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BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the

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that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasting House,

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. The station controller is

Mohit Bakaya Mohit Bakaya is the controller of BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, d ...

. Broadcasting throughout the United Kingdom, the

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and the

Channel Islands The Channel Islands ( nrf, Îles d'la Manche; french: îles Anglo-Normandes or ''îles de la Manche'') are an archipelago in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They include two Crown Dependencies: the Bailiwick of Jersey, ...

on FM, LW and DAB, and on BBC Sounds, it can be received in the eastern counties of

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

, northern

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

and Northern Europe. It is available on Freeview, Sky, and Virgin Media. Radio 4 currently reaches over 10 million listeners, making it the UK's second most-popular radio station after Radio 2. BBC Radio 4 broadcasts news programmes such as ''

Today Today (archaically to-day) may refer to: * Day of the present, the time that is perceived directly, often called ''now'' * Current era, present * The current calendar date Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''Today'' (1930 film), a 1930 ...

'' and '' The World at One'', heralded on air by the Greenwich Time Signal pips or the chimes of Big Ben. The pips are only accurate on FM, LW, and MW; there is a delay on digital radio of three to five seconds and online up to twenty-three seconds. Radio 4 broadcasts the

Shipping Forecast The Shipping Forecast is a BBC Radio broadcast of weather reports and forecasts for the seas around the coasts of the British Isles. It is produced by the Met Office and broadcast by BBC Radio 4 on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. ...

which, in August 2017, was 150 years old. According to

RAJAR Radio Joint Audience Research Limited (RAJAR) was established in 1992 to operate a single audience measurement system for the radio industry in the United Kingdom. RAJAR is jointly owned by the BBC and RadioCentre. RAJAR's predecessor was call ...

, the station broadcasts to a weekly audience of 9.8 million with a listening share of 10.9% as of September 2022.

Overview

BBC Radio 4 is the second-most-popular

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

domestic

radio station Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radi ...

by total hours, after Radio 2. It recorded its highest audience, of 11 million listeners, in May 2011, and was "UK Radio Station of the Year" at the 2003, 2004 and 2008

Sony Radio Academy Awards The Radio Academy Awards, started in 1983, were the most prestigious awards in the British radio industry. For most of their existence, they were run by ZAFER Associates, but in latter years were brought under the control of The Radio Academy ...

. It also won a Peabody Award in 2002 for ''File on 4: Export Controls''. Costing £71.4 million (2005/6), it is the BBC's most expensive national radio network and is considered by many to be its flagship. There is no comparable British commercial network:

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...

abandoned plans to launch its own speech-based digital radio station in October 2008 as part of a £100m cost cutting review. In 2019,

replaced

Gwyneth Williams Gwyneth Williams (born 14 July 1953) is a former controller of BBC Radio 4. She grew up in South Africa and attended St Hugh's College, Oxford. Earlier career Williams joined the BBC World Service in 1976 as a trainee, having briefly worked as r ...

, who had been the station controller since 2010. Music is broadcast as in documentaries relating to various forms of both

popular Popularity or social status is the quality of being well liked, admired or well known to a particular group. Popular may also refer to: In sociology * Popular culture * Popular fiction * Popular music * Popular science * Populace, the total ...

and classical music, and the long-running music-based ''

Desert Island Discs ''Desert Island Discs'' is a radio programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It was first broadcast on the BBC Forces Programme on 29 January 1942. Each week a guest, called a "castaway" during the programme, is asked to choose eight recordings (usua ...

''. Following the creation of BBC Radio 5 Live in 1994, the station has become the home of ball-by-ball commentaries of most

Test cricket Test cricket is a form of first-class cricket played at international level between teams representing full member countries of the International Cricket Council (ICC). A match consists of four innings (two per team) and is scheduled to last f ...

matches played by England. The coverage is broadcast on

long wave In radio, longwave, long wave or long-wave, and commonly abbreviated LW, refers to parts of the radio spectrum with wavelengths longer than what was originally called the medium-wave broadcasting band. The term is historic, dating from the e ...

