BBC | Autumn Watch

Feedback: Controller of BBC Radio 4, Gwyneth Williams

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 10:02:37 +0000

The Controller of Radio 4, Gwyneth Williams, is a disarming figure.

She arrives at the studio for our Feedback interview full of earnest enquiries about everyone’s health, ignoring the fact that she herself has just risen from the sickbed. She kisses her interviewer on both cheeks and appears to be genuinely interested in what he thought about some new programmes.

She has the air of a kindly teacher, who expects high standards and makes you feel you can achieve them. However one is left in no doubt that if one doesn’t come up to the mark one will be dropped, smartish. And she has dropped and is dropping some well loved programmes.

A number of 1.30pm shows such as On the Ropes have already been cancelled to make way for an extended World At One. Now she has turned her attention to Saturday Live which is gaining a co-presenter, Sian Williams, and an additional 30 minutes, at the expense of a free-standing Excess Baggage. Some of the elements of it will be subsumed into Richard Coles’ extended programme. What will happen to the much admired John McCarthy?

Ms Williams has quickly made her mark on the network, significantly increasing the amount of science programming and foreign news. She is undoubtedly a serious person, and perhaps her upbringing in apartheid South Africa, occasionally evident in her accent, makes her well aware of the importance of an independent public service news provider.

So far things seem to be going well, with audiences continuing to increase for both Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra, for which she is also responsible.

However we at Feedback have detected a growing chorus of discontent from those who think there is far too much news on her network, and those who think that the new science programmes don’t have enough science in them. Of course she has less money to spend than her predecessors.

Although Radio 4 has been treated more generously than the other national networks there are fewer journalist to make her extended news programmes and less cash in real terms overall.

So earlier this week I stiffened my sinews and put some of these issues to the immensely courteous Controller, who of course pays my wages.

I hope you feel that I bit, or at least nipped, the hand that feeds me.

Here is an edited version of our interview.

In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash Installed. Visit BBC Webwise for full instructions. If you're reading via RSS, you'll need to visit the blog to access this content.

Feedback is now off the air until 1 June, by which time a new Director General may have been appointed. The ad for his job says that the successful candidate “will be able to admit quickly when in the wrong”. Why don’t you help me find out?

Please keep emailing, writing and phoning. We read and listen to everything, even when we are off air.

Roger Bolton

Roger Bolton presents Feedback

Listen again to this week's Feedback, produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with the programme, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
Read all of Roger's Feedback blog posts.
Feedback is on Twitter. Follow @BBCR4Feedback.

Feedback: Comedy on Radio 4

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 13:10:56 +0000

I hope he won't be embarrassed if we meet in Berkhamsted High St, my local town, but I love Ed Reardon, so I was delighted to meet his co-writer this week, Andrew Nickolds.

We were squeezed into one of those small BBC studios designed for down the line interviews, along with the Commissioning Editor for Radio 4's comedies Caroline Raphael.

As there were only 3 chairs my producer stood, which is good for her soul if not her back. Down the line in Cardiff was the writer and performer, Katherine Jakeways, she of North by Northamptonshire.

We were there to discuss comedy and the Radio 4 audience, following two weeks of rather heated debate about the merits of Count Arthur Strong. Some listeners seemed to be prepared to die for him, while others wished to slit his throat. So I began by asking Ms Raphael why she had commissioned the Count in the first place? This is what followed.

Also this week I talked to BBC Trustee Richard Eyre about a review the Trust is conducting into BBC complaints procedures. Many listeners find the present systems confusing and long winded. The consultation ends in two weeks time so here is a link to the Trust website where you can find details of how to take part.

Finally, next week on Feedback I will be talking to the Controller of Radio 4 Gwyneth Williams. I will certainly ask her about the lunchtime schedule changes she put in place which involved extending the World at One by 15 minutes and moving or cancelling the half hour programmes which had started at 1:30pm.

I'll also ask her about her proposed changes to Saturday mornings.

And the rest is up to you. I am your servant, please use me. Just email Feedback@bbc.co.uk

Happy Easter

Roger Bolton

Roger Bolton presents Feedback on Radio 4

Listen again to this week's Feedback, produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with the programme, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
Read all of Roger's Feedback blog posts.
Feedback is on Twitter. Follow @BBCR4Feedback.

