Who's for 4 ?

Saturday's Guardian had a rather ho-hum editorial about the search for a new Controller for Radio 4. The paper still loves Mark Damazer, but acknowledges that not all is perfect. At least, I think that's what this means...

Three years ago the whole BBC was excoriated in an internal report for a kind of institutional liberalism – a charge that delighted the Murdoch press which dismissed it as the Guardian on air, plainly not a criticism we recognise. There is, however, a germ of truth in the implication of a monoculture, which risks jeopardy in a pluralistic era. There is an irritating preponderance of southern vowels, and a homogeneous centrism in its political outlook that excludes the radical of both right and left.

It is rarely racially diverse, which limits its capacity to illuminate an important part of contemporary culture and excludes perspectives that ought to be heard. It is not the place one would expect to find a debate among the left, for example, about how the City might be tamed, nor a debate among those on the right about the UK's role in Europe. It should be. But above all it must continue to offer, sandwiched between its staples of news and current affairs, the meat of a daily adventure into the unexpected.I have to say there are more serious problems with the station.

I think the problems are more simply stated than that. Things have got a bit lazy and unambitious in many areas, sometimes because producers are fatigued by compliance, and sometimes because they all have more work to do after staff cuts. The station continues to use a coterie of usual suspects to present one-off shows. Cerys Matthews and Sue Perkins are currently flavours of the month. The new panel shows, Heresy and So Wrong It's Right have an air of desperation. My personal heresy is that 100 Objects is actually a bit dull, and I feel as if I've reached a century already. Midweek, Your & Yours (except for Julian Worricker days), In Our Time are tired. I could go on.

My left field candidate for the job is Vivian Schiller, who seems to have refreshed the US network NPR is a way that Radio 4 really needs.

PS I have no updates on the real field of contenders, except I understand that George Entwistle has taking to writing to papers which include him on short lists to tell them they're wrong.