. Consequently, for around 70 days a year, listeners have to rely on FM broadcasts or DAB for mainstream Radio 4 broadcasts – the number relying solely on long wave is now a small minority. The cricket broadcasts take precedence over on-the-hour news bulletins, but not the

, carried since Radio 4's move to long wave in 1978 because long wave can be received clearly at sea. The station has a strong reputation for news, drama, and comedy. Following the ''Six O'Clock News'' from Monday to Friday, the station normally broadcasts a thirty-minute comedy programme. The station is available on FM in most of Great Britain, parts of Ireland and the north of France; LW throughout the UK and in parts of Northern Europe, and the Atlantic north of the Azores to about 20 degrees west; MW in some areas; DAB; Digital TV including Freeview,

Freesat Freesat is a British free-to-air satellite television service, first formed as a joint venture between the BBC and ITV plc and now owned by Digital UK. The service was formed as a memorandum in 2007 and has been marketed since 6 May 2008. Free ...

, Sky and Virgin Media, and on the Internet. Freesat, Sky and Virgin have a separate channel for Radio 4 LW output in mono, in addition to the FM output. The longwave signal is part of the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against ...

's system of

letters of last resort The letters of last resort are four identically-worded handwritten letters from the prime minister of the United Kingdom to the commanding officers of the four British ballistic missile submarines. They contain orders on what action to take if ...

. In the event of a suspected catastrophic attack on Britain, submarine captains, in addition to other checks, check for a broadcast signal from Radio 4 on 198 longwave to verify the annihilation of organised society in Great Britain.

History

The BBC Home Service was the predecessor of Radio 4 and broadcast between 1939 and 1967. It had regional variations and was broadcast on medium wave with a network of VHF FM transmitters being added from 1955. Radio 4 replaced it on 30 September 1967, when the BBC restructured and renamed its domestic radio stations, in response to the challenge of offshore radio. It moved to long wave in November 1978, taking over the 200 kHz frequency (1,500 metres) previously held by Radio 2 - later moved to 198 kHz as a result of international agreements aimed at avoiding interference (all ITU Region 1 MW/LW broadcast frequencies are divisible by 9). At this point, Radio 4 became available across all of the UK for the first time and the station officially became known as Radio 4 UK, a title that remained until 29 September 1984. For a time during the 1970s Radio 4 carried regional news bulletins Monday to Saturday. These were broadcast twice at breakfast, at lunchtime and at 17:55. There were also programme variations for the parts of England not served by BBC Local Radio stations. These included '' Roundabout East Anglia'', a VHF opt-out of the ''Today'' programme broadcast from

BBC East BBC East is one of BBC's English Regions covering Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, northern Buckinghamshire, and the majority of Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Essex. It is headquartered in The Forum, Norwich since 2003. It wa ...

's studios in Norwich each weekday from 6.45 a.m. to 8.45 a.m. ''Roundabout East Anglia'' came to an end in August 1980, ahead of the launch of BBC Radio Norfolk. All regional news bulletins broadcast from BBC regional news bases around England ended in August 1980, apart from in the southwest as until January 1983 there was no BBC Local Radio in the southwest so these news bulletins and its weekday morning regional programme, '' Morning Sou'West'', continued to be broadcast from the BBC studios in Plymouth on VHF and on the Radio 4 medium wave Plymouth relay until 31 December 1982. The launch of Radio 5 on 27 August 1990 saw the removal of Open University, schools programming, children's programmes and the '' Study on 4''/''Options'' adult education slot from Radio 4's FM frequencies. Consequently, the full Radio 4 schedule became available on FM for the first time. However, adult educational and Open University programming returned to Radio 4 in 1994 when Radio 5 was closed to make way for the launch of BBC Radio 5 Live and were broadcast on Sunday evenings on longwave only. Between 17 January 1991 and 2 March 1991 FM broadcasts were replaced by a continuous news service devoted to the

Gulf War The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a Coalition of the Gulf War, 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Ba'athist Iraq, ...

Radio 4 News FM Radio 4 News FM was the national BBC station devoted to rolling news service that was on air during the Gulf War from 16 January until 2 March 1991. It was broadcast on Radio 4's FM frequencies, whilst regular scheduled service continued on ...

, with the main Radio 4 service transferring to long wave. In September 1991 the main Radio 4 service transferred from long wave to FM coverage had now extended to cover almost all of the UK - Radio 4 did not become available on FM in much of Scotland and Wales until the early 1990s. Opt-outs were transferred to longwave: currently ''

Test Match Special ''Test Match Special'' (also known as ''TMS'') is a British sports radio programme, originally, as its name implies, dealing exclusively with Test cricket matches, but currently covering any professional cricket. It broadcasts on BBC Radio 4 LW ...

