Robin

It's rather too warm in London for philosophy, etc. However, my favourite cheeky monkeys at TalkSport have been at it again.  Their ambition is plain - to use the current BBC Trust review of Five Live to make the future remit for the station as dull as possible, so that a so-far-intractable chunk of its 6.5million listeners retune to boost TalkSport's current 3.2m.  In particular, TalkSport would like Richard Bacon taken off the airwaves between 2pm and 4pm, replaced by continuous live coverage of parliamentary select committees, thus forcing all proper men and taxi drivers to retune to Hawksbee and Jacobs - "The UK's hilarious longest-running afternoon sports show" (longest-running in a field of one, afternoon - incontestable, the rest...).

So the ineffable Moz Dee and his "Robin", Jimmy Buckland, asked another Robin, Robin Britten, one of my former colleagues at Five Live, to do some "counting" of a week's output.  Did it match the BBC target of 75% "news" and 25% "sport" ?

Robin went back to basics; what is news ?  His paper offers two definitions. First...

I regard news as this: information about something that has happened, is happening, or is about to happen. I counted output as news if it was also discussion, analysis, debate, and audience interactivity about news.

And second...


News is: fresh information on something that has happened, is happening (breaking news), or is about to happen that is of concern, relevance or interest to the 5 Live audience. News can be reporter-mediated information, informed discussion and debate, or mediated audience interaction about this. But for content on 5 Live to be defined as news, whether it comes from the lighter entertainment end of the spectrum or the more serious realm of public or international affairs, it should be presented with the overriding intention of bringing forward fresh information and understanding; it should aim to analyse, simplify, and engage the listener with the complicated, make the obscure clearer and disentangle hype and spin from core fact. To be classed as news, discussion and audience interactivity should have a current news impetus, a clear intent to add information and a declared aim and purpose; it should not be aimless, repetitious and unrelated to the current news agenda. Mere conversation about the topical - offering no fresh fact, analysis or interpretation - is not news. To be classed as a 5 Live news programme, around three quarters of an individual programme’s output should be dedicated to news content (unless the programme has a separate stated aim and a corresponding percentage of news content). 


Robin's best shot was that in the week he listened to, either 50.1% or 58.9% was "news" (though there was some talk of "sampling" and "extrapolation" in the methodology. One hopes TalkSport got the service they paid for.)

Figures out of the way, Robin goes on to a much more engaging discussion about what the station's ambition should be, and evidences his dislike of "chat".   There's the heated debate, which is probably better saved for winter months in the snugs of old men's pubs a stride or two from Salford Quays.  Back when the station started, there were often arguments about "non-content driven broadcasting" (c Bill Rogers).  Too much - bad; some of it, when presenters are on song, the best radio you've ever heard.  And if the argument is about engaging with listeners, about the world they live in, and the wider world they want to know about, then I refer to this earlier post, entitled Killjoys.