By David Harding.


Alan Rogers used praise rather than blame to bring the best out of creative people
Alan Rogers, who has died aged 71, played an active role at the BBC throughout the 1970s and 80s, initiating or nurturing many popular Radio 4 programmes including Start the Week, The Food Programme, You and Yours, Does He Take Sugar? and Woman's Hour. He inspired Radio 1's first venture into current affairs, Newsbeat, and was also involved in social action radio campaigns, responding to issues including rising youth unemployment. One such campaign for HIV and Aids awareness led to the creation of a national helpline.

Alan was born into a deeply Christian family in Tisbury, Wiltshire, and was educated at Gillingham grammar school in Dorset. In 1957 he went to study maths at Bristol University, where he discovered his passion for journalism, editing the student magazine, and met his future wife, Jenny. His first job was as a reporter for the Bristol Evening World. After spells with the Daily Herald and the Daily Mail, Alan had his 13th application to the BBC accepted, resulting in a job as producer with the Today programme in 1968. When the corporation launched its new stream of local radio stations in 1970, Alan became Radio London's programme organiser.

In the early 1970s, BBC radio was in turmoil: the old Light and Third Programmes and the Home Service were being rebranded into Radios 2, 3 and 4; the youthful Radio 1 was launched; and local radio was shifting resources away from London. Traditional production departments were either confused or engaged in turf wars.

The Current Affairs, Magazine Programmes department, affectionately known as Camp, was born at this time. In 1972 Alan became its surprise new head and set about developing and expanding. As a natural manager of creative people, an entrepreneur and instinctive marketeer, he had the qualities needed for the job.

Alan knew that success depended on understanding and meeting the needs of audiences and network controllers. Radio 4 needed to refresh its schedule. From Start the Week came yet more talkshows: Midweek and Stop the Week. From You and Yours he developed another consumers' champion, the investigative and aggressive Checkpoint, which later became Face the Facts. In the Psychiatrist's Chair was also launched.

New broadcasters including Tom Vernon and Ray Gosling were encouraged to deliver fresh, quirky insights beyond the metropolis. As one Radio 4 controller, David Hatch, put it, "Alan produced solutions." Another, Michael Green, called him "a frontiersman and buccaneer".

From a department fizzing with ideas and energy came new proposals: some surprising successes, some heroic failures. Rollercoaster was created to meet a perennial Radio 4 problem, the mid-morning slump in audiences as listeners drifted away after Today. At the controller's request, Camp created this three-hour live mix of talk, interviews, news, entertainment, religion and arts, melding elements of the programmes it displaced. It was broadcast in 1984 on Thursday mornings for a six-month trial and, predictably, divided opinion. The audience grew and it was pencilled in for two editions a week, but to the relief of many, inside and outside Broadcasting House, large budget cuts ruled that Rollercoaster be axed.

Alan's profound faith was the well-spring for his life and work. His Christian belief informed the way he managed his staff. He used praise rather than blame to bring the best out of creative people, giving them space and trust. Well before equal opportunities, quotas or legislation, Alan felt instinctively that the staffing of the BBC should reflect the make-up of society, and he recruited accordingly. He could be a hands-on editor: when Rollercoaster was missing a star turn, he happened upon Warren Mitchell in the gents and booked him.

I worked for Alan in the early 1980s, first as an editor, then as his deputy. He gave you total confidence, but could also be maddening. I spent three weeks assessing the departmental budget and concluded that we were heavily overspent. Alan jotted down some figures on the back of a cigarette packet and said: "We're OK, you've forgotten seasonal fluctuations." He was right.

He tended to introduce me as his butler, which I relished. As an editor-in-chief, he was muscular in defence but rigorous in standards. He had a "happy hour" at the end of the day when staff could drop in, often to encounter his bawdy language. He made up irreverent but affectionate private names for his three talkshows: Start the Week was "Pluggers", Midweek was "Nutters" and the regular panel discussion for Stop the Week was "Wankers".

When Alan left the BBC, after 25 years, Camp was the biggest BBC radio department outside news and sport. He applied the same creative skills on ARK 2, his vision for a Christian cable TV station, but it did not get off the ground.

He is survived by Jenny, whom he married in 1963, his sons, Luke and Owen, and two grandchildren.

• Alan Rogers, radio executive, born 23 June 1939; died 4 July 2010


Source:-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/jul/21/alan-rogers-obituary