Read this: 15/07/2022 Radio 4 Feedback

BBC sounds music Radio podcasts for the BBC political drama convulsing the Conservatives is exciting as a cup final which is called into extra time and then into a penalty shootout but some of them enjoying it.

Just a little too much.

I did detecting unsuppress clear the Today Show presenters as the situation became more difficult for Boris Johnson in feedback this week.

I'll put that activation to today's Justin Webb and since we told you last week that we would be the proposed closure of Radio 4 Extra with had an almost unprecedented reaction from listeners who hates the idea of losing their much-loved station.

I really don't know how I will cope without it.

Can you please please reconsider? I don't have access to any devices other than my DAB radio so will not be able to listen once for extra leave here where I will ask.

Mosley the former editorial director of the BBC Weather the proposed execution makes financial and strategic sense and

TS Eliot that you've ever heard in before the waste land has been reimagined as a Radio 3 drama, what's the producer? Why and how she did it later in feedback first? It's barely a week since Boris Johnson still down as conserved to be there but already the elections 260a.

Well underway is dramatic for from office was triggered by this interview we on the Today programme on Radio 4 he said damaged.

It was not telling the truth about a warning the prime minister had received in person about the conduct of an hour disgraced Tory whip.

I do not think that is the way to behave and it is very unusual for a retired official to do what I have done this morning.

I did it by myself because what I have seen and read over the last few days on YouTube

And things get to a point where you have to do the right thing that was the former permanent under secretary at the foreign and Commonwealth Office and head of the service Simon now Lord MacDonald he was speaking course on the Today programme and the person conducting the interview with him was my guest Justin Webb just in Weymouth town with Donna coming on the programme.

Did you realise this would be in effect the trigger for a conservative leadership election race well.

Yes and no in as much as I was told about 6 I think so, just as we went on our I was told that he was likely to tweet something of huge interest at about 7:30.

What we didn't know then is whether talk to us and I didn't actually knows going to talk to us until 8:08.

So I stayed in the studio during the News Bulletin quite of me and stretch my legs and other things but I stayed in the sea.

Turn 8:08 this video we got him.

He's going to talk in a couple of minutes.

Do it you got couple of minutes warning to prepare your interview is this normal.

Yes, we do a lot on the hoover great benefit of radio.

We can do it on the hoof and part of your job as a presenter is to be able to do it on the usual and when you come off.

Are you aware of how significant indeed historic that interview? I was certainly aware that he had said a lot that was going to have an impact.

I think that's probably true.

It was so central the point that he was making what number 10 had said and what had actually happened and the difference between those two things was so essential that I think we did probably know by 9 that he had made a really significant intervention and he had said enough for really significant people in the government to think seriously about what to do next when we had these.

Cambridge from some listen, I think the coverage of political events has been very thorough and topical right up to the actual second people resigning however, I did detector noise of unsuppressed glion institute of the Today Show presenters as the situation became more difficult for Boris Johnson I'm not sure if this is because they were just enjoying your break in the normal routine which is interesting for anyone who's been in a job for a long time or it was because they were please Boris Johnson has finally been brought to account Andrew mountsteven, Taunton I hope the BBC reporters and commentators won't in their excitement and enthusiasm for having a ringside seat during such dramas lose sight of the fact that for many or most of us such term or and instability.

Is it best on settling and it were rather than exciting it was very exciting for you wasn't it? Was there an element of Glee that Boris Johnson was going at least for the moment.

That's what some people think they do.

I hope I'm quite sympathetic to what both of those listeners have said because I think they're quite right to point out to us that this isn't a game and that is a professional thing we want to do where up and we want the program to be significant and we want people to say things that are important on it and we are rightly I think pleased when they do and please when we communicated things to the wider nation that are important.

That's a job and all of that is fine.

I think we got to be cautious about sounding enthusiastic, but we do need to be aware that our Enthusiasm for doing our job.

Well doesn't bleed a car into a kind of Enthusiasm that sounds as if we're just desperately came the whatever's going to happen next comes quickly and happens on our watch because that's not a business writing not our business and we.

That's the point this sort of excitement is why you there isn't it and I have to make them as a physical effort to control that excitement or near McDonald's and I was very pleased he was doing it with my two minutes notice and very places doing at 8:10 the primes.

I was very pleased he wasn't doing anyone else not as a result of competitive reason but I hope my excitement wasn't communicated because she shouldn't be in any circumstances say yes, you're right.

We do live for these things.

I think we should have a go to hide it when the moment comes because it's not what they want to hear.

It's only.

