Extra hands

Probably the last chance for the survival of Radio 4 Extra is in the hands of the BBC's non-executive directors.  They may have already signed it off; minutes of their proceedings now lag for months. It was the BBC Trust who saved 6Music. 

The non-execs are Caroline Thomson, Muriel Gray, Robbie Gibb, Michael Plaut, Michael Smyth, Jody Ford and Marinella Soldi, if campaigners would care to drop any of them a line.  The core petition to Save 4 Extra is now up to 16,500.

The continuation of a linear channel as a lead display case for a national archive of radio programming is the very definition of essential public service broadcasting. Maybe even tech gurus like Manon Dave will recognise it as entirely parallel to his "Las Vegas" spin button for finding surprising stuff on iPlayer. 

When will  Director of Speech Mohit Bakaya be made available to defend the closure ?  Here's his position from March this year... 

Mohit Bakaya, the controller of BBC Radio 4, told me they are producing content for audiences who may never hear it on the radio station, but will consume it exclusively on digital platforms. https://t.co/Cdb6jMvF4Y

— Colm Flynn (@colmflynnire) March 24, 2026

Bits

 BBC online news today

Hearing loss

With population figures updated, many radio stations are claiming improvements, but, in truth, most figures for the most recent quarter of listening are flat. 

These are worrying times for BBC Radio Wales, Scotland, Ulster, BBC Local Radio and 5Live, when 'integration' is in the air - though it may be more about management than output.

Radio Wales' weekly reach is down 3% year on year, and average hours per listener down 23%.

Radio Cymru's weekly reach is up 16.5% year on year; average hours per listener are spookily down 16.5%.

Radio Scotland's weekly reach is down 5% year on year and average hours per listener down 10%. 

Radio Ulster's weekly reach is up 9.5% year on year; average hours per listener are down 7.2%. 

BBC Local Radio in England's weekly reach is down 5.3%; average hours per listener are up 10.4%.

Radio 5Live's weekly reach is down 2.4% year on year; average hours per listener are up 10%. 

Wrongly-condemned station Radio 4 was down 5.4%  in its weekly reach year on year, with average hours per listener up 10%. 

Inspiration

 

Left: BBC interim Director of Nations Rhuanedd Richards from the BBC Executive Board website. Right, Rhuanedd from Linkedin this week, noting with pleasure that she has been nominated as an "Inspiring Woman" by the BBC's Next Generation Committee. Rhuanedd is Executive Sponsor of the committee, so that's grand. 

The Committee, selected by the management for 12 months at a time, "provides an advisory function for the Executive Committee, in particular to consider the challenges facing the BBC from the perspective of younger audiences."   It would be good to see their take on the cuts....

Keep listening

I'm all for petitions and campaigns against daft BBC management decisions. Remember, the campaign to 'save' 6Music from an Executive move to close won the support of the BBC Trust in July 2010.  The 2023 move on the BBC Singers was 'paused' after just two weeks of campaigning and a 120,000 signature petition. 

There is another form of 'citizen action' available to those aggrieved by the latest planned cuts. Quarterly audience listening figures are due out next Thursday, and it's too late to influence them. But the next quarter covers 21st September to 20th December, with results reported mid-February; plenty of time to highlight your dedication to programmes and networks facing the axe. 

If you are lucky enough to be part of the Ipsos listening panel, then you have seven day diaries to fill in.  But your connections are also counted by the BBC when you listen via BBC Sounds. So maybe concentrate your pre-Christmas commands to Alexa and Google speakers, even when just passing, rather than your steam radio. And perhaps, if you have Sounds on your car audio, use that rather than DAB/FM.  Then we call all write to Samir Shah about Radio 4 Extra/The Midnight News and You and Yours and ask for transparency about the figures. 

Minders

The flow of minutes from the various BBC Board Committees remains erratic. We now have notes from the Editorial Standards Committee meeting of July. Absent were interim Director of News Jonathan Munro and interim Director of Nations Rhuanedd Richards, but the remaining crowd congratulated themselves on coverage of the May local elections and keeping an eye on AI in journalism. 

At this stage, they note they're still trying to find someone to lead a review of Middle East coverage  "discussions with its preferred candidate for leadership of the Editorial Review of the Middle East were taking place on the terms of reference and timescale."   This review has been in gestation since January 2025 - one year and nine months ago. 

Another too-little, too-late action from the sharp minds: "The Committee approved the proposal for a review of the BBC’s short-form video content." This horse has bolted....

