Just goes to prove the idiots ARE running the asylum!
On Radio 2's Good Morning Sunday a video clip of one of it's presenters falling in the water was mentioned.  Find it I cannot.  
Gone are the Radio Listings, had to use the Radio Times website to find the name of the programme and then the bbc website search box to find the programme's webpage.

Reith would turn in his grave to see the depths the BBC has gone to join the yoof movement!

Sounds?  It's RADIO.  It's what the BBC was formed for!

So they are.  Well hidden in tiny font!

Vanessa Thorpe in "The Observer" adds to the discussion here.

"Listeners and stars up in arms as BBC Sounds app backfires"

Excellent suggestions WG.

Agreed.

iPlayer Radio was ideal.
It wasn't "broke".

Indeed-perhaps Broadasting House will become Podcasting House.....BH and PH sound alike don't they!?

Take a look at this...

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bbc-sounds-radio-rivals-snub-offer-to-join-ap...

With the app still a "work in progress" a BBC attempt was made at a joint venture with Classic FM and other commercials. It did NOT go down well.

It all Sounds as though Anna Rampton from TV's W1A tried to make a strategic intervention?

An interesting and relevant article by India Knight ( especially para 6) on Radio 4 from yesterday's Sunday Times Magazine ------

Nothing gives me more happiness than poking about in the cold frame in the spring sunshine, obsessively checking on the progress of my seeds. I do this in the company of a portable radio that is tuned to Radio 4 — my idea of heaven; as for many people, Radio 4 is the soundtrack to my day. Well, mostly — I migrate to Radio 2, with its brilliant roster of women presenters, if the news is too grim, or if Woman’s Hour is, in its tin-eared and patronising way, trying to be relevant to the sort of young women who literally don’t know what Woman’s Hour is and will never listen to it.

So I was exceptionally irritated to read about cuts to the station, demoralised staff and the recent resignation of Gwyneth Williams, its long-standing controller. An article in The Times said that established shows have been “cut to the bone” and quoted one anonymous presenter as saying: “Radio 4 is in danger of being destroyed. The jewel in the crown is being shut down and asset-stripped like a Midlands car factory.”

Staff have recently been told to save money by interviewing authors without reading their books; there was also the suggestion that shows should rely more on promotional interviews with guests on publicity tours. When I tweeted my anger about this, a couple of presenters replied saying they’d not noticed any cuts to their shows (yet). But my private messages were a whole other story.

This is all happening because the station is chasing young people. Where to start with the stupidity of this? The minority of young people who like Radio 4 already listen to it. The young people who are future listeners will find their way to it eventually, because that’s how it works: you listen to what you find interesting, and that changes with age. It seems tragic to have to point this out. Also: what draws people in is the intelligent and eclectic nature of the programming. The broadcasts I was most resistant to in the past are now among my favourites: Melvyn Bragg discussing Gerard Manley Hopkins or papal infallibility live; or Jim Al-Khalili somehow making laser physics vaguely comprehensible. Radio 4 works because you discover things by happy accident. It’s where ideas and culture intersect. It is a massive educational resource. Seeking to change any of that is a pointless act of cultural vandalism.

And to what purpose? All any of this is doing — and everything I’m saying also applies to Radio 3 — is turning off the existing, older, enviably loyal (thus far) listeners. This is a catastrophic error, because those older listeners will now go off and listen to something else, such as audiobooks or podcasts. There will be no new younger listeners, because they are happily engaged elsewhere. The station will slowly die.


The pursuit of youth in this context is incredibly ill-judged. It reminds me of Tony Blair inviting the Gallagher brothers to No 10, like an excited old uncle. That was, perhaps not entirely coincidentally, during the period when James Purnell, currently the BBC’s director of radio, was a Downing Street adviser. Purnell has a pet project, under which everything must apparently be subsumed:the unusable and universally unloved Sounds app, created at vast expense to replace the popular and user-friendly iPlayer Radio app.There’s also the forthcoming streaming service from the BBC and ITV, supposedly to compete with Netflix and Amazon, just as Sounds is, hilariously, supposed to compete with Spotify et al. The service is called BritBox, the name already deeply nostalgic, with its sad, yearning echoes of Blair-era Cool Britannia.

The BBC denies any of this is happening. The other day, some BBC bloke was on Radio 4 explaining why it was important for the station to have a more youthful perspective. He was effectively saying that there shouldn’t be silos. Odd, then, that he did not talk about how Radio 1 Extra should be trying to attract septuagenarians.

Here’s a thought: maybe the BBC doesn’t have to be a behemoth serving every part of a huge market that’s also served by vast commercial enterprises. Maybe its current problems are a consequence of it fighting to stay vast. It doesn’t have to be vast — just good. As good as the current Radio 4 output, say.

India Knight