主播大秀

Having just made the announcement on Clue/ISIHAC (and I see from the blog that purists would prefer if I abbreviated to ISIHAC) I thought I'd briefly point out that the other great long-lasting series, Just a Minute has won a special award from - the leading comedy website. For which I say thanks. And quite right too.

JAM, produced by Claire Jones, is a supreme example of re-invention. It worked many decades ago with Kenneth Williams, Derek Nimmo et al... but when they died there was real risk of the programme becoming moribund.

But the arrival of Paul Merton - and then the likes of Graham Norton - gave it a very different feel - and it worked. Nicholas Parsons himself was all in favour of the change in tone - and with Clement Freud staying on it has worked beautifully over many years.

• Some lovely video clips from a 2002 Arena documentary about the show, including the late Linda Smith on cheeky panelists.
• Wikipedia's of Just a Minute.
• Just a Minute's page at the 主播大秀 comedy web site.

One of the reasons we started the Radio 4 blog is to draw attention to the huge variety of programmes that go out on Radio 4, very often with no attention from the professional media at all. Radio doesn't get the attention it deserves and speech radio is especially neglected.

Station Controller Mark Damazer has made a start by talking about programmes he likes (The Film Programme and The Moral Maze, for instance) and we're also going to do regular round-ups of reviews from the noble handful of journalists whose job it is to actually listen to speech radio and from the bloggers who do it for love.

In regular blog posts we'll capture as much of the net's day-to-day conversation about Radio 4 as we can - from , the blogs and message boards as well as from the mainstream media. We'll also welcome your suggestions and pointers to content and conversation we might have missed.

What's more, where we can, we'll link to the programmes' web pages so you can listen again if you're inspired to do so. Here's my first round-up:

Gillian Reynolds loved Alan Bennett's dramatisation of his story about a homeless woman who lived in a van on his driveway:

...you could almost smell her, not an easy thing for radio to manage but, between Bennett's brilliant description, Adrian Scarborough's clever alter-Bennett, Smith's great performance, and Gordon House's sensitive direction, it did.

Listen to the Saturday Play, The Lady in the Van here.

David Smith, in his in The Guardian, makes much use of his Desert Island Discs grilling last Sunday

Kirsty Young asks the comedian outright: "Have you ever had a relationship with a man?" Walliams responds: "No." With unhesitating candour, Walliams says: "If I fell in love with a man then, yeah, I wouldn't say that could never happen..."

. North East London blogger John has been enjoying Book of the Week: Iain Sinclair's Hackney: That Rose Red Empire:

...the book will have a resonance far beyond that brilliantly blighted rotten borough.

Listen here.

In , Miranda Sawyer refuses to review Lenny Henry plays Othello:

This is not current events, it's craven advertising.

Listen here.

Kate Chisholm thinks running a season of Sarah Kane's controversial plays would be a better tribute than Blasted: The Life and Death of Sarah Kane:

At half an hour the programme was far too short to explore fully the nature of Kane's troubled talent.

Listen here

It was nice to think that would live forever.

When - alas - he died last April I was confronted with the sort of dilemma that R4 faced when John Peel (主播大秀 Truths) and Ned Sherrin (Loose Ends) died. Should we take the programme out of the schedules forever in the belief that that presenter was so intimately bound up with the programme that it would be impossible for anyone else to present it - or should we continue in a different way?

It took me a while to work out how to proceed on Saturday mornings and there was a chance that 主播大秀 Truths would work out post Peel. In many ways it did - but, after nine months, not quite enough to convince me to keep it.

Some immediately thought that we should end 'Clue' - that Humphrey's dry and self-deprecating wit was so central to the alchemy that it would not work without him. I waited before saying anything - not least because the programme team was much affected by the great man's death. But in the event the programme and the station received a fair amount of correspondence suggesting they could not do without , 'One Song to the Tune of Another' and other assorted brilliant tomfoolery. And the programme team decided they would like to come back - after a period of time

So - unlike '主播大秀 Truths' I thought we should go ahead. I (on Feedback) that 'Clue' would return but did not specify when and how. These judgements are tricky.

