Does RTE Radio 1 need a shake up ?

I can't link because of my post count, but there's a very interesting thread which can be found by searching for Should Radio 1 be doing more? in quotation marks.

I think that if you were to design a talk radio station from scratch, you'd be very pleased with Radio 1's schedule. But, having become the baseline, it's now stale.

One needs to separate weekday R1 from weekend R1 when judging the station. There's much more variety on the weekends.

RTE's commitment to the Arts is pitiful during the week: only the catch-all Arena, Arts Tonight on Mondays, God Slot, and Book on One at around 11ish - a fraction of their schedule. Things pick up on the weekend when you've got Doc on One, Sunday Miscellany, History Show, Book Show, Drama on One, but all of that combined is still less than the six hours given to Sport just on Saturdays.

But for Morning Ireland and Marian Finucane, the magazine show format should be killed off. It works for the former because it's almost exclusively news-based and for latter because it's on the weekend. For Today With... and Drivetime, though, having one segment be an interview with a politician and the following be a story, say, about a gardening show only serves the generalist who's tuning in for nothing in particular. I rarely bother tuning in to talk radio any more because I just podcast the minority of it that interests.

BBC Radio 4 is the benchmark. Reproduce some of what it does. Discrete programmes concerning philosophy, science, parliament, etc, as well as more comedy. I am aware that Callan's Kicks and What's it all about? addressed some of those, but they had very short runs. While much of R4's content is produced in-house, a large amount, especially comedy, isn't. It may be the case that R1 struggles to commission good content given that there is not a culture of doing so.

IMO, they should broadcast debates (see Michael Sandel lectures) and a higher-brow equivalent of Liveline (see Any Answers).