. John Ryan. My heart skipped a beat as the possibilities of what it might say raced through my mind. I sat and looked at my screen for what seemed like an age. I soaked up every last second of joy at the sight of his name in my inbox. I clicked to open the email & sat fidgeting in my seat as my slow computer took a forever to spring to life…
To be continued…