Blog posts by year and monthApril 2010
Posts (13)
Electionwatch: testing the politicians' numbers
We're nearly there - less than a week to go - but the More or Less election team still needs your help. Our job is to explain the numbers being thrown around by all candidates during the campaign. Our presenter (and the FT's Undercover Economist) Tim Harford is broadcasting our analysis on PM a...
The search begins for a new Controller of Radio 4
Editor's note: this post appeared on the About the BBC blog earlier today - SB The advert for the job of Controller of Radio 4 is due to appear over the next few days. It's an important role - the network makes a significant contribution to the news agenda and cultural life of the nation. Like ...
Morecambe and Wise: the garage tapes
Editor's note: David Prest of BBC Radio 4 independent supplier Whistledown unearths a comedy gold-mine - SB. There I was, parked on a double-yellow line in London's St John's Wood, trying to cram several box loads of old tapes and a suitcase of 78s into the back of my car, whilst keeping a bead...
The leaders' debates on radio
I hope you are not disappointed by this week's blog! I would have liked to avoid commenting on the election coverage since many Feedback correspondents are threatening to leave the country if Radio 4 keeps on clearing its schedules for the prime ministerial debates which are being transmitted a...
Horror on the radio: We Outnumber You
Could we do a horror on radio? Could we horrify people? Not an atmospheric, gothic spook with resonant chords and the whiff of damp tweed, but something actually scary. Something to make the audience squelch. That was the ambition. There's a mantra in Hollywood that to be effective, a screenpla...
The Vote Now Show team at work
When I heard that the Vote Now Show team was writing and editing the programme three floors below me in Henry Wood House (opposite Broadcasting House in the West End of London) I had to nip down and get some photos. The scale of the task is daunting: twelve programmes over three weeks: each writ...
Strong language at teatime on Radio 4
Whenever the BBC surveys its audience to find out what it least likes - bad language is usually at, or near, the top of the list. Even those who enjoy using occasional expletives in company don't seem to want to hear them on the radio, and certainly not when children are around. So why did the ...
What will you listen to on Radio 4 next week?
Here's something new. We want to know more about what our listeners and broadcasters like about Radio 4. So we're going to give a copy of the Radio Times to a different Radio 4 person once a week or so and ask them to mark the radio section of the magazine with their selections from the coming w...
So You Want to be a Scientist? The shortlist is out
"Do you have the S-factor?" That's what we asked in January on Material World. Science of course, not sex (this goes out at 1630 on Radio 4 after all) was what we were looking for when we launched So You Want to Be a Scientist? - our search for the BBC's Amateur Scientist of the Year. We asked p...
Leaving Radio 4
I will be leaving a job I have loved in October. I will miss almost all of it. But I always felt that I should not do much more than seven years as Controller of Radio 4 and by October I will have had the best job in the BBC for six of those years. I did not want to run the risk of my ideas dryi...
