Hijacked by the people

The blogosphere is threatening to take over the airwaves and even the great Eddie Mair is feeling ruffled. Last Saturday, half an hour of PM, his five o’clock current affairs programme on Radio Four, was hijacked by ‘the people’. Instead of running straight through till six, Mair had to break off halfway through to launch the new mini-version, iPM.

Mair has been reminding us for weeks now of the existence of the PM blog. ‘Just log on to bee bee cee dot co dot u kay forward slash eye pee em’ has been said by him so often that a hint of repetitive strain is beginning to enter his normally smooth-as-velvet-cream delivery. Advertising what he (or rather his programme) has on offer has become part of his job description; he’s no longer just a presenter of news, an interviewer, a commentator, he’s also an interactive salesman. It’s the only way to ensure that he and his editorial team can put together a programme ‘shaped by listeners and bloggers’.

iPM (which will take over every week at 5.30) is not about what’s happening in the news or the gathering of expert opinion to comment on what’s happening in the news; it’s all about listening to the listener (the ‘i’ stands for interactive). All you have to do to take part is ‘log on–and vent your opinions. So what did we have as top-of-the-agenda on Saturday afternoon? Immigration and Enoch Powell. As Mair himself confessed on air, when they had started to put together the programme some days earlier, this topic had been at the head of the running order (following David Cameron’s dismissal of the Conservative candidate Nigel Hastilow, for reigniting the Powell bonfire). But he and his team then realised that it had become ‘old news’ and wanted to drop it.