Sweet shop

There was a distinct whiff of boiling sugar (to around 115C) emanating from Broadcasting House yesterday, as Ben Cooper, Controller of BBC1, Graham Ellis, acting Director of Radio, and Director General Lord Hall, decided to broadcast "five or six seconds" of "Ding Dong The Wicked Witch Is Dead" in Sunday's chart rundown - plus a "journalist explaining the context". On Radio 2, wild child Jane Garvey, sitting in for Jeremy Vine, had riskily played nearly 15 seconds - there is no news on whether or not that act of bravado had been "referred up" and endorsed.

Here's Eddie Mair pulling a few wings off Ben Cooper.

listen to ‘Eddie Mair interviews Radio 1 Controller - PM programme, BBC Radio 4’ on Audioboo

Meanwhile in television land, Danny Cohen has blinked in the scheduling war between The Voice and Britain's Got Talent. Simon Cowell seems to have made this battle personal, throwing his sexuality into a wide range of tacky media promotional items, including, gallingly for the BBC, a Radio Times interview conducted by doyenne of popular culture, Emily Maitlis.

Cohen risks losing audience for more than The Voice - next week to be bracketed between the old-skewed demographic pairing of The Lottery and Casualty. He also "loses" BBC money; a shorter Voice means an increase in costs per hour for the show, and more spending on output to fill the gap. The adult nature of current Casualty storylines (original British drama beloved of Tony Garnett) means it can't come before the watershed, so Danny's boxed in.