'', extra shipping forecasts, '' The Daily Service'' and ''

Yesterday in Parliament Today in Parliament is a British radio programme that covers the daily proceedings of the Palace of Westminster (Houses of Parliament), on BBC Radio 4. When re-broadcast at around 8.30am the next day on longwave (198 LW) and medium wave, it is ...

''. Longwave very occasionally opts out at other times, such as to broadcast special services, the most recent being when

Pope Benedict XVI Pope Benedict XVI ( la, Benedictus XVI; it, Benedetto XVI; german: link=no, Benedikt XVI.; born Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, , on 16 April 1927) is a retired prelate of the Catholic church who served as the head of the Church and the soverei ...

visited Britain in 2010.

Programmes and schedules

Daily schedule

An online schedule page lists the running order of programmes.

Production

Many programmes are pre-recorded. Programmes transmitted live include ''

'', magazine programme '' Woman's Hour'', consumer affairs programme '' You and Yours'', and (often) the music, film, books, arts and culture programme '' Front Row''. Continuity is managed from Broadcasting House with news bulletins, including the hourly summaries and longer programmes such as the ''Six O'Clock News'' and ''Midnight News'', and news programmes such as ''Today'', ''The World at One'' and ''PM'', which by early 2013 had returned to Broadcasting House after 15 years at

BBC Television Centre Television Centre (TVC) is a building complex in White City, West London, that was the headquarters of BBC Television between 1960 and 2013. After a refurbishment, the complex reopened in 2017 with three studios in use for TV production, opera ...

in White City. The news returning to Broadcasting House has also meant that newsreaders can provide cover for continuity, which regularly occurs at 23:00 each night and 16:00 on a Sunday. This has reduced the total number of continuity announcers required each day down from four to three. The Greenwich Time Signal, popularly known as "the pips", is broadcast every hour to herald the news bulletin, except at midnight and 18:00, and 22:00 on Sunday, when the chimes of Big Ben are played. There is no Greenwich Time Signal at 15:00 on Saturday or 10:00 and 11:00 on Sunday due to the Saturday Afternoon drama and the omnibus edition of ''

The Archers ''The Archers'' is a BBC radio drama on BBC Radio 4, the corporation's main spoken-word channel. Broadcast since 1951, it was famously billed as "an everyday story of country folk" and is now promoted as "a contemporary drama in a rural sett ...

'' respectively. Only pips broadcast on FM, MW and LW are accurate. On digital platforms there is a delay of between three and five seconds, and up to 23 seconds online.

Programmes

Radio 4 programmes cover a wide variety of genre including news and current affairs, history, culture, science, religion, arts, drama and light entertainment. A number of the programmes on Radio 4 take the form of a "magazine" show, featuring numerous small contributions over the course of the programme—'' Woman's Hour'', '' From Our Own Correspondent'', '' You and Yours''. The rise of these magazine shows is primarily due to the work of Tony Whitby, controller of Radio 4 from 1970 to 1975. The station hosts a number of long-running programmes, many of which have been broadcast for over 40 years. Most programmes are available for four weeks after broadcast as streaming audio from Radio 4's ''listen again'' page and via BBC Sounds. A selection of programmes is also available as podcasts or

download In computer networks, download means to ''receive'' data from a remote system, typically a server such as a web server, an FTP server, an email server, or other similar system. This contrasts with uploading, where data is ''sent to'' a remote ...

able audio files. Many comedy and drama programmes from the Radio 4 archives are broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra. Due to the capacity limitations of DAB and increasing sport broadcasts on

BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra (formerly BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra) is a national digital radio station in the United Kingdom, operated by the BBC, and specialising in extended live sports coverage. It is a sister station to BBC Radio 5 Live a ...

, BBC Radio 4 DAB has to reduce its bit rate most evenings, such that after 7 p.m. its DAB output is usually in mono, even though many of its programmes are made in stereo (including its flagship drama "The Archers"), these can be heard in stereo only on FM, Digital TV on Freeview & Freesat (Ch. 704), Sky, Virgin and on line via BBC Sounds. BBC World Service, which uses BBC Radio 4 FM & DAB frequencies between 01:00 and 05:20, is in stereo, but only on Radio 4 FM & DAB and not on its own dedicated DAB channel. BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcasts in mono on DAB, but has always been in stereo on Digital TV (Freeview / Freesat Ch 708), Sky, Virgin and online.

