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

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

. The station replaced the

BBC Home Service The BBC Home Service was a national and regional radio station that broadcast from 1939 until 1967, when it was replaced by BBC Radio 4. History 1922–1939: Interwar period Between the early 1920s and the outbreak of World War II, the BBC ...

on 30 September 1967 and broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes from the BBC's headquarters at

Broadcasting House London Broadcasting House is the headquarters of the BBC, in Portland Place and Langham Place, London. The first radio broadcast from the building was made on 15 March 1932, and the building was officially opened two months later, on 15 May. T ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

. Since 2019, the station controller has been

Mohit Bakaya Mohit Bakaya, Hon. FRSL (born 12 November 1964) is the controller of BBC Radio 4. He joined the BBC in 1993 and produced programmes such as '' Front Row'' and '' Night Waves'' before becoming the commissioning editor for factual in 2008. He was a ...

. He 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. Broadcasting throughout the United Kingdom, the

Isle of Man The Isle of Man ( , also ), or Mann ( ), is a self-governing British Crown Dependency in the Irish Sea, between Great Britain and Ireland. As head of state, Charles III holds the title Lord of Mann and is represented by a Lieutenant Govern ...

and the

Channel Islands The Channel Islands are an archipelago in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They are divided into two Crown Dependencies: the Jersey, Bailiwick of Jersey, which is the largest of the islands; and the Bailiwick of Guernsey, ...

on FM, LW and DAB, and on

BBC Sounds BBC Sounds is an Over-the-top media service, over-the-top audio streaming media, streaming and download service from the BBC that includes live radio broadcasts, Streaming media, audio on demand, and podcasts. The service is available on a wide ...

, it can be received in the eastern counties of

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

, northern

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

and

Northern Europe The northern region of Europe has several definitions. A restrictive definition may describe northern Europe as being roughly north of the southern coast of the Baltic Sea, which is about 54th parallel north, 54°N, or may be based on other ge ...

. It is available on

Freeview Freeview may refer to: *Freeview (Australia), the marketing name for the digital terrestrial television platform in Australia *Freeview (New Zealand), a digital satellite and digital terrestrial television platform in New Zealand *Freeview (UK), a ...

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 Everyone TV (itself owned by all of the four UK Public broadcasting, public service broadcasters, BBC, ...

Sky The sky is an unobstructed view upward from the planetary surface, surface of the Earth. It includes the atmosphere of Earth, atmosphere and outer space. It may also be considered a place between the ground and outer space, thus distinct from ...

, and

Virgin Media Virgin Media Limited is a British telecommunications company which provides telephone, television and internet services in the United Kingdom. Its headquarters are at Green Park in Reading, England. It is owned by Virgin Media O2, a 50:50 ...

. Radio 4 currently reaches over 10 million listeners, making it the UK's second most-popular radio station after

BBC Radio 2 BBC Radio 2 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It is the List of most-listened-to radio programs, most popular station in the United Kingdom with over 14 million weekly listeners. Since launching in 1967, the sta ...

. BBC Radio 4 broadcasts news programmes such as ''

Today Today (archaically to-day) may refer to: * The current day and calendar date ** Today is between and , subject to the local time zone * Now, the time that is perceived directly, present * The current, present era Arts, entertainment and m ...

'', ''

The World at One ''The World at One'' (or ''WATO'', pronounced "what-oh") is BBC Radio 4's long-running lunchtime news and current affairs radio programme, broadcast weekdays from 13:00 to 13:45 and produced by BBC News. The programme describes itself as "Bri ...

'' and '' PM'' heralded on air by the

Greenwich Time Signal The Greenwich Time Signal (GTS), popularly known as the pips, is a series of six short tones (or "pips") broadcast at one-second intervals by many BBC Radio stations to mark the precise start of each hour. The pips were introduced in 1924, gene ...

pips or the chimes of

Big Ben Big Ben is the nickname for the Great Bell of the Great Clock of Westminster, and, by extension, for the clock tower itself, which stands at the north end of the Palace of Westminster in London, England. Originally named the Clock Tower, it ...

. The pips are only accurate on FM, and LW; there is a delay on digital radio of three to five seconds, and online up to 23 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 British Isles. It is produced by the Met Office and broadcast by BBC Radio 4 on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. The for ...

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 c ...

, the station broadcasts to a weekly audience of 9.2 million with a listening share of 11.1% as of December 2023.

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. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

domestic

radio station Radio broadcasting is the broadcasting 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 rad ...

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, 2008 and 2023 Radio Academy Awards. It also won a

Peabody Award The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Foster Peabody, George Peabody, honor what are described as the most powerful, enlightening, and in ...

