A choice of listening

A small but significant change in culture on the Today programme at the start of 2025.  As well as verbal trails for Radio 3 Unwind, from around 8.30am, presenters are obliged to suggest listeners try the Petroc Trelawny's Breakfast Show on Radio 3, 'from 9 o'clock'. 

Last century, Radio 4 Controllers felt their most important shows were at 9am, with big beasts like Start The Week, Tuesday Call, Midweek (with Russell Harty), Desert Island Discs. The Radio 4 Controllers 'owned' the shows and the means of production, whereas Today was very much in joint custody with the News & Current Affairs. 'Inheritance' was the schedule strategy; each programme aimed to retain as much of the big breakfast audience as they could; nothing should be done to put moving that dial in listeners' minds. 

Now the swooping tones of Webb and Dymond are urging us in a range of directions at 9am; why not get on with that Today podcast ? Switch to what's left of Petroc ? Try the audio of the Sounds-construct "Live News", bringing you the BBC News channel in words only ?

Maybe there's a reader from BBC Audiences who can explain what's occurring ?

Full circle

The Black Farmer, Wilfred Emmanuel Jones, has just opened his second 'farm shop', at the front of the old Stage VI of BBC Television Centre. 

Wilfred has broadcasting history; having set his heart on a media job from his base in Small Heath, he wrote to all the producers named in the Radio Times, and Jock Gallagher, based in Birmingham, gave him a three month contract as a runner/researcher. He got to do a report for Radio 4 in 1985 on a mixed race wedding; he researched for an edition of Everyman on BBC1, and parlayed the experience into a job as a film director on Food and Drink, run by Peter Bazalgette. After 15 years, he set up a food marketing business, and that eventually made him enough to set up a working farm in Devon, where he developed The Black Farmer brand. 

Along the way he's been on Radio 4 chat shows, had slots on Countryfile, and nursed, unsuccessfully, the Chippenham constituency for the Tories. 

On the road again

Travelling Tim, BBC DG, gets top seat at the BBC Indian Sportswoman of the Year award ceremony in Delhi earlier this week.

Thinking time

I hope there's some internal discussion about how to cover the Ukraine story on BBC television news over the coming weeks and months. It's possible, because BBC News has the resources, to have people standing outside venues around the world, marking 'talks' without much insight into what's being said behind closed doors. Bulletins can easily be filled with this coverage of process, whereas context and perspective, more difficult to produce, are what we need to wean us all from chaos addiction.

I'd like to understand a little more about what passed between the US and Russia BEFORE the Trump/Putin phone call. Sherpas must have been at work - both parties needed the conversation to look significant - and Hegseth's speech, on February 12th, had plenty of meat, plus evidence of serious thinking, as well as shock factor.  Since then, Trump, Hegseth and Vance have strayed further from that outline, as if they don't understand the complexities that their diplomats are handling. Are, behind the scenes, Russia and the USA in accord on a desired outcome, or is their some genuine negotiation to be done ?

Party time

Let's all have a party. Five days ago, Lucy Boynton was in New York for the launch of A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story, available on Britbox in the USA (owned by BBC Studios). 

The screening and party was at the Crosby Hotel - BBC Studios executives Rebecca Glashow (left) and Robert Schildhouse (centre) were on hand. 

In the UK, A Cruel Love is also out on Britbox, owned by ITV, and the drama is made by Silverprint Pictures, owned by ITV Studios.

Misplaced

Where's that train crash exactly ?  AI off duty ?

Al's back

The British Comedy Guide tells us of a return to our screens of Alan Yentob, with 'imagine... The Academy of Armando', looking at the work of Armando Iannucci. 

Apparently in gestation since 2018, there'll be BBC archive footage, film of Iannucci at work on the set of his HBO comedy Avenue 5, and at the screening of The Death Of Stalin at the Sundance Film Festival. It will also discuss Iannucci's epic poem turned play Pandemonium, described as "a scornful account of the activities of Mr Boris Johnson and 'others' during the pandemic and its aftermath".

Yentob and Iannucci were previously on screen together in the 2006 "imagine....A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Studio" in which Alan asked "Is the British sitcom really dead ?"

Sounds off

The BBC's strategy for Sounds - you can't have it outside the UK. This emerging development has been spotted - and predicted - by radio futurologist James Cridland. 

Some of Sounds offerings will now be available on a section of bbc.com, the website, and later, the app.  Previous users of BBC Sounds abroad will have to transfer subscribed and saved bookmarks to this new BBC Audio area. The only 'live' offerings will be Radio 4 and World Service.

"Due to rights limitations, not all BBC content can be made available to international users. This includes BBC music radio stations as well as some podcasts. We endeavour to provide a comprehensive listening experience to our audience with hundreds of podcasts available. We will continually be adding more content."

New generation

The job titles are generating fast. 

The BBC is looking for a Head of its Generative AI Hub, for £140k p.a. 

"The role reports to the BBC Programme Director for Generative AI and manages a multidisciplinary team which will comprise of business analyst, project management, data science, UX and software skills. The team is likely to make significant use of prototyping, rapid evolution, change methodologies and robust cost-benefit frameworks to ensure the best ideas progress quickly. "

The Programme Director is Peter Archer (BA Modern History, Hertford College, Oxford and Graduate Diploma Psychology, Brookes University) who entered the Civil Service fast stream in 2005, and served three years in Gordon Brown's strategy unit in Downing Street, before joining the BBC in 'strategy' in 2010. 

Amol thinks

Delegates to Dynamic Planner’s ‘Pioneering Tomorrow’s Technology’ conference at 22 Bishopgate yesterday got a full 20 minutes of Amol Rajan's world view, presumably dashed out before he turned to prepping for his rigorous review of NHS spending on Radio 4 this morning. 

His concluding remarks, as reported by Money Matters (and, as far as I can tell, no-one else): “There is no hero coming to save us. We must dig deep, do the work and reimagine our future. If we get it right, Britain can still be a place where history is forged.”

It's not clear where or when Mr Rajan will be standing for election.