In the Radio Times, BBC Radio boss Tim Davie has written a response to the substantial public debate about the Trust's review of Radio 3, Radio 4 and Radio 7.

He endorses the suggestion that Radio 4 broaden its audience:

The idea of making more people aware of Radio 4 makes sense: there are so many programmes waiting to be discovered.

And denies that this means reducing standards:

The station's commitment to quality - whether drama, comedy or programmes from the radio archive - should offer further comfort to those who fear "dumbing down".

He suggests that readers looking for evidence of the health of the network dip into the Radio 4 programme directory - and that particular richness awaits listeners in programmes beginning with the letters 'B' and 'M'. Read the whole of Tim Davie's article on the Radio Times web site.

Steve Bowbrick is editor of the Radio 4 blog

• The picture illustrates Ed Stourton's Bosphorus, one of the highlights of the Bs.
• Tim Davie has written about BBC Radio's increased emphasis on live output on the Radio blog.
• Radio 4 Controller Gwyneth Williams responded to the review on the Radio 4 blog

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006slnx

David Liddiment, the BBC Trustee who led its review into Radio 4 among other stations, must be wondering what has hit him.

No sooner had he published the review last week than newspaper columnists, the odd BBC presenter, and a lot of listeners attacked him for trying to fix something they don't believe is broken.

The irony is, neither does he.

Actually I have been economical with the actualité: some listeners would like to wring his neck. What Mr Liddiment was pointing out, which is irrefutable, is that the further away you are from London, the less likely you are to listen to Radio 4. And the same applies if you are younger, non-white and from a poorer household.

The real debate is about whether that matters, and if it does, whether moving much of the corporation's output out of London, much of it to near Manchester, is the way to tackle the alleged problem.

I should declare an interest here. Although I have worked in London for most of the past 40 years, I was brought up and educated in the north, worked full-time in Manchester for three years in the 1980s, travelled there at weekends for more than 10 years to present the Radio 4 Sunday programme - and survived.

Last week, as you may have heard, I talked to Mr Liddiment about some aspects of his review. This week I travelled to the BBC's promised land, the shining Media City UK beyond the Salford Ship Canal (it's usually called the Manchester Ship Canal, but don't say that in Salford. Those two adjacent cities have a relationship not unlike the Hitchens brothers Peter and Christopher).

I am sure that most BBC Radio listeners, generous hearted as they are, will be delighted that BBC staff are to be housed in such splendid surroundings, at their expense, although the BBC insists that 'out of London' is cheaper in the long run. But of course, what really matters is what the output from Salford will be like. Will it be the same, significantly different and/or most importantly better?

Two very independent and passionate Radio 4 listeners Heather Howarth and Delphine Price accompanied me to New Broadcasting House in Manchester which will soon be made redundant when all the staff there move to Media City UK. There we met Ian Bent, head of audio and music production in Manchester to discuss these questions:

I'd be very interested to know what your view is on 'out of London'. Are the BBC's national radio stations too metrocentric and what should be done to change that - or are you quite happy with what you hear? Leave a comment here or get in touch via the Feedback web page. Apologies if you've had trouble getting through to our phone line in the last few weeks. The high number and length of some of the calls caused some problems but we think we've fixed it now.

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.
• The review of service licences for Radio 3, Radio 4 and 5 live as well as reports relating to archives and children's output are on the BBC Trust's web site.
• Radio 4 Controller Gwyneth Williams blogged about the service licence review earlier this week and, on last week's Feedback, Roger spoke to David Liddiment from the Trust about their recommendations.
• Picture by Evan Moss. Some rights reserved.

Editor's note: this week's Feedback focused on the English language, on Royal visits to Ambridge an on the conclusion of the BBC Trust's review of Radio 4 - SB.

There are many incidental pleasures to be derived from the latest BBC Trust Review, a copy of which is now available on its website.

For example, on page 48 it publishes a useful table which shows the cost per listener hour (CPLH) for BBC network radio stations. That isn't the same of course as how much each station costs, and obviously the more listeners there are the cheaper the cost per listener hour.

Still I was intrigued to see that Radio 3 costs over ten times as much CPLH as Radio 1, and around 5 times as much as Radio 4. Surprisingly, (to me anyway), Radio 5 live costs only a little less than twice as much CPLH as Radio 4. The station which has the lowest cost per listener hour is, unsurprisingly, the most popular, Radio 2.

Mind you don't get carried away with the idea that Radio 3 is massively expensive. It still only costs 6.3 pence CPLH.

The Trust, whose proud boast is that it is dedicated to "getting the best out of the BBC for licence fee-payers", published its latest review on Tuesday 8th February, after what it said was a 12-week public consultation.

It considered the overall performance of Radios 3, 4 and 7, had some pungent things to say about what it called the failure of BBC radio's strategy for children, and also backed the management's proposals for accessing past radio programmes.

The press reaction was, shall we say, mixed. I probably don't have to tell you which newspaper published the following headlines over critical articles.

"Oh no! Don't let the dumb down-brigade ruin Radio 4. Its the last bastion of civilised, aspirational broadcasting."

And the Daily Mail also said:

"Radio 4 has 10 million loyal listeners. So what does the BBC think of them? Too many are white, southern, and elderly".

The Trust's review is far more subtle and intelligent than that and addresses real issues that matter to you. It is worth an hour of any BBC listener's time. Shortly after the review's publication I talked to the Trust member who led it, David Liddiment.

He spent most of his TV life working for Granada television in Manchester so is particularly sensitive to the views of those outside the south east. The first excerpt from our Feedback interview is about the Trust's backing of BBC management's desire to widen Radio 4's appeal:

In a second, and shorter extract, David Liddiment talks about the failure of children's radio to a attract significant numbers of children:

In next week's Feedback I'll be in Manchester to explore further the BBC's plans to move more programme departments out of London, in particular to nearby Salford. Will listeners notice the difference and do you care where your programmes come from? Do let me know what you think.

