An Attack on Radio 4

The bewildering news that Radio 4 have been doing a retrospective on their programme Ramblings prompts me to offer a critique of their broadcasting values.

If you haven't heard of "Ramblings" you aren't going to believe this: Ramblings is a RADIO programme about going for a walk with a group of ramblers. Try to contain your excitement. There is a different ramblers' group each week.

As you can imagine the subject does not lend itself well to radio. Listeners are treated to the sound of a fat old bore puffing up hills telling us about the puddles, distant farmhouses, unidentified birds etc. that she can see and informing us when the sun has come out. Not very useful, since she is somewhere we have never heard of, and the recording took place months previously so the weather information is not even current. Yet, because it is 10 yrs since the first edition of it, or something, they are reprising some of their favourite episodes. Look, Controllers of Radio 4, it didn't work the first time, and it sure as hell aint going to work now it's 10 yrs out of date.

A quick look through the schedules for the last few weeks tells us plenty about the state of despair in which the Radio 4 personnel find themselves, faced as they are with 137hrs 40mins per week to fill. Regular programmes include :

You and Yours 

Consumer Affairs programme. Worthy dull people discuss topics of utter tedium. This week:

• i) Childcare costs. The presenters ponder the choices parents are making: go out to work or stay at home? Largely irrelevant since most people do not HAVE any choice. 
  
• ii) Furniture is one of the biggest areas of customer complaint in the UK. The Furniture Ombudsman explains how to complain effectively. Gosh, thanks!
• iii) Cosmetic surgery: many industry figures believe the new regulatory rules fall short of what's needed to protect consumers. Fancy!
• Finally, you are rewarded with light relief in the form of : "Budgie Round-up"  - Listeners' emails about budgerigars. God help us.

What hope is there for them, with subject matter like that? They ought to call it You and Bores. On daily, ¾ hr at lunchtime.

OK! You can wake up now!

Money Box Live

Offers an opportunity for listeners to phone in with their money queries interspersed with dreary features on subjects such as 'The Right Mortgage for You', and 'Last-minute Tax Planning'. As stultifying on the airwaves as it looks on paper. Routinely referred to even by Radio 4 staff themselves as Money Box Dead.

On for a full ¾ hour every Wednesday afternoon, week after week after week.

The Archers.

Don't get me started. 50-yr-old soap opera which long ago established a baseline level of banality to which it adheres doggedly, fluctuating only to astound the audience with the inane nature of some of the storylines (eg. Will Granny Archer's shepherd's pie find favour with the grandchildren? Henry is getting a new bed. Helen and Tom or someone choose a venue for their wedding. - the on-going sagas for the current week). The inability of the actors to deliver a consistent Borsetshire accent adds, perhaps, a tinge of interest; it gives the social anthropologists something to complain about, at least. The theme music is extremely irritating and should be banned under the Geneva Convention. 
The Archers is on twice a day every single day except, blessed relief, Saturday. Bumper Edition (rpt) on Sundays.

Loose Ends

Sadly they fill the spot left vacant by the Archers on Saturday, with "Loose Ends", Lord have mercy, which really would be better left out to die. Billed as "an eclectic mix of conversation, music and comedy" (in their dreams) this is actually a  completely futile programme in which vacuous media persons drone away about themselves. A waste of time.

More or Less

Oh spare us do. This is a programme about statistics and as such ought to be really interesting and could be so - but no! All they do is state the obvious, at incredible length, for the whole half hour, and thus leave no time for explaining how to see through the manipulations that can be wrought on our opinions by the deceitful handling of data. The presenters could be exposing all manner of idiotic but fascinating misunderstandings perpetrated by journalists who don't know anything about statistics. They have been given a really promising, golden, subject with potential for useful and entertaining programmes but they work their reverse alchemy on it and render it dust and ashes. Lazy stuff indeed. They sound like a bunch of schoolboys who know nothing about the subject they have been given for their homework and are just trying to fill 2 sides of A4 as demanded by their teacher.

Front Row

This comes on every evening at 7.15, regular as clockwork and all the housewives automatically reach for the off button. It has features such as "discussion with Bob Hoskins about being directed on a film by somebody-or-other about whom we neither know nor care." This might be of slight interest to, say, Bob Hoskins himself, and his mother, if she is a particularly doting parent, which I doubt (have you SEEN Bob Hoskins?) but there really can't be anyone else willing to listen. Thus we have a programme whose content will appeal to 2 people at most, i.e. 0.0000000003% of the population, and such pinpoint niche marketing is inappropriate for national radio.

Adding insult to injury and demonstrating a remarkable lack of percipience, once a week they air 'Pick of the Week', a self-congratulatory resumé in which they unerringly home in on all the programmes you least enjoyed, and make you listen to bits of them again.

Verdict : Radio 4 is failing in its duty. You can't expect people to do the ironing whilst listening to this tosh. We want amusing comedies, news from the Tannery, and articles on fine wine and aeroplanes. We'd like the questions in the quiz programmes to be easier too and on topics we know about.

In accordance with internet tradition in these sorts of cases, here is a picture of a kitten.

Due to the boringness of the radio programme it was listening to, the kitten has fallen asleep.