For Clue we wrote down the names of three people we thought we would like to chair the show - and we knew we would not immediately ask one person to do all of the first run. That would be a big burden - post Humphrey. The three names we wrote down all said yes. And here they are - Messrs Stephen Fry, Jack Dee and Rob Brydon. It's wonderful they all agreed. Of course it won't be the same as before - but these are three men of huge talent and I am confident that the show will work. So fingers crossed, and I look forward to the shows.

A reminder of the dates of the recordings and the venues, with two programmes being recorded each night:

Sunday 26th April at with guest host Stephen Fry.
Tickets will be available from 1000 on Tuesday 3rd March

Sunday 17th May at the , with guest host Jack Dee.
Tickets will be available from 0930 on Monday 2nd March.

Thursday 4th June at the , with guest host Rob Brydon.
Tickets will be available from 0900 on Monday 9th March

Please contact the theatres for tickets.

• at 主播大秀 News Online.
• Brydon and Cryer on Today.
• Play the ISIHAC games at the Mornington Crescent message board.

It would not be true to say that "It was Radio 4 Wot Won It" for Slumdog Millionaire but Radio 4 brought 's story to the airwaves quite a while ago - with tremendous flair.

It ran as a ten part Woman's Hour drama serial in late July/early August 2007 - 15 minutes a day over ten days (the slot is repeated at 1945). We simply used the title of the book: Q&A. At the time I thought it was the best short-form drama serial I had heard - and it remains so.

To their credit the Sony Awards drama judges gave it - probably the first time that a drama of this kind had won the top gong. Few awards have given me so much pleasure.

We repeated it a couple of months ago - between Christmas and New Year - late at night. We promoted it. But maybe we should have waited until the Oscar victory (even then much mooted). It's very hard to know when a repeat of the radio series would have had the most impact. The radio production is a little different to the film (inevitably), and more faithful to the book. It was made by an independent company - Goldhawk Essential - adapted by Ayeesha Menon and produced by John Dryden. It was all done on location - and John took a considerable risk with the casting. It cost a fraction of a fraction of even Danny Boyle's not huge budget and gave pleasure to over two million people.

There's a lot to say about radio drama - and how to garner credit for it. I'll come back to the topic.

• recording of Q&A.
  
• Slumdog .
• Danny Boyle interviewed on The Film Programme.
• The 主播大秀's India Pakistan 07 season.
• Radio 4's Profile of MIA, whose music formed part of AR Rahman's Oscar winning score for Slumdog.
• Woman's Hour drama.
• Vikas Swarup's .

The Moral Maze is 500. Tonight's programme at 8 p.m. is thus somewhat special - taking place in front of an audience. It is almost always live (and then repeated on Saturday nights at 2215) which gives it a certain sort of crackle. The subject tonight is suitably large - "Can a post-religious society be a moral society?"

The programme - like many of the best things on Radio 4 - divides opinion sharply. There are those who regard the heat/light ratio as inappropriate to a radio station that prides itself on reason, tolerance, and a certain temperate tone. There are those who dislike the avowedly adversarial format. And, of course, there are those who dislike particular members of the panel.

On the other hand - the combative tone can be fun (and nobody is forced to appear), it is a different way of examining contemporary concerns, it rarely leaves me (or many others) unengaged and shouting at the radio (which I do sometimes during transmission) is not a bad indicator of a programme's ability to stimulate thought. And Michael Buerk - after nearly twenty years - is very good at both stopping outbreaks of physical violence in the studio - and adding a certain stylish reasonableness.

From which you will gather that I am a fan.

Why not at 0900 - where it was for the first half of its life? Tricky. It would come after the Today programme - itself not without abrasion - and I think the feeling when it was moved was that there was a surfeit of argument on days when the Maze followed Today. It is far from an unreasonable point of view. As a result of the Maze's transfer - various other interview formats developed and have done well. One of them (The Choice) stars none other than Michael Buerk. So we have not got the room to do everything I'd like at 0900 and bring back The Maze. But the problem sits there... Meanwhile I am endeavouring to increase the profile of The Maze by trailing it more on the days of transmission. Michael's trails have a certain... relish.

• Paul Donovan 's 500th anniversary in The Sunday Times.
• The Moral Maze web site.
• The Moral Maze message board.
  