Feedback: Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 09:04:14 +0000

Feedback's presenter Roger Bolton

When I was a schoolboy I used to think that the world was divided into those who loved the Goons and those who were baffled by their alleged humour. Indeed I first began to worry about Prince Charles when I watched him go into hysterics in the presence of Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe.

I remained stone faced.

Later on I experienced the same sense of disengagement when readers raved about P G Wodehouse.

At this point I can see some readers of this blog rolling their eyes in disbelief. Don't like the master!

No, sorry, don't. Prefer David Lodge or Reginald Hill any day.

I have another confession. It took me two series to appreciate the genius of Fawlty Towers. I watched the first series from behind the sofa, covered in embarrassment. Is any comedy universally loved?

I find it difficult to believe that anyone could fail to recognise that Hancock's Half Hour, Round the Horne, and I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue are in the comedy Premiership, and I would nominate The Now Show for promotion from the Championship.

But some comedies still divide the country, none more so than Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show.

On Feedback last week we broadcast emails from highly critical listeners who couldn't understand how the Count was ever commissioned in the first place and who called for his immediate decommissioning - "Rubbish", "drivel," and "a waste of space" were among the politer descriptions of the show.

After our programme Elizabeth Messenger emailed us to say "I am sitting here in stunned rage over the comments in tonight's Feedback. How can anyone NOT find Arthur anything but hilarious? In fact I think this is the best series yet.

HOW CAN ANYONE NOT ENJOY THE SHOW ??????

More than 100 other correspondents wrote in similar vein.

So we thought we should bring together some fans and critics of Count Arthur and let them battle it out.

Mike Saunders and Stephen Brain are in the Count's corner. Ian Green and Rachel Jones are trying to knock him out of the ring. We asked all four to listen to the final episode of the series.

This was Ian's assessment:

Next week on Feedback Caroline Raphael, Radio 4's Commissioner of Comedy, is coming into our studio to explain why she commissioned the Count and whether he has a future. Please let me know what else you would like me to ask her about any Radio 4 comedy.

Roger Bolton

Listen again to this week's Feedback, produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with the programme, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
Read all of Roger's Feedback blog posts.
Feedback is on Twitter. Follow @BBCR4Feedback.

Feedback: The Budget

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:20:42 +0000

Feedback's presenter Roger Bolton

This week on Feedback we've been looking at coverage of the Budget and, in particular, the phenomenon of so called "pre news" i.e. speculation, informed or otherwise.

In the view of veteran commentators like Moneybox's Paul Lewis this year's leaks have been unprecedented. Well I say leaks but as Paul points out what really went on was an extraordinary amount of selective briefings by the Treasury and No 10, attributably of course.

It is all a far cry from those days when the contents of the budget were as closely guarded as the movements of Prince William in the Falklands.

Indeed the post war Labour Chancellor Hugh Dalton had to resign because he gave away some small details of his budget minutes before he delivered it.

When I was a very young producer in the early 70's, working on BBC Budget specials, the first we heard of the budget details was in the slightly rushed and hushed tones of one of our reporters who had popped out of the Chamber of the House of Commons during the speech to talk to us by phone, before popping back in again, hoping he hadn't missed too much in the meantime.

Later the Treasury agreed to send a representative to our studio with a copy of the Chancellor's speech which was released, agonisingly slowly, page by page, after, not before, the Chancellor had read it out.

There was extensive "spinning" of course, but it was after the speech not before it.

The aim of this year's selective briefings was, of course, to get favourable headlines for the Government, and help set the agenda in a way which benefits the Coalition. How should, how did, BBC journalists respond to this avalanche of "pre news"?

That is one of the subjects in this week's programme.

Here are my interviews with Paul Lewis and former Radio 4 editor Kevin Marsh. It starts with a chat with Feedback listener Elizabeth Balsom.

In a few weeks I will be interviewing the Controller of Radio 4, Gwynneth Williams, about some forthcoming schedule changes she has announced, and of course about anything you want me to ask her.

Details of how to get in touch are on the Feedback pages of this website.

And I would just like to make clear that, despite, hundreds, nay thousands of requests for me to declare myself a candidate in the race to be the next BBC Director General, I will not be doing so.

You see the present DG used to be my researcher and I always think of him as "little Mark Thompson" despite his being well over six feet tall.

Of course if he would like to succeed me as presenter of Feedback he is welcome to try, but perhaps he needs a period of decontamination first, and, as far as I am aware, there is no vacancy.

