Laura Marling and Front Row's John Wilson (picture by Jerome Weatherald)

For the last three weeks Front Row has been offering daily programme downloads, audio clips and topical highlights of its extensive archive. This has been part of pilot looking at how we could improve our online service for the programme.

We're keen to hear what you think of what we've done, either by replying to this post or via Front Row's contact us page.

You may have already downloaded one of the Front Row Daily podcasts, where we offered the whole of that night's programme to download for free. Previously we offered a weekly highlights podcast. We received a lot of emails and tweets about the daily version, so we know this is popular.

We've curated a week's worth of reviews on the Front Row homepage for an easy, one stop shop to the Front Row verdict on the latest openings and releases, including Stephen Merchant's stand up and the film adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy.

With Tinker Tailor in mind, author John le Carré was one of our selected interviews from the archive. He joins Leonard Cohen, Jo Brand, Anjelica Huston and Tony Bennett who've all resurfaced on the Front Row homepage.

And we've created some slideshows to illustrate some of our features, including our review of the Degas exhibition at the Royal Academy and our interview with Roger Moore. Mark Kermode talks about the five favourite films you won't have seen in a piece we couldn't squeeze into the programme. And there's a video of Laura Marling performing live in the Front Row studio.

You may have noticed some of the programme segments broken up into a new style on our programme pages - clips as we call them - which are more readily shareable and look neater on the page. And you may have seen Front Row tweeting from @BBCRadio4 using the tag #bbcfrontrow.

Do let us know what you think of anything we've done - what should we keep? What could we do better? And anything we should have tried? All feedback gratefully received.

Ben Toone is a content producer for Radio 4 interactive

• Front Row is on every weekday from 7.15pm
• Contact the programme via Front Row's contact us page
• Subscribe to Front Row's podcast

Here it is. Mark Damazer's final interview as Radio 4 Controller.

Twenty minutes of fascinating discussion with Broadcasting House presenter Paddy O'Connell, touching on pressure from politicians and civil servants, on opening up Thought for the Day to secular voices and on not cancelling Woman's Hour - among many other issues. A really fascinating retrospective glimpse of life running Britain's most important radio station. And you'll learn Mark's favourite Radio 4 sound too (I bet it's not what you expect).

Steve Bowbrick is editor of the Radio 4 blog

• The picture shows Mark and Paddy recording the interview in a Radio 4 studio on Tuesday.

Here's the quite lovely video that the Radio 4 comedy gang shot on The Royal Mile at the beginning of the Edinburgh Festival. It was made specially for use on the red button and it was a hit. Well over half a million people pressed the red button on their digital TVs and watched it there - something of a breakthrough for Radio 4 content.

You'll see Paul Merton, Mark Watson, Nicholas Parsons, Susan Calman, Stephen K Amos and others entertaining festival-goers on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

This film contains extended highlights of the event, including a special edition of Just a Minute with Radio 1 DJ Scott Mills.

Steve Bowbrick is editor of the Radio 4 blog

People probably came out this afternoon thinking "I hope I don't run into a flashmob of comedians". Well, bad luck suckers, 'cos that's exactly what they're going to run into...

So said Mark Watson as he kicked off last weekend's rather friendly invasion of The Royal Mile by Radio 4 comedians. The whole thing (including a special outdoor episode of Just a Minute) was filmed using the latest high definition cameras and you'll be able to see the full-length version on the the red button on your digital TV later this week.

In the meantime, click through to YouTube and play the HD version of the video for a quite dazzling sample of the event as it happened and click the embed button to put the video on your own web site.

Steve Bowbrick is editor of the Radio 4 blog

It didn't look much like a central hub of operations for one of the most successful professional gaming teams in the country. Just an ordinary suburban semi-detached, painted lemon-yellow. But as soon as we walked through the door of Mike 'Odee' O'Dell's family home, it was obvious this was no ordinary three-up-two-down. Team shirts & boxes of tech kit were stacked high in the hallway and stuffed into every conceivable nook and cranny. His two young daughters were busily tapping away on computers, and a sullen-looking young man sat frowning in concentration at a 50-inch plasma TV in the living room, practicing for a big FIFA World Cup match that weekend. Upstairs it was no different. The master bedroom was more office than peaceful retreat, with trophies and gigantic prize-cheques - most of them bigger than both Mike's daughters put together - littering every surface. Two things struck me during our brief visit to the UK headquarters of Team Dignitas. This man is seriously dedicated to his work and his wife must be an absolute saint!

