No-one builds stations like BBC Radio 4 anymore. With general, mass audiences for drama, comedy, news and magazine shows served mainly by television since the 1950s, radio is ever more divided up into individual stations providing either “music” or “talk,” either individually or in varying ratios, in an attempt to stop inspiring the listener to tune away. But Radio 4, with its roots through the original Home Service to the birth of the BBC in 1922, has always broadcast a mix of programmes like a TV channel. As befitting the more intimate and personal nature of radio listening, the days of its listeners are entwined with Radio 4 in a way that cannot be replicated by talk show phone-ins or a continuous stream of today’s greatest hits. No-one marched in the street when the presenter of the Radio 1 breakfast show changes, but if Radio 4 moves its furniture around...
I remember when, in 1998, new station controller James Boyle
unleashed a swathe of changes to the station that caused uproar – long-running
series ended, their replacements starting at different times of day, current
affairs and Parliamentary coverage buried in the evening, and flimsy quiz shows
at lunchtime, with “The World at One” shortened to accommodate them.
These changes made headline news, and enraged listeners continued to ask questions on Radio 4’s “Feedback” – renamed from “Disgruntled Tunbridge Wells” in 1979 – for the following year, by which point the programmed had, coincidentally, doubled in length to thirty minutes, and had taken over one of the quiz slots. As confirmed in David Hendy’s book “Life on Air: A History of Radio Four,” even when asserting that these changes were based on a year’s worth of listener surveys and analysis of each programme, the BBC were accused of following computerised data instead of their instinct. It sounded like people could not trust the BBC to arrange their shows properly.
And yet, the Radio 4 schedule in 2020 largely still follows the same pattern – comedy shows like “Just A Minute” and “I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue” at 6.30pm, “Woman’s Hour” at 10am, drama at 2pm, current affairs at 8pm, and science at 9pm. Some shows introduced in 1998, like the Sunday morning news programme “Broadcasting House,” evening arts review “Front Row,” and discussion show “In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg,” are still running. However, if anything has been moved, like replacing the lunchtime quiz shows with more news, it has been done gradually.
I later found that harsher changes had been implemented in
1977, proving to be so unpopular they were largely reversed within a year. The
Radio 4 controller at this time, Ian McIntyre – dubbed “Mac the Knife” in the
press – answered concerns about the quality of news programmes by cutting their
length, and putting in more scripted talks to ensure the quality stayed high.
The side effect was shown most clearly on Sundays, when programmes aiming to
replicate magazines like “The New Yorker,” with titles like “Forget Tomorrow’s
Monday,” and “Not Now, I’m Listening,” pushed the shows people were already
listening in for, like the omnibus of “The Archers” or “Letter from America,”
towards the evening, with no clear reasoning that this was what people actually
wanted.
The symbol of the changes, and what annoyed everyone the
most, both listeners and BBC employees, was cutting into the breakfast news of “Today”
with a hodgepodge of sport, weather, newspaper reviews, entertainment and
consumer items, and comedy recordings. The frustration was shared: on one
edition, after trailing what was on other stations, announcer Peter Donaldson
said, “but if you’re listening to Radio 4, I’m afraid you’re stuck with ‘Up to
the Hour’.” McIntyre was later moved to Radio 3, and all that remains of the
experiments are the investigative series “File on 4,” and a half-hour Six O’Clock
News.
But what caused marching in the streets? As it turned out, it
was existential threat. “BBC Radio 4 News FM” temporarily ran as a rolling news
network during the first Gulf War in 1991, while the usual programmes continued
on long wave, but its success in that time – it had gained the nickname “Scud
FM” – brought several years of ruminating to a head on whether the BBC should
start a twenty-four-hour news channel. The suggestion it should take the long
wave channel, keeping Radio 4 on FM, led a teacher named Neil McKinnon to start
a campaign of direct action named “Save Radio 4 Long Wave,” where he was
interviewed in various newspapers, tore up his TV licence, and received
thousands of letters, not unlike deliberately incendiary campaigns today like “Defund
the BBC” on Twitter. This culminated in a march from Hyde Park to Broadcasting
House in April 1993.
The existential threat was that any new network would take
away Radio 4’s spine of breakfast, lunchtime and evening news – “Today,” “The
World at One,” “PM” and “The World Tonight.” Finally, the decision was made to take
Radio 5, a collection of sports, children’s and education programmes made to keep
the medium wave frequencies of Radio 2, and turn it into Radio 5 Live, a 24-hour
news AND sport network, with a tone and character different from Radio 4, with
its own separate programmes.
Neil McKinnon later said he was making up his Radio 4 campaign as it was going along, but what it did was provide a face for the station’s listeners in a way that hadn’t happened for other stations, at least until social media came along, but what it had also done is set the pace of change at slow, and careful.
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