Roger Bolton

Roger Bolton presents Feedback

Listen again to this week's Feedback, produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with the programme, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
Read all of Roger's Feedback blog posts.
Feedback is on Twitter. Follow @BBCR4Feedback.

Feedback: The Art Of The Interview

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 15:21:19 +0000

I sometimes think I am a poacher turned gamekeeper turned poacher.

As a producer and then as presenter of programmes like Sunday on Radio 4, I plotted and conducted interviews designed to expose what I thought were flaws in the interviewee’s position.

Now, on Feedback, I critically examine such interviews on behalf of listeners.
In doing so, I have to conduct interviews with programme makers or executives which are designed to test their arguments and reveal any flaws. Confused?

I am, occasionally, and certainly feel a little sheepish, or at least that I am in a glass house throwing stones, using the same techniques that are being questioned. And then there is the problem of interviewing Premier League presenters like Victoria Derbyshire and Justin Webb, who could do what I am attempting to do rather better.

Oh get on with it, I hear you cry, enough of this existential angst.

OK I will.

If you regularly listen to Feedback you will know that a significant number of listeners dislike the way some Today presenters interrupt their interviewees, and the number of times they do it.

However it’s not only John Humphrys and Jim Naughtie who have come under fire from our listeners recently.

Listener Michael Brooks criticised the World at One’s Martha Kearney for her “”constant interruptions and belligerent style” when interviewing Ed Milliband.

And Margaret Angus was “exasperated” when Evan Davis interviewed David Cameron on Today. She said “I wanted to hear what the Prime Minister said - not the constant and aggressive interruption of the interviewer – it was maddening”.

Even the aforementioned Justin Webb has felt the force of complaint as he changed his relatively laid back approach for a more interventionist one.

We invited Justin and the multiple award-winning Queen of 5Live Victoria Derbyshire into the studio to discuss some of these issues. Also present was listener Sarah Wroot.

Here is part one of our discussion, which dealt mainly with the political interview.

Next week on Feedback , Victoria and Justin will discuss interviewing members of the public, some of whom can be in a highly emotional state when live on air, and who may not realise the consequences of what they are saying..

Please do let me know what you think of my interviews about interviews.

Roger Bolton presents Feedback

Listen again to this week's Feedback, produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with the programme, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
Read all of Roger's Feedback blog posts.
Feedback is on Twitter. Follow @BBCR4Feedback.

Feedback: Radio 2 Traffic Control

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 17:26:52 +0000

Feedback's presenter Roger Bolton

I'm not sure what I expected Sally Traffic's Radio 2 office to be like.

Perhaps the cockpit of a 747 or a TV studio control room, lights and switches everywhere, incessant phone calls, a multitude of assistants thrusting the latest information into her hand before she rushes into Steve Wright's studio. Not quite.

There's a desk, a chair, a curtain free window with views over pigeon defiled rooftops, a phone line and a computer screen and Ms Boazman herself - and that's it. Not that Sally needs a chair.

When I talked to her this week she seemed never to sit down, checking the phone calls of her motoring friends, peering through cameras from all over the country and accessing the latest police and AA information, before running across the corridor to Steve Wright's studio where she ad libbed her way through a list of jams and accidents, ending dead on time, to no-one's surprise.

As you can see I was impressed by her calm, charm and productivity, but I was also armed with a number of emails from Feedback listeners wondering whether Sally's updates were 'surplus to requirements'.

Surely with all the apps, BBC local radio stations and other technological advances, they said, Sally should cut the traffic, and concentrate on presenting instead. As your prosecuting barrister I did of course press her on these points.

Listeners were also keen to raise questions about the amount of coverage of the Republican primaries in the USA. Most of our correspondents are of the view that there is far too much - and that a lot of it is simply incomprehensible. I put those points to Richard Clark, the editor of the BBC Radio newsroom.

And if you're still confused here is a link to the BBC website where the primary process is explained.

Please join me next week on Feedback when I will be talking to Justin Webb and Victoria Derbyshire about the art of the interview. Please let me know what you'd like me to ask them. I might even learn something.

Roger Bolton presents Feedback

Listen again to this week's Feedback, produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with the programme, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
Read all of Roger's Feedback blog posts.
Feedback is on Twitter. Follow @BBCR4Feedback.

