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Diary

Gwyneth Williams

Wednesday, 9th April 2008

Gwyneth Williams on delivering the World Service

This month is schedule change: our clocks on all 13 English networks alter to take into account summer time. It is also our chance to make a few changes without causing too much inconvenience to listeners; although frankly if you are not up to inconvenience as a World Service listener, you probably have dropped off long ago. Distribution is thorny as short wave, I am told, is falling in popularity and the local FM rebroadcasting stations have a very short range. Please Alec Broers (one of the Reith lecturers I have edited), can you help? You are a brilliant scientist and engineer and, crucially, chairman of the House of Lords science and technology committee. I know that as a serious, Atlantic-crossing sailor you are a big WS fan. You must know someone who can come up with a quick fix.

Clock change is also when we bring in the new. We have new presenters in Alan Johnston with From Our Own Correspondent, Matthew Bannister for the relaunched daily Outlook and Bridget Kendall on a new weekly show, The Forum; scientist Susan Greenfield will sometimes present this too. The aim is to talk about ideas across subjects and around the world. Ideas cross borders and boundaries in all senses, just like the World Service. As globalisation unfolds we are at the heart of a new way of seeing the world. English is spreading, as George Steiner put it, like a whitewash around the globe. Our English Learning department has just told me that their monthly pages viewed on the website in China was 38 million. ‘Is that a lot?’ I asked; well, Gordon Brown has asked the British Council to aim for a million, so I’ll settle for that.