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.
• The review of service licences for Radio 3, Radio 4 and 5 live as well as reports relating to archives and children's output are on the BBC Trust's web site.
• Radio 4 Controller Gwyneth Williams blogged about the service licence review earlier this week and, on last week's Feedback, Roger spoke to David Liddiment from the Trust about their recommendations.

The BBC Trust's service licence review was hugely positive for Radio 4 and Radio 7. I have seen some of the listeners' responses on Radio 4 to the Trust. We are widely considered a 'national treasure' and the appreciation for what we do is humbling. The Trust's reseach received a record number of responses and revealed that eighty per-cent of the audience approved of us with a score of eight- or more out-of-ten. The reasons cited included "the passion and knowledge of the presenters; the range and depth of programming; extremely high production standards; and an intelligent and challenging tone". Add this to the new Rajar figures (one-in-five of us in the UK listen every week and Radio 4 accounts for one-in-every-eight radio listening hours) and the kind of quality delivered by Radio 4 for audiences is unarguable.

A broader picture too about radio seems to be emerging: we fit in with people's lives; we are modern, flexible and cheap. Radio 4 Extra (which is what Radio 7 will become) is another way of enjoying our drama and comedy programmes with something else thrown into the mix. There is a developing Radio 4 archive of documentaries and history programmes, science, film, arts interviews from the brilliant Front Row - all opening up other ways to find and share our programmes. Radio 4 is not confined to its successful schedule but can be enjoyed in different ways and this is a broad approach to the challenge posed by the Trust in their document this morning about expanding the Radio 4 audience in the future.

So let's think about David Liddiment's specific two 'buts' - prompted by our own excellent Sarah Montague on Today this morning (listen to the whole interview below). One, he said Radio 4 has a huge skew to the South-East of England. Those in the North don't listen as much as those in the South. And two, 35-50s aren't listening to Radio 4 as much as they were. Well, our audience has been quick to reply online; here are two examples from Twitter:

 

Fairly young still, living in the North, and listening to @r4today - no need to change this at all, dear BBC Trust! #r4todayless than a minute ago via webviews of the world

beyondmaps

 

Today program making me mad. Radio 4. Don't put regional accents on because it's pc. Put the best reporters on there. AAAAAGGGHHH mad.less than a minute ago via Echofoncerys matthews
cerysmatthews

And I'm sure that listener appreciates the excellent File on Four, our flagship investigation programme based in Manchester with its first class reporters. We want talent on Radio 4 - wherever we can get it and we will continue to look widely everywhere for the best reporters and presenters. Of course we are keen for people all over Britain to enjoy our programmes more and the Trust understands this and supports our endeavours.

Partly that is about getting the best programmes and contributors from as many places as possible but mainly it is about excellent programmes and talent, both on and off air - the best on Egypt at present for instance, from those who know and carry authority, whether it is Magdi Abdelhadi from the World Service or Jeremy Bowen, our Middle East Editor (did you hear his recent programme on the Lebanon and wine? - highly recommended). We have plans to take more of our programmes out and around the UK - the Moral Maze, for instance, and a new poetry masterclass with Ruth Padel. I think too that as we develop a more international sensibility - which is only keeping up with our audience - we will be more welcoming to new listeners wherever in the UK they happen to live.

And of course as I have already said we have other ways of listening to Radio 4 in our developing archive and easier ways of searching and sharing our programmes.I am delighted that the Trust has endorsed and encouraged our plans for extending the Radio 4 archive on our website. We know how popular the archive is. For example the In Our Time archive is one of the BBC's most valued sites. In the coming months we will be making even more of our factual programmes permanently available. We will also put together some more collections of older programmes and interviews to support our seasons and events. The collection of Film Interviews was one of the gems of the Film Season. We are building something similar for World Book Night as part of the BBC Year of Books. Here is a sneak preview of the collection of Radio 4 interviews with the featured authors. Our web team have a range of other plans in store in the next few months.

So we are responding to the challenges raised in the Trust report in our own Radio 4 way and we will carry on trying to find and make available, in the words of Matthew Arnold, more of "the best that has been thought and said in the world"- for more listeners everywhere.

Gwyneth Williams is Controller of BBC Radio 4 and Radio 7

• Read the review of service licences for BBC Radio 3, Radio 4 and Radio 7 and the new permissions on the BBC Trust web site.

Editor's note: the BBC Trust today announced approval for some important changes at the BBC, several of which affect Radio 4. In this blog post, which appears in full on the About the BBC blog, Roly Keating outlines plans for an extension to access to archive content, much of which will come from Radio 4 - SB

Something happened today that should interest anyone who thinks the BBC's archives should be more easily accessible.

Alongside the BBC Trust's announcements about the Service Licence reviews of Radio 3 and Radio 4 came a new approval: an amendment to those two networks' Service Licences - and that of BBC Four - that allows all three the ability to offer programming on-demand for an unlimited period after broadcast. There'll also be an amendment to BBC Online's licence to reflect the new permissions.

What it means is that BBC for the first time has a clear, defined remit to start building a 'permanent collection' of some of its best programmes for free online access by anyone in the UK now and in the future...

Roly Keating is Director of Archive Content at the BBC

Read the rest of this blog post about plans for archive content - and watch a full-length Henry Moore documentary from the archive - on the About the BBC blog...

• The picture shows Henry Moore in his Hertfordshire studio in 1967. It's from the BBC picture archive.
• Read the review of BBC Radio 3, 4 and 7, and the new permissions in full on the BBC Trust web site.