Focusing the mind

You can see how difficult it must be for the powers behind BBC Radio. On the one hand, the Corporation is still pumping out programmes that we could have heard 60 years ago. The list is endless but try The Archers and Desert Island Discs for starters, brought together on Sunday (Radio 4) when June Spencer, who plays Peggy Woolley, was Kirsty Young’s guest. (She’s been in the series since the very first episode 60 years ago, when the broadcasts were live and the scripts changing even while they were on air, the producer tiptoeing up to the microphone, seizing the script and cutting lines with a pencil.) Can you imagine the outcry if either of these stalwarts were bumped off the airwaves? On the other hand, the Beeb’s desperately trying to stay ahead of the digital game, and to ensure that it keeps hold of its market dominance.

I confess I’ve never felt the need to tune in to 6 Music, currently threatened with closure in the new proposals for streamlining the BBC. Couldn’t the money be better spent on tempting the young to get the listening habit? 6 Music has been building an audience, to 650,000 listeners, not so very far short of Radio 3, but only by doing what’s already available elsewhere on Radio 2 and the commercial stations. Where there’s still a real gap is in the Corporation’s commitment to children’s radio. Radio 4 has virtually abandoned anyone under about 25, arguing that BBC7 is covering the gap. On Sunday nights, for instance, there’s a really confusing ragbag of programmes on Radio 4, one minute giving us heavy-duty analysis of American politics with Matt Frei and company, and the next the distinctly retro world of those naughty schoolboys Jennings and Darbishire in a reading of the book by Anthony Buckeridge which seems to have been going on for weeks.