Feedback: The World Service at 80

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 11:26:02 +0000

Feedback's presenter Roger Bolton

Last Wednesday something unprecedented happened in the Bush House car park on the Aldwych in London's West End.

It took place in what looked like a hospitality tent brought over from a racecourse or a country fair. Inside there were long racks of scaffolding to which several lights were attached, throwing a mixture of red and white light onto the red carpets below.

Large blown up photographs of the great and the good, from Michael Palin and David Attenborough to Kofi Annan and King Abdullah of Jordan, and accompanied by laudatory quotes, looked down on a rather bizarre scene.

Four trestle tables had been pushed together and were surrounded by a large number of stools, on which sat, rather uncomfortably, the editors.

Their 9am meeting on the day's BBC World Service news agenda was being broadcast for the first time. Unsurprisingly, the participants were being unusually polite to each other.

Standing above them were cameramen zooming in to whoever was speaking, sound recordists with their microphones on long poles swinging backwards and forwards, and an assortment of invited guests and journalists like Feedback's presenter.

The reason for this remarkable broadcast was to celebrate, and of course promote, the BBC's World Service on its 80th birthday, which takes place shortly before Bush House is deserted in favour of the new BBC News Centre at Broadcasting House, a couple of miles away.

When the World Service began expectations seem to have been rather low. It was then called the BBC Empire Service and the then BBC Director General , John Reith, announced that "The programmes will neither be very interesting nor very good".

After the meeting on the news agenda finished I talked to one of the participants, Steve Titherington, the Senior Commissioning Editor, Global News.

By the way, the World Service has just announced that 7 million Iranians now tune in to its broadcasts, a rise of over 85% over 3 years.

Perhaps that explains the recent harassing of the families of those who work for the Persian Service.

By the way, thanks for listening and do feel free to write to us about anything you have heard on any BBC radio station.

Roger Bolton presents Feedback

Listen again to this week's Feedback, produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with the programme, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
Read all of Roger's Feedback blog posts.
Feedback is on Twitter. Follow @BBCR4Feedback.

Feedback: Radio and pluggers

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 18:00:00 +0000

Feedback's presenter Roger Bolton

George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury has been called many things, not least by gay couples who want to get married and who find in Dr Carey an implacable opponent.

This week, however, he was outed as a plugger.

One Feedback listener claims to have heard him mention his new book thirteen times in 20 broadcast minutes on the Today programme and Radio 2.

Mind you I don't think everyone would have noticed because by now we are inured to plugs.

The BBC would once have banned such references and still says it has strict controls on the promotion of products but many feel those controls are flexibly interpreted, particularly in television.

Is there a guest on the Graham Norton Show for example who doesn't have something to sell?

One can understand the dilemma.

Madonna offers you the first sight of her new record and an exclusive interview if... Indeed in some cases artists will forgo fees in favour of a promotional spot.

BBC Radio is particularly vulnerable since it has so many hours of programmes to fill and relatively little money or no money to offer potential guests.

I wish that the plugs could be formalised in the credits of programmes and banned in any other part of them.

On the other hand I supposed this blog is a sort of extended plug for Feedback. So I'd better just shut up and let you get on with listening to it.

By the way, thanks for listening and do feel free to write to us about anything you have heard on any BBC radio station.

Roger Bolton presents Feedback

Listen again to this week's Feedback, produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with the programme, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
Read all of Roger's Feedback blog posts.
Feedback is on Twitter. Follow @BBCR4Feedback.

Feedback: The Moral Maze

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:59:00 +0000

I think that one of the most terrifying things I have done in broadcasting is to chair the Moral Maze.

It can't have been much fun for the audience either, I'm sure they preferred Michael Buerk, who is very rarely absent from the presenter's chair as he values this programme as much as any he has done.

Why was it so terrifying for me? Well the panellists of course. David Starkey was a member on one occasion and he paid little attention to me, sinking his teeth ever deeper into what he saw as the woefully inadequate arguments of a witness.

In one edition I presented, live as usual, Dr Starkey was being particularly vituperative, so the producer walked into the studio and put his hands around the good doctor's neck and appeared to squeeze. Whatever he did it was effective and I got a word in edgeways.

The other difficulty is the geography of the studio. The desk is oval, with the presenter at one end, two of the panel on each side and the witness opposite the presenter. This means of course that when the panel turned to the witness they turn away from the presenter. I was reduced to plucking unavailingly on panellists' arms to shut them up. And at the end of all this I was supposed to help the witnesses make their points, summarise the arguments, develop some key observations, and get the programme out on time, before the pips.

