Radio Review:Radiohead at 11 in the morning? I must be listening to Phantom. This is the station where it seems no day is complete without the playing of an Arcade Fire song, and no night can be declared over until Radiohead have had a spin. But to hear the decidedly non-morning person Thom Yorke keening away before 11am? That's what sets this station apart from other music broadcasters.
It's now just over five months since the former pirate station took up official residence on Dubliners' radio dials, with a licence to play "alternative rock" to the city. It's a welcome comeback.
Phantom has some good presenters. There's the zany charm of early riser Sinister Pete; Edel Coffey has a breezy mid-morning style; Richie Ryan on Saturday afternoons blends sport and music in a way I never thought possible; and presenters right across the schedule transmit a teenage enthusiasm for the music they play. Mixed in with the news headlines are refreshing reports on gigs, new releases and industry developments. There is a clear commitment to niche music, including Irish and unsigned acts, and thanks to Phantom's spell as a web-only broadcaster, it also has an excellent website.
But strengths can also be weaknesses. There's a 1980s broadcasting-from-a-bedroom atmosphere to even some of Phantom's prime-time shows. On the one hand, this gives the station an honest, home-made feel. On the other hand, it makes them sound like a bunch of amateurs. A recent item on how to pull off an April Fool was twice as long and half as funny as it needed to be to justify airtime.
For loyal listeners, it's nice not to be bombarded with ads (gig guides and venue promotions are about the height of it, and those are listener services as much as they are advertising), but it can't help with the budgets, and nobody can make good radio out of thin air. When the station does embark on commercial ventures, listeners can be short-changed. For example a link-up with the 3 network results in regular invitations to "3-text" the station. This sounds - presumably deliberately - like "free-text us", but texters' phones are charged as normal. When people are being asked to part with money, even a small sum, they need to be told clearly, not have it taken from their pockets under the cloak of some interactive community media initiative.
To continue to be successful, Phantom has to walk the line between the pirate station that listeners loved, and the professional, official station it must become in order to survive and thrive. It can do the pirate walk better than Long John Silver, but when it tries to act like a commercial radio station it can look a little less steady.
Maybe its bosses were thinking about this grown-up future when they commissioned Julien Clancy's new documentary series, Homegrown (Tuesdays, 8.15pm). This series of six half-hour programmes (three down, three to go) looks at the contemporary Irish music scene and asks such questions as: "How exactly do the Irish music charts work in the first place?" With a studenty voice-over, a plodding commentary ("Pens at the ready while we go through the top four most important bodies for Irish bands today"), and interviews that wouldn't make the cut on an RTÉ Radio 1 documentary, it was just saved - like so much on Phantom - by the well-chosen music. Maybe it's best to play to that strength for the moment.
There's not much point in a stand-in reviewer giving out about the exodus of regular presenters from RTÉ Radio for their Easter holliers. And why complain when the replacements include Eamon Dunphy in Marian Finucane's Sunday morning slot? With a congregation that included barrister Gerry Danaher and Irish Times columnist John Waters, we seemed set for a lively couple of hours.
But while initially it was entertaining to hear the Drumcondra bootboy directing the conversation like a polite dinner party host, as the show progressed one felt the presenter was treading a little too gently on his Easter eggshells.
Yes, there were flashes of Dunphy's waspish interviewing style, as in a discussion with John Waters over the validity of 1916's blood sacrifice. "Can I make the point to you, John?" began Dunphy. "Well, I shouldn't because I'm supposed to be chairing this . . . but I will anyway." For the most part though, he remained tethered to the Montrose mast. The raised-voice moments reminded us that Eamon Dunphy could do far more on RTÉ radio than he has so far. Since arriving last year, his output has been restricted to sycophantic Saturday-morning interviews with people he obviously admires.
Radio's former tough tackler has cleaned up his game, and was made team captain for the day last Sunday, but he didn't seem completely comfortable in the job. If a few feuds could be consigned to the history books, Dunphy could become one of RTÉ's star strikers. He'd make a fine mid-morning inquisitor during Pat Kenny's summer break. And that troubled Drivetime show could use a seasoned presenter with star quality.