Cases still being made

Here's a surmise. The current round of BBC cuts is being done at a departmental rather than divisional level, and there are some very big pieces of the jigsaw missing. 

It's pretty clear that Rachel Jupp decided to 'arrive' early as Director of News, and whilst letting some bits of agreed 'radio news' cuts become public, she's really not impressed with the plans left by the Turness administration to cut newsgathering, tv daily news, and online news.  And she's been given charge of sorting out 'integration' across BBC local radio, BBC Radio 5Live, Radio Scotland, Radio Ulster and Radio Wales; and making sense of the dash for clicks coming from regional tv newsrooms, swamping news online with dubious 'health' stories, dashcam footage and pop news. Plus there will emerge a new co-ordinated plan for long-form tv current affairs, and much less of it, merging regional and 'national' investigations with Panorama. 

Sitting atop all that will have to be a convincing intellectual and financial case for all the News-lite stuff that is being produced for Tik-Tok, Facebook and Instagram. 

Case not made (2)

So, looking round his digital services, Controller Speech Mohit Bakaya has decided to close Radio 4 Extra.  16 years ago, under Tim Davie, the finger was pointed at BBC6 Music and The Asian Network;  either would have generated considerably more savings than closing 4 Extra, and the argument was that there were plenty of other outlets delivering popular music. 

Culturally, there's no rival to 4 Extra - it provides something only the BBC can. The management has been hollowed out since it first arrived as BBC7.  A station editor/scheduler will be saved; financially, there's little extra work in paying out much reduced/zero repeat fees; some freelance announcers will lose work.  The BBC 'owns' the prinicipal means of transmission - a Digital Audio Broadcasting multiplex, which carries all BBC network and digital stations. Radio 4 Extra gets enough bandwith for mono speech; I'd be puzzled if stopping it delivered a measurable cash benefit.

1.5m listeners reached every week, and it's not clear that the 'brand' will survive digitally for smart speakers etc - a big mistake. Radio 4 Extra's schedules give the BBC archive a recognised and friendly 'discovery' window, something that Matt Brittin says he values. 

The BBC's Morning Service is left floating. Will BBC Local Radio really accommodate it in their schedules ?  Why no similar imposition on Radio Wales, Radio Scotland and Radio Ulster ? 

Case not made

It would be presumptuous of me to engage in a 'value' v 'cost' discussion with a top businessman like Matt Brittin. 

What's the 'value' of a top quality radio drama studio in Birmingham, against the construction cost, which he puts at £1.5m ?

What's the 'value' of a continuous 24 hour radio news production operation in London, compared with the cost of a move of one of three shifts to Sydney ?  

On the 'cost' side, the BBC's screwball calculations help News, but hinder the BBC. Restructuring costs (i.e. paying for 26 redundancies) are 'held centrally' and merely noted on the News 'business case'. Should any candidates for the exit be entitled, they may draw down pensions 'early', and the pension scheme is a burden on the licence-fee payer; not part of the News 'business case'. I wouldn't mind betting that the costs of establishing/training/parallel running new offices and studios for 20-odd new staff in Australia mean that any marginal savings in this exercise appear in year 2. 

And what price the lost 'value' of a cohesive approach to UK and World events, where handovers between shifts are face-to-face, and explanations of the sinkholes and craters that surround the delivery of even straightforward stories are passed on with more than just an end-of-shift memo. Where staff shaping the UK morning agenda have a commonality of experience with their core audience, starting their own daily lives with UK tv, radio, papers ?  Perhaps even enjoying an overnight 'breakfast' with members of the Today production team. 

It's entirely possible to write UK news in Blue Street, North Sydney, but, over-time, there will be stuff that's clumsy, out-of-tune, misguided - and strong stories left alone, because the local context is not obvious to someone on the other side of the world.  It's why, after all, BBC News is boosted by so many dedicated correspondents and stringers overseas.  In this case, the baby is on the way out with the bathwater.... 

G-day, UK !

The World Service and BBC Radio Newsroom are going through extaordinary contortions, to save a net total of seven posts, and stop spending on night shifts. 

Production of World Service Bulletins (which currently sustain Radio 2, Radio 5Live and local radio frequencies overnight), as well has the half-hour "Newsroom" and the 0600 Global News Podcast is being moved to Sydney. 

26 London jobs will go, their work carried out by 19 new employees in Sydney, who will work eight hour shifts across seven days.   Apparently the London newsroom remaining shifts, of 'days' and 'evenings', will continue unchanged. 

(This plan should have become clear with the dropping of the midnight news on Radio 4; I feel I've let readers down....)