The Radio 4 Blog Feed

Feedback: Local Radio, Science and Home Planet

2012-01-27T18:01:00+00:00

I have, of course, heard of win win situations, but this week's decision by the BBC Trust to ask (ie order) the Executive to reverse most of the cuts it planned in local radio looks like a win, win, win situation.

It's a win for local radio supporters who will see some much loved programmes preserved.

It's a win for the Trust as it appears to show they listen to licence fee payers and are independent of BBC management and it's a win for the Executive as the sums involved are miniscule compared with the rest of the 20 per cent cuts which will apparently now go ahead.

Oh, and there is a fourth set of winners, those MPs who campaigned to have the cuts cut and can now tell their constituents that they "saved their local station".

Now let's hope we can get back to what really matters, the range and content of programmes.

This week on Feedback Radio 4's coverage of science came under scrutiny. The trigger for the debate was the decision of the Controller, who protests her passion for science, to cancel Home Planet, which, judged by the correspondence we received, was a much loved series about environmental science, and which had a special relationship with its listeners.

Two of them, Eileen Halsey and Howard Sherwood, came into our studio to meet Mohit Bakaya, who commissions science programmes for Radio 4, and BBC News's first science editor, only appointed last week, David Shukman.

There ensued a vigorous discussion which began with Eileen telling me how she felt when she heard about that Home Planet had been sucked into a black hole. You can hear it on the Radio 4 website.

We would like to do more such discussions in which you the listener get to meet and challenge those who decide what is in the schedules of all BBC radio stations.

We guarantee to read and listen to everything you send us. So please get in contact.

Roger Bolton presents Feedback

Listen again to this week's Feedback, produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with the programme, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
Read all of Roger's Feedback blog posts.
Feedback is on Twitter. Follow @BBCR4Feedback.

Feedback: Local Radio and Radio 4's schedule changes

2011-11-04T13:33:00+00:00

Bill Oddie, John Cleese, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Jo Kendall, Graeme Garden and David Hatch (Producer)
from "I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again", 1968

Controllers of Radio 4 do not change their schedules lightly.

Their listeners tend to want to keep what they have and are doubtful whether any change will be for the better.

David Hatch was a much loved and successful controller 30 years ago but when he died he had "Rollercoaster" engraved on his heart. He had introduced a rolling schedule that soon steam-rollered over him.

His successor Michael Green had the temerity to move Woman's Hour to the morning and faced strident rebellions both inside and outside Broadcasting House.

He held his nerve and in the end won through, though he has scars to show for it.

However, after 25 years, even some of the producers and Jenni Murray herself now acknowledge that he was right to make the move.

In Feedback this week I talked to the Head of Planning and Scheduling at Radio 4 Tony Pilgrim about the changes.

What will audiences make of the latest changes which see the World at One extended by 15 minutes to 1.45pm and several half hour programmes, such as Feedback, moved elsewhere?

I am sure we will soon find out. You can find more details of the changes elsewhere on the Radio 4 blog.

Also this week I went to Salford to meet the BBC's boss of local radio, David Holdsworth. We discussed the planned cuts in his output which have resulted from the Delivering Quality First process.

Already there have been protests online, it's been raised in Westminster and at Broadcasting House in London.

St Paul's is not the only august institution under siege.

I took with me a passionate fan of Radio Shropshire, Andy Boddington.

Please let us know what you want Feedback to look into, and remember, the BBC Trust's consultation on Delivering Quality First ends on December 21st.

Make sure your voice is heard.

Roger Bolton presents Feedback

More on the changes to the schedule on the Radio 4 blog
Gwyneth Williams, Radio 4's controller, announces the schedule changes
Listen again to this week's Feedback, produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with the programme, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
Read all of Roger's Feedback blog posts.
Feedback is on Twitter. Follow @BBCR4Feedback.

Local radio cuts and having the Last Word. It's Feedback

2011-10-21T12:30:00+00:00

Radio Leicester's team of station assistants, ready for the start of Radio Leicester on 8 November1967

It was rather lonely in the Feedback studio this week. I was surrounded by empty chairs.

We, and many listeners, wanted to talk about the proposed cuts to the BBC's English local radio stations, and had invited both the BBC's Director of News and the boss of local radio to come and discuss their proposals, which will see over four per cent taken out of the so called content spend, as well as significant job losses.

