Rep

The BBC's current commercial ideology looks likely to take it into another cultural brouhaha. After trying to shed the BBC Singers, because there were allegedly better ways of spending licence fees, there's fiddling to come with BBC drama production and the Radio Drama Company. 

The Radio Drama Company was formed in 1939, and has turned over close to 1,000 actors, flexing in size from the nine or ten original members, up to over 50 post-war, and now ticking over at around 15/16. It supplies casts for Radio 3 and Radio 4, for book readings and supplementary voices for The Archers.  It's provided employment for Carleton Hobbs, Norman Shelley, Marjorie Westbury, Stephen Tompkinson, Nina Wadia, James MacPherson, Bruce Alexander, Polly James, Alex Lanipekun, Richard Griffiths, John Rowe, Denys Hawthorne, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Alex Jennings, Adjoa Andoh, Norman Bird, Emma Fielding, Anthony Daniels, Ben Onwukwe, Joanna Monro, Ann Beach, Anna Cropper, Steve Toussaint, Janet Maw, Suzanna Hamilton, Simon Trinder, Susan Jameson and Carolyn Pickles.

Now it seems the 'Rep', which is filled largely by six month contracts, is to be floated free of the drama production teams that currently nurture them in Broadcasting House. Drama producers (officially BBC Audio Drama London) will be made to join BBC Studios at Television Centre; three and a half miles in a straight line to the last remaining BBC radio drama studio in London, 60a, back in BH.