Michael seems to paddle calmly over the surface of the water, seamlessly directing affairs.

However this week on Feedback we had a number of emails suggesting that he hadn't done his job in last week's edition about the monarchy, and allowed one of the witnesses, a particularly feisty Joan Smith, to be "trampled" by Michael Portillo. Others saw it differently, but I put the criticism to Michael Buerk, when I interviewed him in the Moral Maze London office, which looks as if it was last refurbished by Lord Reith.

I began by asking MB what made a good MM edition? Did he always hope for a punch up?

Roger Bolton presents Feedback

Listen again to this week's Feedback, produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with the programme, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
Read all of Roger's Feedback blog posts.
Feedback is on Twitter. Follow @BBCR4Feedback.

Feedback: The BBC had "got it wrong on women"

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:15:36 +0000

Mark Thompson: "Those who say that the BBC has a case to answer about the way it treats older women
on the air are right..."

This week the Director General Mark Thompson wrote in the Daily Mail that the BBC had "got it wrong on women" saying that the Corporation does not have enough older female newsreaders and presenters.

This is a strange phenomenon when, as he also pointed out, there had been a revolution in the number of women in leadership roles in the Corporation.

At one point recently the top three roles in BBC Television were filled by women but that did not seem to make a difference to the number of older women on screen.

Indeed it was a woman, Jay Hunt, who was Controller of BBC One when Miriam O'Reilly was ousted as presenter of Countryfile and subsequently won an employment tribunal against the BBC on the grounds of ageism.

Are things better in BBC Radio where only one of the main five network controllers is a woman, and their boss is a man?

Critics would say that might be why for example only one of the Today programme's presenters is a woman and that on Radio 2 there isn't a woman presenter to be heard for most of the day, young or old. (Though it has just been announced that Anneka Rice will be joining as a presenter.)

But are men alone to blame for this imbalance? Are women afraid to promote older women?

Mrs Thatcher did not seem to see it as her responsibility to change the gender balance of her government or party. Is that the position of women leaders in the BBC today?

They have fought so hard to be regarded as equal that could it be that, unlike the Prime Minister David Cameron, who argued this week for more women in the boardroom, they don't feel they can demand more women in in front of the microphone?

Whatever the truth I do think some great women broadcasters are now underused. In my view that includes Sue McGregor, and in particular, Olivia O'Leary.

In the Feedback mailbox this week there is more support for the idea of a woman DG, and for one of our listener candidates who I "interviewed" on last week's Feedback.

We also ask a teacher and pupil to swop music station for seven days, and I try and find out why iPlayer sometimes cuts off the end of radio programmes but not television ones.

You can hear today's programme online shortly after transmission.

Thanks for listening and do keep writing, whatever age or sex you are.

Roger Bolton presents Feedback

Listen again to this week's Feedback, produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with the programme, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
Read all of Roger's Feedback blog posts.
Feedback is on Twitter. Follow @BBCR4Feedback.

Feedback: FOOC

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:30:00 +0000

Bush House canteen, 1960

On Wednesday this week I was sitting in the entrance hall of Bush House off the Strand in London, home of the BBC World Service although not for much longer.

By the end of the year almost all of its present inhabitants will have moved a mile or so north west to the newly refurbished Broadcasting House, which will host the Corporation's News centre.

I felt rather nostalgic.

I sat in the same place on my first day in the BBC in 1967, a young trainee from the north, overpowered by the lofty building and the lofty people in it, many of whom adjourned to the bar at every opportunity to discuss past glories and present conquests.

The best thing about Bush for me in those far off days was the canteen which provided, at very reasonable and subsidised prices, dishes from every part of the world.

However many of the producers seemed bored by the food, living off coffee and cigarettes, wearing black roll necked sweaters and probably planning revolutions in their home countries, from which many had fled or been exiled.

It give me quite a jolt to realise that, back then, not only was the Iron Curtain uncracked but Spain and Portugal were not yet democracies and Mao's Little Red Book was being touted as more important and relevant than the Bible.

By the time I reached Bush, From Our Own Correspondent, had already been broadcast from there for more than 10 years.