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 channel owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation. It is state-owned enterprise, publicly owned but, unlike the BBC, it receives no public funding and is funded en ...

abandoned plans to launch its own speech-based digital radio station in October 2008 as part of a £100m cost-cutting review. 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 The Azores ( , , ; , ), officially the Autonomous Region of the Azores (), is one of the two autonomous regions of Portugal (along with Madeira). It is an archipelago composed of nine volcanic islands in the Macaronesia region of the North Atl ...

to about 20 degrees west; DAB; Digital TV including

and

, 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 naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom ...

's system of letters of last resort. In the event of a suspected catastrophic attack on Britain,

submarine A submarine (often shortened to sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. (It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability.) The term "submarine" is also sometimes used historically or infor ...

captains, in addition to other checks, check for a broadcast signal from Radio 4 on 198 kHz longwave to verify the annihilation of organised society in the United Kingdom. BBC Radio 4 broadcasts a wide variety of speech-related programming, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. Music is broadcast as in documentaries relating to various forms of both popular 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 audio recordin ...

''. Sport is also not part of the station's output, apart from during news bulletins, although between 1994 and 2023, the station's longwave frequency was used to broadcast ball-by-ball commentaries of most

Test cricket Test cricket is a Forms of cricket, format of the sport of cricket, considered the game’s most prestigious and traditional form. Often referred to as the "ultimate test" of a cricketer's skill, endurance, and temperament, it is a format of i ...

matches played by England. Consequently, for around 70 days a year, listeners had to rely on FM broadcasts or DAB for mainstream Radio 4 broadcasts – the number relying solely on longwave was now a small minority. The cricket broadcasts took precedence over on-the-hour news bulletins, but not the

, carried since Radio 4's move to longwave in 1978 because longwave can be received clearly at sea.

History

Initially the power was 100 watts on 350 metres (857

kHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), often described as being equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose formal expression in terms of SI base uni ...

). 2LO was allowed to transmit for seven minutes, after which the "operator" had to listen on the wavelength for three minutes for possible instructions to close down. On 14 November 1922 the station was transferred to the new

British Broadcasting Company The British Broadcasting Company Limited (BBC) was a short-lived British commercial broadcasting company formed on 18 October 1922 by British and American electrical companies doing business in the United Kingdom. Licensed by the British Gener ...

which in 1923 took up the nearby

Savoy Hill Savoy (; )  is a cultural-historical region in the Western Alps. Situated on the cultural boundary between Occitania and Piedmont, the area extends from Lake Geneva in the north to the Dauphiné in the south and west and to the Aosta Valley i ...

for its broadcasting studios. At midnight on New Year's Eve 1923, the twelve chimes of

were broadcast for the first time to mark the new year. The British Broadcasting Company began transmissions in London on 14 November 1922 from station 2LO in the Strand, which it had inherited from the

Marconi Company The Marconi Company was a British telecommunications and engineering company founded by Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi in 1897 which was a pioneer of wireless long distance communication and mass media broadcasting, eventually becoming on ...

(one of six commercial companies which created), but technology did not yet exist either for national coverage or joint programming between

transmitter In electronics and telecommunications, a radio transmitter or just transmitter (often abbreviated as XMTR or TX in technical documents) is an electronic device which produces radio waves with an antenna (radio), antenna with the purpose of sig ...

s. While it was possible to combine large numbers of trunk

telephone line A telephone line or telephone circuit (or just line or circuit industrywide) is a single-user circuit on a telephone communication system. It is designed to reproduce speech of a quality that is understandable. It is the physical wire or oth ...

s to link transmitters for individual programmes, the process was expensive and not encouraged by the

General Post Office The General Post Office (GPO) was the state postal system and telecommunications carrier of the United Kingdom until 1969. Established in England in the 17th century, the GPO was a state monopoly covering the dispatch of items from a specific ...

as it tied up large parts of the telephone network. The stations that followed the establishment of 2LO in London were therefore autonomously programmed using local talent and facilities. By May 1923, simultaneous broadcasting was technically possible at least between main transmitters and relay stations, the quality was not felt to be high enough to provide a national service or regular simultaneous broadcasts. In 1924, it was felt that technical standards had improved enough for London to start to provide the majority of the output, cutting the local stations back to providing items of local interest. The company became the

British Broadcasting Corporation The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public broadcasting, public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved in ...

in 1927. On 9 March 1930, 2LO was replaced by the

BBC Regional Programme The BBC Regional Programme was a radio service which was on the air from 9 March 1930 – replacing a number of earlier BBC local stations between 1922 and 1924 – until 1 September 1939 when it was subsumed into the BBC Home Service, two day ...

and the

BBC National Programme The BBC National Programme was a radio service which was on the air from 9 March 1930 – replacing the earlier BBC's experimental station 5XX – until 1 September 1939 when it was subsumed into the BBC Home Service, two days before the outb ...

