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Anyone who knows me will tell you i’m a massive fan of the ‘The Jam’. One of their biggest hits was ‘That’s Entertainment’.... but if Paul Weller and the boys were still going strong you could pretty much guarantee that they’d never be entertaining anyone in Exeter.
The best we could hope for would be Plymouth, or Bournemouth, or even Bristol !

Our city seems to have fallen off the map when it comes to attracting the top singers and bands. In the 1990’s Westpoint hosted Bryan Adams, Oasis and the Corrs. Even David Bowie played a surreal ‘experimental’ gig there...deeming the acoustics in a glorified cowshed good enough to reward his South West fans with a local performance ! (I didn’t enjoy it much by the way !)

For some reason, yet to be satisfactorily explained to me, Westpoint is no longer on the circuit for the big name acts. It’s a shame, because the annual Holiday on Ice extravaganza is always a cracking week...and you should experience the atmosphere there for the Premier league darts at least once ! It’s great to see people coming from far and wide to enjoy these events, and it proves that we do indeed have a massive catchment area. 
That’s why I get so annoyed when I have to make that 90 mile round trip to Plymouth Pavilions to see the major stars and the really big shows. The argument that the Pavilions works as a venue because it has a larger catchment area doesn’t stack up for me. For goodness sake, Exeter University’s favourite son Will Young is by-passing Devon’s capital to perform in Plymouth later this year. How can that be right?

It’s the same with theatre. Why on earth could Exeter not sustain something of similar size to Plymouth’s Theatre Royal? I’m not going to knock the Northcott. It does a valiant job with limited resources, but it’s the major shows with a West End feel that really put bums on seats and gives the financial freedom to also stage some less profitable productions. Even Torquay’s old fashioned Princess Theatre pulls an audience down from Exeter.
Don’t get me wrong. I am certainly not denegrating the talented local performers or music venues like Mama Stones, Corn Exchange and the Phoenix, or theatres such as the Northcott, Barnfield and Cygnet. I’m talking about the really major shows and the big star names !

While we’re at it, we could certainly do with a ‘one stop shop’ entertainment guide, a kind of ‘Time out’ for Exeter. At the moment we need to pick up a handful of brochures in order to build our own schedule ! This new weekly Echo will surely come to the rescue.
Let’s face it,  we have a thriving airport, Premiership rugby, League one football, and a magnificent Cathedral. We are on the national map with the Met Office and Flybe. John Lewis is about to build one of its flagship stores here.  Is it too much to ask that we can can emerge, kicking and screaming, from the entertainment dark age?

This a great city. It’s ahead of the game in so many ways. Entertainment, sadly, is not one of them !

I’ve never considered myself to be much of a traditionalist. I’ll admit I like singing along with ‘Abide with Me’ on cup final day and I’ll give the Queen a watch at xmas, but when it comes to most other things I’m definitely in the ‘progress is a good thing’ brigade.
A few years ago I even advocated Exeter City leaving St. James Park to ground share with the Chiefs !

I suppose being in the media you have to get used to change. When I worked alongside the likes of Jill Dando and Ben Bradshaw as a reporter for BBC Radio Devon in the 1980’s, we used to carry a big portable (ish) reel to reel tape recorder and microphone. They were so heavy that if you lugged it around for too long over the same shoulder you were likely to need medical help to correct your posture !  These days I can record a fantastically good quality interview for Exeter FM radio by just using an iphone app, and it can be e-mailed to the studio and used on air within minutes. When I began working for regional TV, i’d cover stories with a cameraman, soundman and, occasionally, a lighting expert. There would also be a team of people back at the studio to help you put your report together. Now, it’s not unknown for reporters to film and edit an item entirely on their own, using a laptop and broadband link to send it to the studio base in Plymouth or Bristol.
Things move on. Technology changes. Audiences need and expect different things.

With that in mind, a few months ago I wrote in this paper about the value of local news coverage. I talked about the appetite to know about all things ‘down your way’. It seemed to me that there was a unstoppable move away from localness and I questioned whether many of us worried enough about regional tv becoming less regional...local radio, less local, and daily papers, well.... less daily. 
Since writing that article I have become an owner of Exeter FM radio and the Express and Echo has gone weekly.
I don’t apologise for being a little upset about the demise of the daily paper that I grew up with. It may sound a little sad, but I can remember how excited I was a few years back when I lifted up a carpet in my parents house to find it was lined underneath by pages from a 30 year old copy of the Echo. I sat in the middle of the floor reading about Fred Binney’s goalscoring exploits for Exeter City in the early 70’s! It’s like an old friend !
  But times move on, and i’m looking forward to seeing what this new Echo can offer. By all accounts the weekly move had become inevitable, and when reading habits change so markedly, you have to adapt just as rapidly. I will miss the daily read, but I’m anticipating many advantages with a bumper sized paper, not least the time and space available to analyse local issues properly and in far more depth than ever before. The biggest plus will surely be the number of readers. When the Torbay Herald Express went weekly recently, sales rocketed, and if significantly more people can engage fully with local issues, debates and discussion, that can only be a good thing.

I hope the diehard traditionalists really give it a chance !