The World At One, enjoying a good run under energetic editor Nick Sutton (Twitter is already missing his nightly delivery of Fleet Street front pages, now he's on summer holidays), is to be extended to 45 minutes in the Autumn. Controller Radio 4 Gwyneth Williams has granted it a number of extensions already this year - and says the move is in response to the Commons sitting in the morning, creating more to talk about. (This happened in 2003).
The programme started at 40 minutes in 1965, the idea of Gerard Mansell, under editor Andrew Boyle, with presenter William Hardcastle, a former editor of The Daily Mail. Its tone was mimicked by internal Xmas funny tapes of parody and blunders, entitled "The World Gone Wrong".
In 1998, when "news" was concentrating on "bi-media", James Boyle, Controller Radio 4, cut it back to 30 minutes before anyone really noticed. The editor then was Kevin Marsh.
It leaves Radio 4 with one of those funny shaped holes at 1345 - just time for "Phil Smith looks at scissors", or some such. And Moneybox and the Media Show will feel sure the move to 3pm-5pm will hit their figures. But the key question - does The World At One get extra money/staff for producing an extra 15 minutes ? I'm guessing the best they can hope for is a standstill - after all, they seem to be able to turn it on at short notice. So the winner is altruistic Gwyneth's bank balance.
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