. The letters ''LO'' continued to be used internally as a designation in the BBC for technical operations in the London area (for example, the numbering of all recordings made in London contained ''LO''). The code ''LO'' was changed to ''LN'' in the early 1970s.

Main stations

Each of these main stations were broadcast at approximately 1

kilowatt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of Power (physics), power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantification (science), quantify the rate of Work ...

(kW):

Relay stations

Each of these relay stations were broadcast at approximately 120

watt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of Power (physics), power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantification (science), quantify the rate of Work ...

s (W): The

was the predecessor of Radio 4 and broadcast between 1939 and 1967. It had regional variations and was broadcast on

medium wave Medium wave (MW) is a part of the medium frequency (MF) radio band used mainly for AM radio broadcasting. The spectrum provides about 120 channels with more limited sound quality than FM stations on the FM broadcast band. During the daytim ...

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 Offshore radio is radio broadcasting from ships or fixed maritime structures. Offshore broadcasters are usually unlicensed but transmissions are legal in international waters. This is in contrast to unlicensed broadcasting on land or within a nat ...

. 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 A treaty is a formal, legally binding written agreement between sovereign states and/or international organizations that is governed by international law. A treaty may also be known as an international agreement, protocol, covenant, convention ...

aimed at avoiding interference (all

ITU Region The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), in its International Radio Regulations, divides the world into three ITU regions for the purposes of managing the global radio spectrum. Each region has its own set of frequency allocations, the ma ...

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 BBC Local Radio (also referred to as Local BBC Radio) is the BBC's local and regional radio division for England and the Channel Islands, consisting of 39 stations. As of December 2024, the network broadcasts to a combined audience of 7.1 mil ...

stations. These included '' Roundabout East Anglia'', a VHF opt-out of the ''Today'' programme broadcast from BBC East's studios in

Norwich Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of the county of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. It lies by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. The population of the 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 The Open University (OU) is a Public university, public research university and the largest university in the United Kingdom by List of universities in the United Kingdom by enrolment, number of students. The majority of the OU's undergraduate ...

, 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 BBC Radio 5 Live is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It broadcasts mainly news, sport, Talk show, discussion, interviews and phone-ins, and is on air 24 hours a day. It is the principal BBC radio station Broadca ...

and were broadcast until the end of the 1990s 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 , combatant2 = , commander1 = , commander2 = , strength1 = Over 950,000 soldiers3,113 tanks1,800 aircraft2,200 artillery systems , page = https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-PEMD-96- ...

, Radio 4 News FM, with the main Radio 4 service transferring to long wave. Before this, Radio 4's FM frequencies had occasionally been used for additional news coverage, generally for live coverage of statements and debates in Parliament. By the start of the 1990s, Radio 4 had become available on FM in most of the UK - previously FM coverage had been restricted mainly to England and south Wales. This meant that it was possible for the main Radio 4 service to be transferred from LW to FM, and this took place on 16 September 1991 with opt-outs - extra shipping forecasts, '' Daily Service'' and '' Yesterday in Parliament'', joined in 1994 by ''

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. The programme is available on BB ...

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

Pope Benedict XVI Pope BenedictXVI (born Joseph Alois Ratzinger; 16 April 1927 – 31 December 2022) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 19 April 2005 until his resignation on 28 February 2013. Benedict's election as p ...

visited Britain in 2010. On 30 May 2023, the BBC announced that Radio 4 will stop broadcasting opt-outs on long wave with the last opt-outs airing on 31 March 2024. The two displaced programmes, ''Daily Service'' and '' Yesterday in Parliament'' moved to

BBC Radio 4 Extra BBC Radio 4 Extra (formerly BBC Radio 7) is a British digital radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It mostly broadcasts archived repeats of comedy, drama and documentary programmes, and is the sister station of Radio 4. It is the pri ...

, although the latter was returned to the early morning Radio 4 schedule in April 2025. The daily amount of '' Shipping Forecasts'' was reduced to be broadcast 2 times on weekdays and 3 times on weekends. ''Test Match Special'' moved to

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

on 31 July 2023. These end ahead of a planned switch-off of long wave transmissions by 2025. On 15 April 2024 at 12:27 PM BST, Radio 4's medium wave frequencies switched off for good. These previously served as relays in areas with a weak LW signal to provide reception of Radio 4 LW, such as Northern Ireland and south west England. A continuous closedown loop message was broadcast until 30 April 2024, informing listeners to retune to other methods of reception.

Programmes and schedules

Daily schedule

As of April 2025 the station is on air from 05:00 to 01:00 Monday to Friday, and 05:30 to 01:00 on Saturday and Sunday. Whilst off air the BBC World Service is broadcast over its frequencies. An online schedule page lists the running order of programmes.

