We were driving to the V&A summer party, windows down, scent of jasmine floating on the liquid June air, prospect of petal-strewn cocktails and pretty girls posing in their zaniest dresses with Grayson Perry ahead. My iPhone in my bag connected to Ivo’s car radio and – bear with me – started playing.
We were in Kensington Church Street and it was the Radio 4 Media Show. ‘In a minute the head of BBC news on cuts announced today and former World Tonight presenter Ritula Shah on the Radio 4 programmes being axed,’ said Katie Razzall, introducing the acting bean-counter, a Mr Jonathan Munro, who explained that he had to cut 10 per cent costs, that 550 jobs were being binned to save half a billion quid, and that there was much more pain to come.
We passed the Royal Albert Hall as this suit waffled on about digital priorities, linear channels and replenisher audiences. Then he named the radio programmes for the chop. At this point I should pause to make an admission for what follows to ‘land’, as I think we say.
Though I am proud to work at LBC (think of me as a ball-girl at Wimbledon, occasionally handing a towel or lemon barley water to top seeds like Ferrari, O’Brien, Fogarty, Swarbs, Dale et al), back in the day I was a senior broadcast journalist on BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight.
Not that my husband was aware of it at the time, as he never managed to stay awake long enough to hear anything I broadcast. He would explain that if he turned on the radio at 10 p.m. for the programme, he would all too quickly became unconscious. ‘It should have been called The World To Sleep,’ he said. I only worked seven days a fortnight but, in mitigation, the shifts were 13 hours long and I managed to be pregnant almost all the time.
Just as T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock measured out his life with coffee spoons, my husband and I now measure out our days in BBC news output, as if we were in some Corporation-funded care home. Although LBC is the aural wallpaper of my existence, we wake to the Today programme. He watches the BBC six o’clock news and then at 10 p.m. he sits back down on our red velvet Sofa.com and watches the exact same programme all over again before flipping to Newsnight. After Newsnight we read in bed and then it’s lights off and the R4 Midnight News. We are like fully Gina Forded babies, only with the BBC news schedule as our unvarying timetable.
As we ‘parked up’ outside the Museum, it occurred to me how mad it was that when Matt Brittin, the new DG, formerly of Google, ‘met with’ the managers tasked with cutting the BBC budget, they all agreed to trim most fat from Radio 4, as radio is not just cheap, it’s not just popular – it’s an essential service. These cuts make me think they must never listen to R4’s output, or meet anyone who does, because by cutting 400 hours of radio content (compared with 150 hours of TV and video), they won’t gain the yoof listeners they desire but will lose the loyal Boomer audience they already have.
We arrived at the V&A and enjoyed the spectacle of podcast queen Emily Maitlis twirling in a mermaid-blue Jenny Packham gown, then entered the throng.
By this point, I was building up a proper head of steam about the cuts. Take Money Box Live, AntiSocial and Crossing Continents, if you must, take your breakfast television which I have never knowingly watched, but God preserve The World Tonight and the half-hour midnight news bulletin. The round-up of all the day’s stories delivered with precision and clarity. The segue into the weather and the Shipping Forecast. Replacing all this with a podcast – a podcast – is like swapping Big Ben’s bongs for a tinny ringtone. It’s a step too far. In this digital revolution Auntie is cannibalising her own children.
Just as Prufrock measured out his life with coffee spoons, my husband and I measure out our lives in BBC output
A lithe Mick Jagger raced past me into the crowd in trainers with his security and ballerina fiancée, as if being chased. Look at Mick, I told myself, he’s my target audience. I’d bring back cricket on long wave, Midweek with Libby Purves… and I know just the woman to make this happen. Sarah Sands, a former editor of the Today programme. I couldn’t spot her in the mojito-swilling crowd, so I telephoned Mrs Sands the next day and, unlike Andy Burnham (I suspect), we have a plan.
We are going to poach Justin Webb as main presenter from the BBC. Zeb Soanes as our newsreader from Global. We are going to bring back the Home Service. Presenters in black tie will deliver the news from London in received pronunciation and, on pain of death, never ever mention their children, sleep patterns, pets or moon cycles.
You may call it midsummer night’s madness… I say you can but dream.
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