PLANS by BBC Radio Scotland to axe the Janice Forsyth Show from its Saturday morning schedule is indicative of “urgent questions about what on earth is going on, in Britain’s increasingly male-dominated public sphere”.
Throughout the week, there have been calls from various musicians, politicians and other well-kent folk that the show should be saved.
And writes Joyce McMillan, in her weekly column for The Scotsman, it’s been a week also dominated by sport – whether the BBC deciding First Minister, Alex Salmond, should not appear, as planned, on a rugby discussion, or the resignation of Fabio Capello as manager of the England football team and the various reporting of his possible successor, Harry Redknapp.
While recognising that many women are involved in sport, including as broadcasters, McMillan says sport is “overwhelmingly a male preoccupation”.
McMillan continues: “And even the row over the Janice Forsyth Show was triggered, apparently, by a Radio Scotland decision that music programmes should increasingly be confined to the evening, to make way for ever more daytime coverage of news and, yes, sport.”
