Radio 4 Help

Why are the weather forecasts on Radio 4 so short?

Some listeners felt Radio 4 was not moving swiftly enough from one programme to another. Consequently, we decided to shorten some of the forecasts, whilst keeping them long enough to provide the weather information that most of our audience need.

We recognise that some listeners have a specialist interest in meteorology, but most people want concise, non-technical forecasts, and that is what we are now providing.

The key changes are:

Forecasters will use a new standard map of UK weather regions, so the naming of region will be consistent.

Cear signposting of each region before each bit of weather information.

The forecaster will pick out some major population centres and the narrative will normally flow from South to North (although this will change in the case of major weather disruptions elsewhere).

The forecasts now consistently indicate temperatures. They often identify regions by reference to their main population centres - an aid to easy understanding which listeners had requested.

You can find an explanation of the changes to the weather forecast on the Radio 4 Blog.

You can get the latest weather report for your area via the BBC Weather web site.

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