In a surprising turn of events, the long-standing radio program Good Morning Scotland will come to an end after more than 50 years on air. Remarkably, this iconic show predates Radio Scotland itself, having first aired in 1973. Back then, it was part of the Scottish Home Service, a time when many still affectionately referred to their radios as ‘the wireless’.

The new chapter for morning radio listeners will be Radio Scotland Breakfast, a fresh offering set to be hosted by Martin Geissler and Laura Maciver, with Phil Goodlad tackling sports coverage.

Promising to uphold the high journalistic standards established by its predecessor, the new program aims to be a “pacy, informal, and informative” experience for its audience. However, this change has sparked debate.

Many wonder why the BBC feels the need to alter a beloved institution, questioning the wisdom of the age-old saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Critics suggest that the broadcaster’s eagerness to appeal to younger audiences may be driving this decision.

Interestingly, Good Morning Scotland is not suffering from a lack of listeners. In fact, its audience numbers surged during the COVID-19 pandemic and have since remained robust.

The real issue, according to some, is the demographic tuning in. The majority of its loyal listeners are older, contributing to a perception within media circles that the program is out of step with the coveted younger demographic.

The audience for speech radio nowadays is one overwhelmingly of the over-55s. Folk of a vintage old enough to have at least a dim memory of pre-decimal coinage, the Ballachulish ferry, the Silver Jubilee and when a Snickers bar was still quaintly called a Marathon.

And whose most vivid memory of out-there cutting-edge broadcasting was the first 1978 series of Grange Hill.

BBC Scotland’s headquarters in Glasgow

Before BBC Radio Scotland was the Scottish Home Service, with The McFlannel’s a regular evening broadcast

I feel a bit stranded in this debate because I haven’t listened to Good Morning Scotland in many years and, despite racking my brains, I can’t think of anyone else in my circle who does.

I typically start my day by checking in to all my online news publications, from Mail Plus downwards, and chillax of an evening with the unfailing goldmine of intelligent YouTube documentaries.

And, if I happened to be driving at such an unjournalistic hour at half-eight in the morning, I’d usually be tuned to Radio 4.

The Radio Scotland I knew and loved – and you might feel the same way – was snatched from me more than 30 years ago by a mad axeman called James Boyle.

The sometime head of BBC Radio Scotland left behind him the smouldering, burnt-out overturned wreck of a brilliant channel that had something for everyone.

The gracious tones of, for instance, Bill Jack and Neville Garden. The couthy morning warmth of Macgregor’s Gathering: with his long-running folksong duo with Robin Hall, Jimmie Macgregor had once topped the bill at some venue with, at the bottom of the poster and in very small print, some Liverpudlian lads called The Beatles.

Lasses and their grannies singing the likes of The Crystal Chandeliers down the telephone to Art Sutter. The Jimmy Mack Show.

And Tom Ferrie’s late-night bubblegum-­pop programme to which every teen in the country listened. Less a broadcast than our evening hangout, Top 20 hits shamelessly and unlawfully recorded for that mix-tape you planned to slip some bonny lass during morning registration.

Radio Scotland Breakfast presenters Martin Geissler, Laura Maciver and Phil Goodlad

But there was much intelligent talk radio too – steepled fingers and G12 accents – and, even still, of a Saturday evening, Take The Floor, the Scottish country dancing vehicle that’s the oldest programme on the schedule.

It’s been around in one iteration or another since before Hitler invaded Poland and Gary Innes, that good Lochaber man, is in the latest warm succession to such legends as David Findlay and Robbie Shepherd.

Boyle’s subsequent career has been a tedious upwards slither – controller of BBC Radio 4, chairman of the Scottish Arts Council, chairman of the National Library of Scotland and, for all I know, membership of the New Club and the Royal Company of Archers.

That is the vulnerability of radio. It has been the poor relation of television for as long as most of us can remember and, for the media-luvvie careerist shooting through it, it tends to be less a platform than a stepping stone.

A shame, for there is both a simplicity and a magic about radio, as King George V majestically put it in 1932, in the first ever Christmas broadcast by our reigning monarch. 

‘Through one of the marvels of modern science, I am enabled, this Christmas Day, to speak to all my peoples throughout the Empire … I speak now from my home and from my heart to you all. To men and women so cut off by the snows, the desert or the sea, that only voices out of the air can reach them …’

I began my media career on the wireless – BBC Radio Highland, which aired from 1976 to 1993, launched the public life of (for instance) Charles Kennedy and broadcast a brilliantly conceived ‘Lamb Bank’ appeal, with details of orphaned lambs available to any ewes bereft of their stillborn young.

My mentor, Angus MacDonald, went grey in the training of me, but it has been sweet to see the success of his son. A broadcast natural, Calum MacDonald is the morning anchor of Times Radio.

The point Angus hammered tirelessly into my noggin – in truth, I was far more comfortable behind a typewriter than in front of a microphone – is that, in radio, you must consciously address yourself to one person, not We The Nation.

The little old lady on her Hebridean croft, the schoolboy swotting for his Highers, someone’s mum making the tea – it’s a friendly chat over the fence, you know. Not the Gettysburg Address.

And there are times when the sheer adaptability of radio can rise to a huge occasion. In December 1988, aeons before the advent of 24-hour news, the last man you would have wanted broadcasting during a huge and unfolding disaster was, surely, Tom Ferrie.

But he it was who helmed Radio Scotland on the evening of December 22, 1988, as the full horror of Lockerbie washed over drip by drip, as houses blazed and bodies landed in people’s gardens.

He had to fill in between the hourly news bulletins; the planned playlist had to be dumped for more appropriate music – calm, low-key – as yet more ghastly details emerged from Dumfriesshire.

Ferrie more than rose to the occasion. He was on air till near two in the morning. ‘Tom’s professionalism was exemplary,’ his producer, the late Rab Noakes, noted, ‘as he handled it all with aplomb’.

And this is exactly when radio matters: when it excels.

TV, the columnist Peggy Noonan once mused, ‘gives everyone an image, but radio gives birth to a million images in a million brains’.

From her Amsterdam garret, young Anne Frank put it still more powerfully. ‘Our blessed radio. It gives us eyes and ears into the world. We listen to the German station only for good music. And we listen to the BBC for hope.’