We would have liked to raise these issues with BBC executives - but they were unavailable. Indeed a strange silence seems to have descended on the senior management floor of the BBC control tower.

Perhaps they have gone on a retreat to contemplate the reaction to their proposals, put forward because of the latest licence fee settlement which makes cuts of 16 per cent unavoidable.

Perhaps we shouldn't complain too much about the empty chairs as we had Tim Davie, Director of Audio and Music, on last week and the BBC Trust Chairman Lord Patten on the week before. Still you want answers and we will continue to try and get them, so the invitations stand.

Not that Feedback listeners are united in their support for local radio.

It is striking, reading the Feedback correspondence, some of which we broadcast this week, that whereas in areas like Cumbria and Shropshire there is massive support for their local radio stations, in other areas there is more support for the national networks. To be continued.

Meanwhile let us contemplate more profound issues like death or at least Last Word, Radio 4's obituary programme.

What do you have to do to get on it, apart from pop your clogs?

That is one of the questions I put to the programme's editor, Phillip Sellars. Here is the interview.

By the way the BBC Trust's consultation on the Delivering Quality First proposals continues until December 21st. Details of how you can contribute are on the Trust website.

Make sure you get your points across.

Please join us next week when we hope our chairs will be fully occupied.

Roger Bolton presents Feedback

The BBC Trust website: Read the DQF proposals and take part in the consultation
Listen again to this week's Feedback, produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with the programme, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
Read all of Roger's Feedback blog posts.
Feedback is on Twitter. Follow @BBCR4Feedback.

Feedback: Delivering Quality First and local radio

2011-06-03T14:42:00+00:00

When I was growing up in Carlisle in the years after the war (no, not the Boer one) there was no local radio anywhere, let alone in that somewhat isolated city, 300 miles from London and eight miles south of the Scottish border.

We got our TV news from BBC Newcastle and later from Border Television as well. As the latter was actually based in Carlisle we felt more warmly towards it, but while the BBC gave us lots of news about the north east , which didn't interest us at all, Border told us a lot about southern Scotland which interested us even less.

So when BBC Radio Carlisle started it was warmly welcomed.

Its first offices were on a hilltop in the southern suburb of Harraby where the unfortunate highlanders who followed that dreadful man, Bonnie Prince Charlie, were executed by that equally dreadful man, 'Butcher' Cumberland. (Mind you a good song came out of it - The Bonnie Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond, written in his cell in Carlisle castle by a condemned Scot). He took 'The high road' (was hung at Harraby), his lover took 'the low road', the A6, and he was back in Scotland before her, in spirit at least.

BBC Radio Carlisle has now become BBC Radio Cumbria and has a spanking new building just opposite the castle. Several feet below are the remains of the major Roman city, which lies just south of Hadrian's Wall.

I went there this week for Feedback to see whether the BBC's second most popular local radio station - Radio Jersey is the most popular in terms of percentage reach - is performing a vital public service.

As part of DFQ, the BBC's Delivering Quality First initiative, which has to find 20 per cent savings in the Corporation's spending over the next five years, possible cuts in local radio have been mooted.

One of the ideas that I have heard being discussed is that a number of local stations could share their afternoon programmes.

I took up these issues with the editor of BBC Radio Cumbria Nigel Dyson who had a maverick idea for saving money.

And also with Sue Carter who is the programme manager at Oxford-based Jack FM, a commercial station where they already are saving money as they only man their breakfast show. For the rest of the day it's automated music.

Do let me know where the BBC should look for savings in radio. Or on the other hand you might take the view that TV has more fat available for trimming.

Next week I'll be talking to the head of Radio 5 live. Do let me know what you'd like me to ask him.

Leave a comment on the blog or get in touch via the Feedback web site.

Roger Bolton is presenter of Feedback

Listen again to this week's Feedback, produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with Feedback, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
Feedback is on Twitter. Follow @BBCR4Feedback.
Picture caption: "Wast Water in the Lake District, Cumbria. 29/11/2004 BBC A view of Wast Water in the Lake District, Nov. 2004 - Wast Water in the Lake District National Park is Englands deepest lake, at its deepest it is below sea level."