Reading Radio 4

A Programme-by-Programme Analysis of Britain's Most Important Radio Station

Macdonald Daly

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781137576569
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137576576
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book is a study of contemporary Radio 4 output, covering the entire broadcast day. Radio is largely neglected by media and cultural studies. The small body of existing work on Radio 4 is predominantly historical, focusing on institutional history, or sociological, focusing on contemporary BBC editorial and journalistic practices. Reading Radio 4, by contrast, analyses contemporary Radio 4 programmes entirely from the point of view of today's listener. Individual chapters correspond to all existing Radio 4 timeslots in the entire broadcast day of 19 hours 40 minutes, from 5.20am to 1.00am. The study, while academic in approach, aims to promote an informed and critical appreciation of Radio 4 for all listeners, as well as students of the media. 

Afterword

Academics these days are expected to demonstrate that their research has ‘impact’, which in essence means a demonstrable effect on external institutions, social life or official policy. I should now set out to enhance my career and please my managers, perhaps, by lobbying Planet BBC to allow itself to be impacted by my book’s trail-blazing meteor. I intend to do no such thing, and it may be worth explaining why.

My purpose in this book has not been to influence the nature of Radio 4, but to encourage a more critical approach to it than typical ‘consumerist’ listening. Were my views ever to be sought, I would propose the abolition of ‘The Archers’, ‘Desert Island Discs’ and ‘Shipping Forecast’ as a minimum, as well as a prohibition of anyone over the age of seventy from hosting or starring on any Radio 4 show. No Controller would seriously entertain such ideas, however, and if she did she would instantly be shown the door by the BBC, hopefully before a lynch mob of loyal listeners (that is, the vocal minority who make complaints and write to ‘Feedback’) found out. My low evaluation of these programmes comes from my very particular, though not entirely personal, wish that Radio 4 were more intellectual than it is, more inflected towards what I see as its strengths in informative and educational programming than its weakness for producing entertainment pap, that it sounded less, at certain times of the day, like a diversion staged in a retirement home. But Radio 4’s typical listener is not someone with my idiosyncratic evaluative tendencies, recording programmes in order to analyse them, making it his business, for five years, to probe into and consider every corner of its schedule, and explicitly favouring public service broadcasting over the production of time-killing trifles. Most listeners hear Radio 4 as a passing flow of deliberately mixed programming and probably do not take it very seriously.

It is on such listeners that I hope to make an impact. If this book encourages any of them to attend to Radio 4 more thoughtfully, I shall have reason to feel that the task ha...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• Introduction
• 05.20 Shipping Forecast
• 05.30 News Briefing
• 05.43 Prayer for the Day
• 05.45 Farming Today
• 05.58 Tweet of the Day
• 06.00 Today
• 09.00 Round-Table Discussions and One-to-One Interviews
• 09.45 Book of the Week
• 10.00 Woman’s Hour
• 10.55 The Listening Project
• 11.00 Morning Documentaries
• 11.30 Morning Comedies
• 12.00 Home Front/A History of Ideas
• 12.15 You and Yours
• 13.00 The World at One
• 13.45 Fifteen-Minute Feature
• 14.15 Afternoon Drama
• 15.00–17.00 Miscellaneous Afternoon Programmes
• 17.00 PM
• 18.00 Six O’Clock News
• 18.30 Evening Comedies
• 19.00 The Archers
• 19.15 Front Row
• 20.00–22.00 Miscellaneous Evening Programmes
• 22.45 Book at Bedtime
• 23.00 Miscellaneous Late Night Programmes
• 23.30 Today in Parliament
• The Weekend
• Backmatter