I get increasingly upset at the Today prog getting someone reasonably interesting on the last slot of the show, then cutting them off clumsily in mid flow, to try to avoid crashing the pips. They crash them anyway. O tempus o mores.....

Chris,

I used to partake of a daily survey of 'listeners likes and dislikes about radio programmes' where I regularly complained - for years! - about the way that Today especially seems to have a fixed time-slot mentality, where an interview gets ingloriously terminated with "I'm sorry, we've run out of time" and suddenly that's an end to it - whether it's running up to the pips or not! It irritates the hell out of me when they do that!

The programme can be the most wonderful way to understand what's happened in the world whilst I've been in the land of Nod - until they go into 'fortune telling' mode (something which TV News is especially "good" at!) when they tell me just what so-and-so is going to say at some point later in the day. Of course they're keen to show that they've been so entrusted, perhaps with sight of the speech or even just a quick briefing by someone's PA; indeed, sometimes I wonder if it warrants the various politicians travelling around the country to deliver these speeches when the gist of what they want to say has been aired long before they've even hit the road (or track). To me, that's not 'News' in the true sense of the word.

I'd rather not go back to the days of Jack De Manio: Bill Hardcastle in his prime perhaps(!) but maybe this form of News forecasting is what our present editors want. Ah well.