FOOC, as it is inevitably known in the BBC, and best pronounced without a northern accent, has hardly changed its format in 55 years and judging from our in tray is still greatly admired, though as you will hear even fans can be critical. Fooc's editor is Tony Grant. You can hear him in today's programme on the website.

By the way it's not too late to send us your application to be the next Direct General of the BBC.

Even though Mark Thompson has not made public his intentions, the BBC Trust says it is engaged in "sensible succession planning" to replace him.

So do let us know if you think you are up to the job and we may organise an on air preliminary interview as we did this week for listener Rwth (sic) Jones.

I hope the internal candidates are listening as they could pick up a few valuable tips.

Thanks for listening, and reading.

Roger Bolton presents Feedback

Listen again to this week's Feedback, produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with the programme, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
Read all of Roger's Feedback blog posts.
Feedback is on Twitter. Follow @BBCR4Feedback.

Feedback: Local Radio, Science and Home Planet

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:01:00 +0000

Picture by gull@cyberspace.org

I have, of course, heard of win win situations, but this week's decision by the BBC Trust to ask (ie order) the Executive to reverse most of the cuts it planned in local radio looks like a win, win, win situation.

It's a win for local radio supporters who will see some much loved programmes preserved.

It's a win for the Trust as it appears to show they listen to licence fee payers and are independent of BBC management and it's a win for the Executive as the sums involved are miniscule compared with the rest of the 20 per cent cuts which will apparently now go ahead.

Oh, and there is a fourth set of winners, those MPs who campaigned to have the cuts cut and can now tell their constituents that they "saved their local station".

Now let's hope we can get back to what really matters, the range and content of programmes.

This week on Feedback Radio 4's coverage of science came under scrutiny. The trigger for the debate was the decision of the Controller, who protests her passion for science, to cancel Home Planet, which, judged by the correspondence we received, was a much loved series about environmental science, and which had a special relationship with its listeners.

Two of them, Eileen Halsey and Howard Sherwood, came into our studio to meet Mohit Bakaya, who commissions science programmes for Radio 4, and BBC News's first science editor, only appointed last week, David Shukman.

There ensued a vigorous discussion which began with Eileen telling me how she felt when she heard about that Home Planet had been sucked into a black hole. You can hear it on the Radio 4 website.

We would like to do more such discussions in which you the listener get to meet and challenge those who decide what is in the schedules of all BBC radio stations.

We guarantee to read and listen to everything you send us. So please get in contact.

Roger Bolton presents Feedback

Listen again to this week's Feedback, produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with the programme, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
Read all of Roger's Feedback blog posts.
Feedback is on Twitter. Follow @BBCR4Feedback.

Feedback: How easy is it to contact BBC programme makers?

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:35:00 +0000

Feedback returns this week at 4.30pm on Fridays with a repeat at 8pm on Sundays and we are of course available on BBC iPlayer.

So this week I was sitting in Western House, next to BH in central London, waiting to interview Radio 2's Head of Programmes, Lewis Carnie.

The young man in charge of the studios looked of course around 12, and behind him on the wall were black and white photographs of the comedy greats of 50 or even 60 years ago.

Of course, dear reader, I recognised them all.

Tony Hancock, for example, was flanked by Kenneth Williams, Sid James and Bill Kerr. Around the corner was a photo of "Professor" Jimmy Edwards with Joy Nichols (shortly to be succeeded by June Whitfield) and Dick Bentley rehearsing "Take It From Here".

So in writing this week's Feedback script I popped in a TIFY catchphrase "Black Mark Bentley".

None of the people in the office, and some are not in the first flush of youth, knew to what or whom I was referring. The reference was removed from the script.

I tried another tack, this time to demonstrate that I was not totally out of touch with contemporary culture, referring to TOWIE.

This half the office did get, although of course they would not admit to watching ITV's The Only Way is Essex.

So how wide and how old can cultural references be on Radio 4?

Just yesterday on the Today programme I heard Leonard Cohen (oh you know him) quoting Yeats (WB the poet) about "The rag and bone shop of the heart".

I turned away from these reflections to the business in hand and asked Lewis Carnie why he had chosen Richard Madeley to stand in for Chris Evans on his station's breakfast show.

We also explored how easy or difficult it is to contact BBC programme makers. Do let us know how you get on in trying to make your point.

Roger Bolton presents Feedback

Listen again to this week's Feedback, produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with the programme, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
Read all of Roger's Feedback blog posts.
Feedback is on Twitter. Follow @BBCR4Feedback.