One of the team's star players, David 'Zaccubus' Treacy, agreed to meet us for a chat about his life as a professional gamer. Hiding beneath a huge floppy hat I was expecting his interview to be a bit of a struggle. Computer gamers don't have a reputation for possessing highly developed social skills. As a gamer myself I am thoroughly opposed to this generalisation, and as soon as David started to speak I realised I had utterly misjudged him from his appearance. This young man was friendly, open and eloquent. Despite having suffered with dyslexia throughout his school years, he was clearly very bright and ambitious. The difference here was that his ambitions centred around becoming the best video gamer on the planet. Now you might think that sounds like a waste of a person's drive and passion - but when you consider he has the potential to earn in excess of $100,000 in a year, and travel the world on expenses while he's doing it, it begins to sound a lot more palatable.

The final stop on our tour of the UK gaming fraternity was the Gadget Show Live in Birmingham, where Team Dignitas were contracted by hardware manufacturers to battle head to head against members of the great unwashed public. Young lads bashed away at computers worth thousands of pounds as their parents looked on, somewhat bemused. They were routinely wiped out by a few carefully planned flicks of a Team Dignitas mouse-hand on the other side of the partition.

Dr Dominic Micklewright, a sports psychologist from The University of Essex was also at the event. He ran some scientific tests on our gamers and see if any comparisons could be made with professional athletes, he subjected the poor victims to a rigorous session of bouncing, cycling and reaction-time tests. They were sharp - as sharp as any good athlete who takes his sport seriously. But when it came to the fitness tests - well, let's just say there can be no denying that most avid computer gamers probably do need to get out into the fresh air a bit more often!

Kate Russell is presenter of The eSportsmen on BBC Radio 4

• Part one of The eSportsmen is on Radio 4 on Friday 4 June at 1100.
• There are some pictures of Kate Rusell and the eSportsmen on Flickr.
• Follow Kate Russell (@katerussell), Mike O'Dee (@dignitasODEE) and David Treacy (@zaccubus) on Twitter.
• Dominic Micklewright's Sport, Performance & Fatigue Research Unit at Essex University.
• The picture is by Go International Group. It was taken at the Dreamhack Malaysia finals in 2009. Used under licence.

I can always tell when we've recorded a good edition of The Bottom Line: it is one where I have not had to speak very much.

Don't get me wrong. I love speaking. It's what I'm paid to do. And before we record the programme I always make sure that I have plenty to say on the topics we're discussing.

Fortunately, however, I'm modest enough to know that the Bottom Line is really about the guests rather than the presenter. And for the programme to succeed, it needs to show the guests at their most fluent and expressive.

And that is where the challenge of the programme lies.

To succeed, the conversation has to fizz; the guests have to bounce comments off each other and push their point out, rather than have it pulled from them. In short, the guests have to converse like the professional talkers who fill the airwaves - journalists, politicians, artistic performers and academics.

But the interesting fact is that when you take a significant number of business people out of their comfort zone and put them in a radio studio, they are not relaxed about practising the art of conversation.

Business-people are trained in all sorts of communication: they can bark orders or sell washing powder or talk to Powerpoint presentations. They are just not bred to appear on Midweek.

Put a microphone in front of many of our guests they are a little taciturn; they like to think about what they're saying; they are worried about disagreeing with the other guests or speaking out of turn. Sometimes, they even wait to be asked a question.

Unchecked, none of these habits give the programme the natural flow we are looking for. (After all, you would never feel a dinner party had been very stimulating if it consisted of the host simply asking a sequence of questions to one guest at a time). So my job as presenter is to make all the guests feel comfortable with the task at hand.

Now, over time I've made an interesting observation on what works and what doesn't in making the more reticent guests relax.

I used to give a rather vague pre-show chat to them all, emphasising that they should feel free to speak without being spoken to; that they could make their point when they wanted to, and even interrupt if it sounded natural.

But this turned out to be too imprecise. Business-people are task oriented and hungry for new skills. They want their briefing to be more target-driven.

So I have discovered that if, before the recording, I instead tell them that "on at least three occasions in the programme, you should make a comment without having been asked anything by me", they converse in a far more casual way.

In fact, some of the best conversations occur when I jokingly suggest the show is a competition to see who can initiate the most points and talk most.

Tell them that, and the discussion flows. I have to do very little work. To the listener the result is a programme that has a more variable pace and one that is altogether easier to listen to.

But I expect it's only programmes with business guests that would find the way to foster a natural-sounding round-table chat by giving specific advice upfront of a rather unnatural kind.

Evan Davis presents The Bottom Line, Dragon's Den and Today

• The new series The Bottom Line begins this evening at 2030.
• Some pictures taken at a recording of The Bottom Line in Broadcasting House last July