• Michael Buerk's The Choice.

...and I should have added we are also running a series on Oscar winning films called And The Academy Award Goes To... presented by Paul Gambaccini, and produced by Paul Kobrak and Sara Jane Hall, on Saturdays at 10.30 - the biggest feature slot of the week.

The aim is to exploit the heightened interest in film at this time of the year - when we get the weepy speeches, the , the and then the . This is the second series. Last year the films featured were: Lawrence of Arabia, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, The Silence of the Lambs, The English Patient, and this year: The Godfather parts 1 & 2, Shakespeare in Love and Crash and the final one coming up on Saturday: West Side Story

The programmes examine the films - but not in the way The Film Programme would. They home in on the political and cultural context which might have influenced the judges' verdicts - suggesting that, on occasion, the Oscars outcome might not be a matter of cinematic quality - but more a reflection of a political zeitgeist.

Last week's programme - about the win for Crash over Brokeback Mountain - one of the best in either series. Paul's conclusion about the confusion of merit and subject matter convinced me.

Listen to the Crash edition of And the Academy Award Goes to... here (until Saturday 21st February).

For a while we've been thinking about film on Radio 4.

We do a fair amount about film - but I think we could do more without toppling over. So that's why The Film Programme (podcast) now has a Sunday repeat in addition to the Friday origination. Francine Stock presides. I like the programme more and more. We spend some time using DVD releases as a way of exploring the back catalogue - and the interviews tend to be far less centred on the single subject of the film about to be on release - and more on a life's work. This week's piece with Bruce Robinson (of fame) is a classic of its kind.

I had thought about adding the question: 'What film would you take with you to your Desert Island?' to the Desert Island Discs climax - but I have not yet convinced myself it will work. It would if everyone chose a film that was widely known (The Sound of Music etc.) but I think it runs the risk of misfiring if every week Kirsty has to unravel the plot and the meaning of a more obscure film.

But we will be doing a big series on films - probably - in 2010. We haven't done that for a while.

And tonight on Front Row comes Mark Lawson with Clint Eastwood - a ran on Today this morning. Appetising.

Several of you have raised the matter of repeats - and others trails.

I'll write about the vexed subject - and it is - of trails later this month.

I'll deal with repeats in this one.

Yes - we repeat a fair amount - about 19% of the schedule. It can feel like more - because if you strip out things that you couldn't repeat, like , PM, The World at One, news bulletins etc... it's higher. Some of this is pure economics. We simply can't make more programmes with the money we have. We have several ideas for new programmes/formats - but I can't afford to take out repeats and replace them with these news ideas. We'd go broke.

It has got a little more difficult in recent years - but we have always repeated a range of programmes and I do not believe that things are very different now - a little, but not much.

But it's not all about economics. Take the recent move (and re-branding) of Archive on 4 (The Archive Hour as was). This format/title, now ten years old, was very often one of the best things we did all week. It was going out only on a Saturday night at 8 pm to an audience of between 300,000 and 400,000. (That's the number who listen to at least a portion of it - not necessarily all of it).

Now it gets a slightly shorter transmission, 45 minutes, at 3 pm on a Monday afternoon. The total audience for something of quality has more than doubled as a result. Thus this week's fascinating programme on the burning of The Satanic Verses and the fatwa against Rushdie is heard by far more people. That's a good thing.

Bad - if you miss the reading that was once there at 3.30 - but on balance, and keeping in mind the economics, a decent trade.

For heavy listeners - it can be wearying. But there is not much overlap between the two Archive on 4 slots and although I wish everyone would listen to R4 most of the time - not everyone does. Some people listen lightly - so well-placed repeats are a boon for many - and a pain for some.

Thank you for these richly informative thoughts and comments. Some of them reveal significant expertise and personal experience.

The programme has received over 350 emails so far about the interview. Tomorrow (Wednesday) there will be discussion on Woman's Hour about the nature of management responsibility - one of the central themes of the exchanges between Jenni Murray and Sharon Shoesmith. How much is it reasonable for us to expect senior management to know (in any sphere of public life), and when is it really fair for someone to lose their job?