Feedback: BBC Asian Network

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 14:00:00 +0000

Ed's note: Apologies for the delay in publishing the weekly Feedback blog post. Feedback returns in January - PM.

The host of BBC Asian Network's morning show, Tommy Sandhu

Last Tuesday morning it was cold and grey in the Chilterns where I live. I drove to the railway station through the drizzle to find commuters with resigned faces, as once more their expensive trains to London were delayed.

More trackside lines failures, or was it the points?

When I reached Western House off Great Portland Street in central London, at just before 8am, the only warm part of me was the hand in which I held a plastic cup of coffee.

Then I was taken up to the studio from where the BBC Asian Network's morning show is broadcast - and colour and heat burst back into my life. Tommy Sandhu, the presenter, was on his feet dancing around to the latest glorious Bollywood mix.

I felt very overdressed, not to say grey and middle-aged. Well that's stretching it a bit. I think I was middle-aged before Tommy was born. It was impossible not to grin and start shuffling around in what approximates in my case to dancing.

I was watching what broadcasting life is like after death, or at least after a death sentence has been commuted.

Both BBC 6 Music and the Asian Network, two digitals channels set up when all was possible in the digital spring, were considered not to have attracted sufficient audiences to merit their running costs and so were to be quietly put to sleep.

The reaction to the news was anything but quiet.

6Music was the first to be reprieved as its audiences soared and the sainted Jarvis Cocker and others got to work.

The Asian Network was also let out of death row, but, as a result of those initials which are engraved on every BBC heart, DQF, is about to have to make cuts of around 46 per cent in its spending. Never mind, it lives.

In Feedback this week you can hear about my visit to the Asian Network breakfast. Here's Tommy.

And here's my interview with the Network's head of programmes Husain Husaini.

Feedback is now off the air until January 20th, but do keep listening and writing to us.

With the results of DQF being published early in the New Year we will soon find out if the BBC is any good at listening.

Have a good break.

Roger Bolton presents Feedback

Listen again to this week's Feedback, produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with the programme, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
Read all of Roger's Feedback blog posts.
Feedback is on Twitter. Follow @BBCR4Feedback.

Feedback: Roger Bolton interviews Radio 4's controller Gwyneth Williams

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 16:20:00 +0000

BBC Radio Theatre in Broadcasting House, London

There is an expression floating around the internet at the moment, plucked from a number of American magazines. It's "pulling a Gwyneth" and refers to that somewhat eccentric actress Gwyneth Paltrow.

Well on Feedback this week we pulled our own Gwyneth - Gwyneth Williams - who as Controller of Radio 4 has introduced the most significant changes to the network's schedule since James Boyle, well over a decade ago.

In private his successors will tell you that they were grateful for many of the changes he made, but at the time there was a huge uproar and shortly afterwards the man, nicknamed McBirt, retired to the quieter waters of Leith and the world of Scottish arts.

His next two successors, Helen Boaden and Mark Damazer concentrated on the programmes and those who make them.

Now Gwyneth Williams, driven in part, some suspect, by the need to make economies, but also by a genuine belief that The World at One needs more time, and that her network needs more science and less Americana, has refashioned the schedule she has inherited.

Quite a number of those who have contacted Feedback approve of what she has done, but a larger number worry that Radio 4 is now too dominated by news. They point out that between 6am and midnight over a third of the Radio 4 output is news or news related.

"We already have 5live", one wrote. "We don't need another rolling news station". I put the concerns to Gwyneth Williams when we met this week. (By the way the name Gwyneth, Welsh of course, means "white, fair, blessed". Well I can confirm that she is white and fair. You can decide on the third attribute.)

Here is our discussion.

Please let us know what you want Feedback to look into, and remember, the BBC Trust's consultation on Delivering Quality First ends on 21 December.

Make sure your voice is heard.

Roger Bolton presents Feedback

Earlier in the week the Telegraph's Gillian Reynolds asked Radio 4's controller about the changes and more in a wide ranging interview. You can read about it and watch a video on the blog.
More on the changes to the schedule on the Radio 4 blog
Gwyneth Williams, Radio 4's controller, announces the schedule changes
Listen again to this week's Feedback, produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with the programme, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
Read all of Roger's Feedback blog posts.
Feedback is on Twitter. Follow @BBCR4Feedback.