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The Shipping Forecast

2014-06-27T13:53:33+00:00

Editors note: Denis Nowlan, Network Manager of BBC Radio 4 talks about the enduring importance of The Shipping Forecast. You can listen to the Shipping Forecast online or read the latest report at BBC Weather.

The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping

The Shipping Forecast is one of those Radio 4 institutions that occupy a special place in the hearts of many listeners across the country, but it also fulfils a very important role in providing vital safety information to mariners who traverse the waters around our shores. With this in mind, last year we asked our colleagues at the Royal Yachting Association, the Met Office and HM Coastguard to send a questionnaire to their members inviting feedback on the way they use the Shipping Forecast. We did this to ensure the service we offer continues to provide them with the most useful information in the best way possible.

We were very pleased to receive almost 1,000 responses, and although this was a self-selecting sample, the feedback was on the whole very positive: most respondents cited Radio 4 Long Wave as their primary source of Maritime Safety Information (MSI) and classified the service as vital; they also praised it for its simplicity, reliability and dependability. One respondent, whose comments were echoed by hundreds of others, wrote: “Radio 4 Long Wave service is absolutely essential for safety and planning (inshore and at sea); it can be received at considerable distance unlike FM/internet and when cruising well offshore becomes the only source of weather and safety information.”

There does not appear to be an appetite for significant changes to the service, although some respondents did suggest that all Shipping Forecast bulletins should be made available on demand on the Radio iPlayer, and we have already implemented this change.

I spoke to Feedback about the results of the questionnaire and about the ways people access the Shipping Forecast.

Listen to Feedback

Listen to The Shipping Forecast

The shipping forecast vs The Ashes on Radio 4 LW

2011-01-07T11:32:04+00:00

We had long discussion yesterday, considering various tactics for avoiding a possible clash between the late night Shipping Forecast and the end of the last Test Match. Could we only carry it on FM and DAB? That wouldn't work for mariners far from land as they rely on the carrying power of Long Wave...

Read the rest of Denis Nowlan's post and leave comments on the BBC Radio blog.

Repeating the Now Show...

2010-03-17T17:00:32+00:00

Editor's note: Radio 4's network manager explains three recent on-air errors - SB

Radio 4 broadcasts 13,000 programmes a year - a hugely complex mix of human activity and technology which, most of the time, comes out of the speaker in a seamless stream of beautifully crafted radio. Which makes it all the more noticeable for listeners - and frustrating for us - when there's a glitch. This week we've had a couple of glitches. On Saturday, we broadcast the previous week's edition of the Now Show instead of repeating the one from the night before.

This earned us some inevitable headlines about the 'Now and Then Show'. And yesterday morning we read out the wrong Shipping Forecast at 0520, for the second time in a month. These lapses are entirely unrelated to each other: the wrong Now Show was due to an error in operating the digital system that plays out programmes; the wrong shipping forecast was due to the forecaster selecting, at the end of a night shift, an earlier bulletin. We take these things very seriously and after any error we study what went wrong to see what lessons can be learned.

In the case of the shipping forecast, we are already implementing changes that should make such a mistake far less likely in future. The system has been adjusted so that the previous bulletins will be automatically deleted. And instead of the 0520 bulletin being read as the last task of the night shift, it will be the first task of the day shift. I can't promise that we won't make any mistakes in future. But we shouldn't make these ones again.

Denis Nowlan is Network Manager at BBC Radio 4

Listen to the correct edition of The Now Show on the Radio 4 web site.
The picture shows the control desk in the Radio 4 continuity studio. More pictures from the studio here.