A small number of people (fingers of one hand) complained to the 主播大秀 about the programme - suggesting that we should not have run the interview at all - and that in doing so we had given Sharon Shoesmith a platform. I am always a little baffled by this sort of complaint. The interview tested a lot of key arguments about the case - and in a way that did not simply allow Ms. Shoesmith to say whatever she wanted. It did allow her ample time to answer Jenni's tough questions. It's the sort of thing that we should do.

UPDATE: Jill Burridge, the editor of Woman's Hour appeared on Feedback this week to discuss the interview. (Jem Stone - host)

"Murray pressed her on everything, hard but courteously, exploring the lines between perception and reality, blame and responsibility."
Listen to the interview in full

We did something on Saturday's Weekend Woman's Hour we have not done for a very long time - by running at great length (about 43 minutes) the interview between Jenni Murray and the former head of Haringey Social Services - Sharon Shoesmith. Normally the programme is a compilation of some of the outstanding moments of the previous week.

Jenni Murray interviews Sharon Shoesmith on Weekend Woman's Hour.

The interview was recorded on Thursday and we chose not to wait until Monday's edition of the programme. I thought it would have more impact on Saturday - when there is normally less news flying around - and that we could run and the news bulletins - trailing forward to the full interview on Saturday afternoon.

I heard it on Thursday night and stayed in the car - bolt upright. It was a compelling piece of radio - uncomfortable, probing, emotional - in a restrained sort of way. It did indeed make of over .

It's a tribute to the programme team and its history that they got the first broadcast interview with Ms. Shoesmith. ( - which also influenced our decision to run ours that day). No money was involved. Woman's Hour is many things - but its beating heart is journalism.

UPDATE: Mark has written a further post responding to feedback about this programme. (Jem Stone - host)

We've just announced who will be this year's Reith lecturer. It will be from Harvard. He is a political philosopher--but his work ranges wider than that label suggests. He has written about aspects of behavioural psychology, genetics and much more. The lectures will be broadcast in June.

Choosing the Reith lecturer is one of the perks of the job and I enjoy the debates that I have with some very senior R4 colleagues about who we should ask. But it's a demanding jigsaw puzzle. We look for someone who is distinguished, with a good broadcasting voice, with something new to say--preferably about something that resonates at the time the lectures are broadcast. And if that were not enough--we would like the lectures to have lasting value. As said in 2006, (when he was the Reith lecturer) 鈥渋t's a tough gig.鈥�

His lectures still give me goosebumps. In part because he was initially reluctant to write them--but also because he unleashed a dazzling display of charm, wit and humanity that had me roaring him on--while biting my fingernails.

And I have raised the Reith stakes by moving the transmission time of the lectures to the peak morning schedule. They had previously been broadcast in the evenings. So every year I fret about it. Fingers crossed.

Which was your favourite Reith lecturer and why? Leave me a comment below.

A Reith Lectures chronology from Wikipedia.
Seven of the most important lecturers from the 主播大秀's archives.
Some by Michael Sandel from the archives of .
The 主播大秀 Press Office's announcement.

Welcome. I am writing this blog to help explain the way R4 works, draw attention to particular programmes and, of course, to hear what's concerning you and to discover what you like and don't like.

It may not work--but I thought that given the nature of the R4 audience--loyal, demanding, inquiring--I am hopeful that I will learn some useful things and that you will feel more in touch with the station.

I will not blog every day--but when I'm around I'll do my best not to leave long gaps between postings. And when I'm not around--I'll tell you. With the editors of the blog we'll also try to highlight round-ups of the conversations and comment about Radio 4 online.

There are some things that I won't be able to do. If there I (and my colleagues) may need time to sort things out. It would be wrong to use the blog to provide instant answers when considerable thought is required and/or when facts are not clear. So I would not have used the blog to provide a blow by blow account of proceedings when there was interest in the presentation of 'Today' at the end of last year.

Nor can I talk about the future--or speculate--about any individual presenter. Those sort of conversations have to stay private.

And finally--of course you can tell me what is on your mind--and I will read what you write - but I can't write back to each individual comment about a programme. There are other more formal places to go on 主播大秀 Online to , comment or complain.

But there's plenty that we should be able to do here . Let's see how it goes.