Radio
Just as it is
Mary Kenny
May I be cheeky and offer some advice to Miss Monica Sims, the lady expected to be the new Controller of Radio 4? To the average listener, nothing very much needs to be changed on what was once the Home Service; most of us really do want a policy of I.eave Well Alone. And what with the coming change of wavelength in November surely that is quite enough disruption for some time to come? Radio 4, in fact, is a jolly good radio channel just as it is. For all the complaining about the former controller Ian McIntyre, he left it in a very good state, and despite the critics, Radio 4 actually got written about And talked about more consistently than any other channel during his reign. And it is I would guess, by far the most influential element in radio, in that it helps to form the ideas of people who really do matter. It is true that what the BBC executives most Worry about is the fact that Radio 4 audiences remain not only relatively small, but also that it continues to fail to attract Younger listeners. This business of attracting the young is an absolute bugbear of marketing men, and it has been transmitted to a lot of people in the communications business. Obviously, certain commercial Marketing men must worry about the young because the seventeen to twenty-five age group has a high disposable income for the Purchase of rubbish, but the BBC isn't actually selling anything. That said, however, I must make the Point that I know one way in which Radio 4 could attract some younger listeners and that is to have more programmes about education. Young parents are obsessed by education, yet education is a subject on Which Radio 4 is extraordinarily deficient, and even when they do refer to it, they are remarkably wet and inapposite about it. They will, as Woman's Hour did recently, do a sweet, sentimental feature about seven-year-olds learning multi-racial, creative ethnic cookery which teaches them tO express themselves, when precisely what Mfuriates most mothers of seven-year-olds is the fact that all the children ever seem to do is messy, pointless things like cooking, drawing and playing with egg-boxes. Or they will make the point praisingly, as Paul Vaughan did on Kaleidescope last Monday, about how wonderful it is that the best artists in a children's art exhibition come from comprehensive schools. The rather sour reaction of the average parent or grandparent would be, I think, that as they don't seem to learn to read, write or add up, the least they might do is paint well. Yet, listen to Jimmy Young who always gets to the Point and has his finger on a nation's pulse. In an interview about education in France (11 September), one of the first things that Jim asked was 'How do they cope with the discipline problem in French schools?' He knows that that is what every housewife and mother listening most worries about.
But most of Radio 4 is perfectly fine as it is; current series! recommend include: New Britons (10.05 on Tuesday mornings), a most enlightening of features about people who have come to this country — the programme on 5 September about Ivan Henry, a West Indian living in the Midlands was one of those rare journalistic exercises which increase your understanding and imagination about what life is like for other people. The Unforgettables, a late-night (11.33 p.m.) programme features some truly charming popular music of the kind that we all remember from the 1940s and 1950s. The panel game, I'm sorry, I haven't a clue (6.30 pm Tuesday, 12.27 pm Thursday) is probably the best radio comedy around.
Some forthcoming attractions: Book at Bedtime starting on 18 September (Radio 4) is Henry James's chilling The Turn of the Screw. On 19 September there is a programme on Radio 3 at 9.45 p.m. exploring the world of that novel: The Horror at Bly.
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