What’s Radio Four, For?
Or possibly “Who” is it for? They’re currently running an ad campaign using the tag line “Radio Four Discerning Listeners” or something like that, so it seems an appropriate time to ask the question.
Being back in the UK for a few days gave me a chance to catch up on some old favourites and ponder it as I listened to various bits of their output.
British readers will know that there’s a regular debate about Radio Four being ‘too middle class’. Now, I’m not wholly sure what that means, but I do know that despite solidly working class antecedents, these days I’m probably about as middle class as they come, and there’s an awful lot of Radio Four’s output that sails a long way over any experience I have.
The bane of my Radio Four listening was traditionally Quote, Unquote. This was an exercise in literary snobbery, in which a selection of literary snobs are asked snobbish literary questions explicitly designed to show off their literary snobbery by Nigel Rees (who we must surely deduce is a literary snob). This is the kind of exercise where contestants identify the nineteenth century poet from the third word of their unpublished first couplet. I have an English Literature degree, and at least 99% of the stuff in the average show makes me feel like I failed Remedial Ladybird Books. That’s exactly the sort of programme that gives Radio Four its reputation for pompous elitism.
Another programme that does so is the Saturday morning travel show Excess Baggage. Most travel programmes in the British media feature minor celebrities being sent to sample the delights of various resorts around the world. The best of these featured the orange-hued Judith Chalmers and were designed to create interest in unexpected destinations (home and abroad) in the ordinary British traveller, possibly with a hint of aspiration towards the further-flung hotspots.
Nothing so ordinary for Excess Baggage. I first realised that this was a programme aimed at no actual human being when I heard an immortal discussion prefaced with the introduction: “As we’re at the start of the school holidays, we’re going to talk about some options for people travelling with children.” Gosh, I thought; a practical feature on Excess Baggage? Maybe they’re learning.
And then I sat in stunned silence as a woman who had taken her children out of school for two years to tour Europe discussed the challenges of having done so. I finally lost it when she started talking about how they’d had a hard time adjusting when they got back. What the fuck did she expect?
So on Saturday the useful feature they ran was the story of a jazz musician (worrying) who had travelled the villages of the Carpathian mountains (oh oh) with no money, playing music for food and lodging (HAT TRICK!). I mean, seriously; even if they don’t intend this to be a practical travel guide kind of show, who are they addressing with this stuff?
November 28th, 2008 at 11:08 am
Fair enough about things like QUOTE, UNQUOTE but, having just made Elspeth’s dinner while listening to PM, I feel a defence of Radio 4 is called for. It does current affairs stuff, especially politics, terribly well. Its documentaries, especially history, are rather good too–my regular washing-up listening for weeks has been AMERICA–EMPIRE OF LIBERTY, an epic history in about 90 parts over the course of a year (we’ve just got to the civil war and the presenter/writer’s taken a well deserved break until January).
I’m a closet ARCHERS listener, too. And it’s a comedy testing bed for every decent British comedian who ever made it big on TV. THE AFTERNOON PLAY? FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT? TEST MATCH SPECIAL on Radio 4 long wave, the soundtrack to the summer? What more do you want?! Just because you don’t pay a licence fee any more…
Have fun giving thanks.
November 28th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
As it happens, I do still pay the licence fee, but don’t get me wrong - I did say I’d also been catching up on old favourites. The podcast of The News Quiz has kept me going quite a lot of the time I’ve been in the US (though that subscription is on hold while *gak* The Now Show is in the Friday Night Comedy slot), and there’s plenty more to love on R4. But let’s not forget this is also the network that unleashed Claire In The Community and that Count Arthur Strong bollocks on the world.
My point was only that the network does itself no favours by producing nonsense of the kind I mentioned.
November 30th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Agreed. Such programmes probably alienate people who might otherwise listen to the good stuff, and so entrench the divide between “Radio 4 listeners” and “not Radio 4 listeners”. Still, I turned on the telly on Saturday night to see two minutes of a primetime game show presented by Dale Winton, featuring celebrities dressed in foil and knee pads taking part in some wacky attempted-IT’S A KNOCKOUT! style “fun”. It made me feel very like someone who might define themselves as a “not BBC 1 viewer”, despite the fact that, of course, I watch BBC 1 all the time.
I’m reminded that, now November’s over, I intend to borrow David’s Xbox and spend December mindlesly shooting aliens in HALO 3 (probably while listening to YESTERDAY IN PARLIAMENT, GARDENERS’ QUESTION TIME, the shipping forecast, etc).
Reading that back, I am inclined to think this isn’t a terribly sensible reply. You may be able to tell that I’ve been in the pub.