We had a bit of craic on the Facebook group this week:

“Fans of 2FM presenters Rick O’Shea and Nikki Hayes have this week turned the tables on 2FM over format changes to the shows.

All this week fans, or Ricktivists, have been inundating 2FM shows with requests for Britney Spears’ Trouble and dedicating them to Richard or Nicola. This song has in fact been adopted as an anthem by the campaign. Campaign organiser Allan Cavanagh has said that in effect, 2FM has been playing a song dedicated to Rick and Nikki:

“The Facebook group was set up to show RTE that fans were unhappy with the changes to the shows. We adopted Britney’s Trouble as an anthem for its name and likelihood of getting played. Effectively 2FM has been playing our anthem in support of two of its presenters on its request shows. Now every time it’s played on 2FM it will stand for the unnecessary changes made to the shows and the need to revert to the previous, more popular format.

“The campaign now has over 300 members and will continue to urge 2FM to reverse its decision on this dreadful waste of talent.”

Rick O’Shea and Nikki Hayes had previously had highly interactive shows where listeners drove the shows’ content, but were recently instructed by 2FM management to drop features and simply introduce the music.”

Take 2 minutes to tell RTE management what you think of the changes.

My email:

A chara,

I’m writing to complain about the recent changes to the shows of Rick O’Shea and Nikki Hayes. The decision to axe the audience interaction, interviews and features has made each show nothing more than a mix tape. Your decision to do this has damaged your audience. Instead of being an engaged enthusiastic audience who felt part of the show, your remaining listeners are now passive and your shows have simply become background music. An engaged audience is more open to the message of your advertisers; to a passive audience those ads become indistinguishable from each other.

There’s simply no rationale that can convince me what you’ve done benefits these shows or 2FM. You have a duty to provide entertainment, and you took two very entertaining shows and turned them into iPods. You are going to lose audience numbers over this I am sure. It’s not too late to give the shows back their lustre; in fact if you did, 2FM management would be sure to regain the respect of the listeners.

I’m the person that set up the Facebook group in support of Nikki and Rick. As of today, that group has 327 members and is growing every day. A selection of the comments left by people are as follows:

” Rick’s banter was the only reason I listened to the radio rather than the CD player on the way home from work.”
“I can’t imagine a show without Nikki giving it a bit of lip! Keep the talk and stuff the music during the day if you know what’s good for ratings! Music is a night time thing anyway.”
“A step backwards if ever there was. The personality and the character are the reasons people tune in to specific shows. Listeners don’t want more ‘that was, this is’ linking droids which are plentiful enough on other stations. If people just want music then they will choose to listen to their choice, on their terms and in their time with their iPod, Streaming radio, LastFM, Imeem and that fella who plays the banjo at the end of Dun Laoghaire pier.
And there I was thinking Irish radio was actually beginning to get it…”
“Drop all non-music items? Are they serious? That’s beyond madness”

There are many, many comments being left on various blogs as well. There’s at least 30 influential bloggers who have come out in condemnation at this decision. This list too is growing every day. You can see the facebook group for yourselves, and I invite you read the various blog posts listed there to get an idea of how unpopular the change to format has been:

http://tinyurl.com/93u8ac

This has already been picked up by the Star and other papers are expressing interest in the story. Advertisers will pick up on the negative publicity and possibly go elsewhere. If you don’t want a PR disaster please change the shows back to their previous format.

Yours sincerely,

Allan Cavanagh.

Get your own – Open publication

AJ at LeCraic has compiled many of the blog posts about the Rick O’Shea/ Nikki Hayes fiasco into book form, embedded above. Sterling work sir, sterling work.

Let’s call it Rickgate.

…[a]nd even the music they are playing offers nothing new. It’s just playlisted pop. Do the people who make decisions at 2fm not understand that if young people want to listen to music, they plug in their iPod or whack on Last.fm? Do they really just want the afternoon slots at 2fm to turn into a soundtrack for customers at Spar or petrol stations? Because that’s what will happen now with these rudderless and badly thought out decisions.”