Radio 3
Why is Today losing its audience? Because it doesn’t care about its listeners
Headlines announcing that Radio 4’s flagship Today programme is losing its audience while Radio 3’s Breakfast has put on numbers…
Podcasts often have no real interest in those who might be listening
‘Do you ever imagine your audience?’ was a question thrown at James Ward, creator and presenter of The Boring Talks…
How hospices make you think differently about life
The timing of the Today programme’s series about hospices could not have been more apt, coming as it did so…
Martha Kearney’s arrival at Today is a breath of fresh air
Like a breath of fresh air Martha Kearney has arrived on Radio 4’s Today programme, taking over from Sarah Montague…
Radio’s role in winning the Cold War
Some of us grew up worrying about reds under the bed, which was perhaps not as foolish as all that…
Is forgetting a modern disease?
If you were to ask me by the end of the week what I had written about in this column…
The 280-mile walk that made Bach who he was
It was in his organ loft at Arnstadt that I began my acquaintance with Johann Sebastian Bach — with JSB,…
Radio 3 offers a refreshing antidote to the current conversations about Europe
The season of Advent, for most children, means anticipation, gleeful waiting, the counting down of days. But after a certain…
What it feels like to hold a heart
It’s been heart week on Radio 4, celebrating the anniversary of the first ‘successful’ heart transplant in 1967, which was…
Why does James Purnell think radio needs to be ‘reinvented’?
Grade: A A dimbo pop reviewer for one of our national newspapers suggested that on this album, her ninth, Björk…
I never understood the appeal of Ken Dodd
It’s always odd to hear a familiar voice on a different programme, playing an alternative role. They never sound quite…
The ties that bound us
Only Neil MacGregor could do it — take us in a single thread from a blackened copper coin, about the…
Speed limit
Slow radio is popping up everywhere at the moment — programmes that have no outward form but just meander through…
Split decision
Think back to that morning in September 1967 when the Light Programme was split in two, Tony Blackburn launching Radio…
Woman of a thousand voices
‘On air, I could be the most glamorous, gorgeous, tall, black-haired female… Whatever I wanted to be, I could be……
The listening project
As Classic FM celebrated its quarter-century on Wednesday with not a recording but a live broadcast of a concert from…
‘Smile, segue and shut up’
Three weeks before Classic FM launched, I was on the radio in Hong Kong, introducing hits by Rick Astley and…
The joy of the Proms
Summer nights, hot and humid, mean just one thing — it’s Proms season again. Sore feet, sweaty armpits, queuing outside…
Baby love
I like Radio 4 — you can have it on in the background burbling away for hours and hours without…
Service with a smile
He’s been billed as the new Pied Piper but it’s going to take a while for Tom Service to quite…
Word processing
‘Comedy is like music,’ said Edwin Apps, one of the characters in Wednesday afternoon’s Radio 4 play, All Mouth and…
Crossing continents
Could radio, and in particular a weekly soap, have a role to play in the Syrian crisis? You might think,…
Home and away
Four programmes, four very different kinds of radio, from a classically made drama to weird sonic ramblings, via the best…
Girl power
Hurrah for Radio 3 and its (long-overdue) efforts to give us music not just performed by women but composed, and…
Lessons in the surreal
The new season of the Serial podcast (produced by the same team who make This American Life) was launched last…
