''World Have Your Say'' (''WHYS'') was an international

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 ...

global discussion show, that was broadcast on

BBC World Service The BBC World Service is a British Public broadcasting, public service broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC. It is the world's largest external broadcaster in terms of reception area, language selection and audience reach. It broadcas ...

every weekday at 16:00

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and on

BBC World News BBC News is an international English-language pay television channel owned by BBC Global News Ltd. – a subsidiary of BBC Studios – and operated by the BBC News division of the BBC. The network carries news bulletins, documentaries, an ...

every Friday at 15:00UTC. World Have Your Say won Gold in the 2008

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, in the category Listener Participation. The show described itself as "the BBC News programme where you set the agenda." Typically each edition addressed a question, or number of questions, raised by the users of its

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and

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site, as well as emailers to the BBC. It encouraged callers to talk to each other and directed questions asked by listeners to the guests on the programme, intervening as little as possible to keep the show more of a conversation than a talk show. The show also occasionally worked as a forum for the

's global audience to put questions to a particular guest. Previous guests included

Aung San Suu Kyi Aung San Suu Kyi (born 19 June 1945) is a Burmese politician, diplomat, author, and political activist. She was awarded the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize. She served as State Counsellor of Myanmar and Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Myanmar), Ministe ...

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and

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History

The

launched the programme in October 2005, featuring Anu Anand and

Steve Richards Steve Richards (born 6 June 1960) is a British TV presenter and political columnist, who has written columns for the ''Guardian'', ''Independent'' and ''New Statesman'', of which he was political editor for a time. He regularly presents Radio 4 ...

as presenters and Mark Sandell as editor. Ros Atkins replaced Richards in early 2006 as the main presenter. Since February 2011 the programme had a weekly television edition on

on Fridays produced by the same production team. Topics for discussions were set by listeners, who could email the show prior to it going on air each day, or even call into the studio office. Some of the comments left on the WHYS blog and Facebook site, together with emails, Tweets and SMS text messages, were read on the air. Callers from all over the world were the key part of the programme by calling in and debating the daily topic. On occasion, the show would leave the studio and go on the road, to discuss subjects from a particular country but often with a global impact. For example, in 2011, they went to Berlin to discuss the legacy of Nazism in Germany, Jakarta to talk about revolution in a Muslim country, and Bangkok to talk about sex tourism. Most of the time, the topics for the days' show were offered by e-mail. Some stories were suggested by a single person, others by the number of people wanting to talk about it. Increasingly, use was made of the programme's

site as a source of comment on news stories. Sometimes, these were stories from the listeners' point of view. In fact, some of the reporting of current events for the show was done by real world people, most with no journalism experience.

Television

began presenting a version of the programme in 2011 with Ros Atkins as the presenter. The programme, presented on Fridays at 15:00 GMT, encouraged viewer discussion on some of the top stories from the week. Occasionally, correspondents and high-profile individuals close to the issue at hand would join in the conversation. Similarly to the version on radio, the programme heavily utilised social media; especially

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and

. As of late 2013, Chloe Tilley played a more active role as a presenter.

References

External links

* (

)
''World Have Your Say''
(

) {{BBC News BBC World Service programmes British talk radio programmes