Production

The station broadcasts a mix of live and pre-recorded programmes. Live programming includes breakfast programme ''

'', magazine programme ''

Woman's Hour ''Woman's Hour'' is a radio magazine programme broadcast in the United Kingdom on the BBC Light Programme, BBC Radio 2, and later BBC Radio 4. It has been on the air since 1946. History The first BBC programme for women was the programme cal ...

'', consumer affairs programme '' You and Yours'', and (often) the music, film, books, arts and culture programme '' Front Row''. Continuity is managed from

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), formerly known as BBC Television Centre, is a building complex in White City, London, White City, West London, which was the headquarters of BBC Television from 1960 to 2013, when BBC Television moved to Broadcasting H ...

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

, 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

are played. There is no Greenwich Time Signal at 15:00 on Saturday or 11:00 and 12:00 on Sunday due to the Saturday Afternoon drama and the omnibus edition of ''

The Archers ''The Archers'' is a British radio soap opera currently broadcast on BBC Radio 4, the corporation's main spoken-word Radio broadcasting, channel. Broadcast since 1951, it was famously billed as "an everyday story of country folk" and is now pr ...

'' respectively. Only pips broadcast on FM 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, comedy, drama and 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—''

'', ''

From Our Own Correspondent ''From Our Own Correspondent'' is a weekly BBC radio programme in which BBC foreign correspondents deliver a sequence of short talks reflecting on current events and topical themes in the countries outside the UK in which they are based. The prog ...

'', '' You and Yours''. The rise of these magazine shows is primarily due to the work of

Tony Whitby Anthony Charles Whitby (19 November 1929 – 25 February 1975) was a British BBC Radio producer and television current affairs editor who was Controller of BBC Radio 4 from 1970 to 1975. Early life and education Whitby was born in Mere, Wil ...

, 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 30 days or over a year after broadcast as streaming audio from Radio 4's ''listen again'' page and via

. A selection of programmes is also available as

podcasts A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. Typically, a podcast is an episodic series of digital audio files that users can download to a personal device or stream to listen to at a time of their ...

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 systems. 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

. Due to the capacity limitations of DAB and increasing sport broadcasts on

, 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) * Read the

BBC Radio 3 BBC Radio 3 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It replaced the BBC Third Programme in 1967 and broadcasts classical music and opera, with jazz, world music, Radio drama, drama, High culture, culture and the arts ...

news summaries at 13:00 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

* Viji Alles * Ron Brown * Lisa Costello * John Hammond * Amanda Litherland * Caroline Nicholls *

Tom Sandars Thomas John Sandars is a continuity announcer, newsreader and news presenter for BBC Radio 4. Education From 1989 to 1994, Sandars was educated at The Oratory School,Alan Smith * Jane Steel

Freelance

* Chris Aldridge * Kelsey Bennett * Charles Carroll * Richard Evans * Arlene Fleming * Danielle Jalowiecka * Joanna Kean *

Jim Lee Jim Lee (; born August 11, 1964) is a Korean-born American comic book artist, writer, editor, and publisher. As of 2023, he is the President, Publisher, and Chief creative officer, Chief Creative Officer of DC Comics. In recognition of his work ...

* Neil Nunes * Andrew Peach * Tina Ritchie * Al Ryan

Former

* Alice Arnold (1994–2012; now with Mellow Magic) * Carolyn Brown (left 2015) * Harriet Cass (left 2013) * Corrie Corfield (1988–2021) * Peter Donaldson (1973–2012) * Mark Forrest (2018-2025) * Charlotte Green (1988–2013) *

Peter Jefferson Peter Jefferson (February 29, 1708 – August 17, 1757) was a planter, cartographer, and politician in colonial Virginia best known for being the father of the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. The "Fry-Jefferson Map", cre ...

(left 2009) * Astley Jones (left 2006) * Laurie Macmillan (died 2001) * Rory Morrison (died 2013) * Charles Nove (left 2019; now with Scala Radio) * Jamie Owen * Brian Perkins * Iain Purdon (retired from BBC World Service in 2016) * Susan Rae (left 2021) * Vaughan Savidge (left 2018) * Neil Sleat (1998–2021) * Zeb Soanes (left 2022; now with Classic FM) * Moira Stuart (left 1981 to move to TV; now with Classic FM)

Frequencies and other means of reception

Former frequencies

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 modern English, sycophant denotes an "insincere flatterer" and is used to refer to someone practising sycophancy (i.e., insincere flattery to gain advantage). The word has its origin in the legal system of Classical Athens, where it had a d ...

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 Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not. Etymology The word "social" derives fro ...

and culturally 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 The middle class refers to a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy, often defined by occupation, income, education, or social status. The term has historically been associated with modernity, capitalism and political debate. C ...

" and of "little interest" to non-white listeners.

Notes

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