Notable continuity announcers and newsreaders

Announcers carry out the following duties from Broadcasting House: * Provide links (or junctions) between programmes * Read trails for programmes * Provide reassurance to listeners during a programme breakdown * Read the

(except the 05:20 broadcast, which is covered by

BBC Weather BBC Weather is the department of the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) responsible for both the preparation and the broadcasting of weather forecasts. On 6 February 2018, BBC Weather changed supplier from the government Met Office to Me ...

) * Read the BBC Radio 3 news summaries at 13:00, 17:00 and 18:00 on weekdays Newsreaders read hourly summaries and longer bulletins from New Broadcasting House. In 2012 the BBC announced that it would be reducing its main presentation team from 12 to ten.

BBC

* Alan Smith * John Hammond * Caroline Nicholls * Tom Sandars * Jane Steel

Freelance

* Chris Aldridge * Andrew Crawford * Mark Forrest *

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* Andrew Peach * Susan Rae * Neil Nunes

Former

Alice Arnold Alice Arnold may refer to * Alice Arnold (broadcaster) Alice Arnold (born 1962) is a British broadcaster and journalist. She was a newsreader and continuity announcer on BBC Radio 4 for more than twenty years until the end of December 2012. ...

(1994–2012) * Carolyn Brown (left 2015) * Harriet Cass (left 2013) * Corrie Corfield (1988–2021) *

Peter Donaldson Peter Ian Donaldson (23 August 1945 – 2 November 2015) was an English newsreader on BBC Radio 4. Early life Donaldson was born in Cairo, Egypt, and moved to Cyprus in 1952 at the time of the overthrow of King Farouk. He was a frequen ...

(1973–2012) * Charlotte Green (1988–2013) * Peter Jefferson (left 2009) * Astley Jones (left 2006) * Laurie Macmillan (died 2001) * Rory Morrison (died 2013) * Charles Nove (left 2019; now with

Scala Radio Scala Radio is a classical music digital radio station in the United Kingdom, owned and operated by Bauer Radio since its launch in March 2019. The station broadcasts nationally on DAB via the Sound Digital multiplex and online through websites ...

) * Jamie Owen * Brian Perkins * Iain Purdon (retired from BBC World Service in 2016) * Vaughan Savidge (left 2018) * Neil Sleat (1998-2021) *

Zeb Soanes Zebedee Soanes (born 24 June 1976) is a British radio presenter who presents the weekday evening music show ''Smooth Classics at Seven'' on Classic FM. He was previously a newsreader and continuity announcer on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 4 Extr ...

(left 2022) *

Moira Stuart Moira Clare Ruby Stuart, (born 2 September 1949) is a British presenter and broadcaster. She was the first female newsreader of Caribbean heritage to appear on British national television, having worked on BBC News since 1981.Classic FM)

Frequencies and other means of reception

Criticisms

Criticism voiced by centre-right newspapers in recent years have a perceived left political bias across a range of issues, as well as sycophancy in interviews, particularly on the popular morning news magazine ''Today'' as part of a reported perception of a general "malaise" at the BBC. Conversely, the journalist Mehdi Hasan has criticised the station for an overtly " socially and

culturally Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human Society, societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, and habits of the ...

conservative" approach. There has been criticism of ''Today'' in particular for a lack of female broadcasters. In September 1972, Radio 4 employed the first female continuity announcers—Hylda Bamber and Barbara Edwards. For quite some time, the introduction of female newsreaders led to complaints from listeners; women discussing topics of feminist interest led to similar complaints. In addition, there has been long-running criticism by atheist and humanist groups of ''Thought for the Day'', a slot dedicated exclusively to religious discussion during Radio 4's flagship morning news programme. Radio 4 has been criticised for being too middle class and of little interest to non-white listeners.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bbc Radio 4 4 News and talk radio stations in the United Kingdom Radio stations established in 1967 1967 establishments in the United Kingdom Radio stations in the United Kingdom Longwave radio stations Peabody Award winners Podcasting companies