Why would it be what interests them as well as to listen to worry things too concerned that we noticed that there is an undercurrent of criticism which is seems to be always hear that you are biased you and the rest of you today colleagues and this is what soon human has to

Well, let's take the first point that has been a long running campaign to bring down Boris and if so, where are you part of no absolutely not and I just think that there is a danger that influenced by the Twitter nonsense where you have bad on the one side and on the other side.

I should say box is Testament to this all sorts of people saying you always knew all of that Boris Johnson enabled in after Eddie Mair interview in 2013.

You all should have been on every day.

You should never have allowed him to do any interviews about saying this that and the other etc etc.

It's poisonous it poisons are in higher politics.

The man was legitimately elected.

He behaves as he wanted to behaviour put into place the policies he wanted to put into place.

Job was to question them it was also the question Downing Street when it seemed that they said things that weren't true.

Have you had your director-general has said the BBC has had a problem within 30 time and time again.

Do you see is that is just a necessary thing.

That's all gender should think about all the time or do you think there is a real problem some of your colleagues with their partial what team says is 100% right in as much as we have to keep renewing our vows as it were and looking at us and taking impartiality seriously talking about impartiality at the level of party politics.

He's talking about your approach to stories.

Do you come at them Jenny and I think there's a very legitimate that we don't necessarily necessarily in the past and he's made all sorts of changes with pulled out of the Stonewall scheme.

For instance we have made efforts to make sure that where we are coming from is a place of genuine enquiry.

We're not involved in any kind of pain when not involved in a particular worldview all of that is hugely important to accept that which I absolutely do and LinkedIn David 100% right.

I would say anything that doesn't mean that you have an organisation full of people who are presented to vote one way and are desperate for that party.

That would not be comfortable in the BBC and well good luck to them as well as thanks to presenter Justin Webb and please do let us know your thoughts about that interview or of course anything else to do with BBC Radio and podcasts.

This is how you can get in touch you.

Email to feedback at bbc.co.uk the address is feedback PO Box 672 34 London SE18 4ax.

You can follow activity on Twitter by using at BBC R4 feedback or you can call us and leave a phone message on 0343 444 5004 standard landline charges apply, but it could cost more and some mobile networks all those details are on our website.

It's not the BBC which is celebrating its centenary this year 20-22 also marks 100 years since the publication of one of the greatest achievements of literary modernism TS Eliot The Wasteland the occasion BBC Radio 3 has reimagined the poem in the new half hour audio drama, they do The Wasteland in different voices preface by inside.

Analysis from leading academics the poetry itself is an touch, but it's spoken by different actors and embedded in an extraordinary soundscape in a moment.

I will be talking programs producer and director Caroline Raphael but first here is an extract from the broadcast City over the mountains.

Cracks and reforms and births in the Violet are falling Towers Callum raffle, why should anybody read or in this instance listen to The Wasteland today? It's 100 years old is 100 years old, but it is I think one of the great poems in the English language and I think that it was groundbreaking and it's time and although I'm not going to pretend.

I'm no excuse amount about poetry because I think it's still has that feeling of modernism of trying something different of playing with form which I think we still respond to anybody is interested in art or literature will still respond to it.

Don't think there's anything else that quite matches it on the poetry programme had an introduction for about half an hour.

So when people talk about the significance and the fact.

Honest equivalent of Visual collage, isn't it? It's a collage in words and it says that sounds a very helpful and quite extraordinary when you think of when it was written just immediately after the war but when you can approach the I mean you can't decide I'm going to adapt rearrange drop things.

Can you when you did with TS Eliot you get shot if you did that absolutely and that wasn't ever going to be on the cards for put out a general Coulter artist created people across across the media for what they called interpretation, so as you may be aware listeners, may be aware rights on Elliot have always been quite difficult the estate of absolutely in quite correctly protectors of the station and the flame but for the centenary year they were open to suggestions.

So this is what I would call an interpretation in terms of how.

I was going to approach it as a program maker as a director but it's absolutely wasn't case of throwing away signed up in the air and see where it landed that was absolutely not on the car and as you say I would have been shot.

So what was your approach to my approach to the TS Eliot Estate the holder of the rights was to approach the poem exactly as written but approached the drama director so what I had started looking at and thinking about was that this is a collage but there are characters real people Lodge within the sperm some of them are named tiresias name selves Madame sosostris is named the woman talking to her husband in the windy Ron you call me the house in scots already you get the sense that there are characters so I approach the poem of trying to work out whether I could follow these characters give them some kind of narrative.

Not always possible but try and when you start doing that as a drama director you then have to go so, where are they? What is the space there in and once you start thinking about space movement then the sound comes out of it and I was so lucky that David Thomas I've worked with before who is absolutely genius has a musical.ly and a sense of rhythm and sound recorder that I then said to him.

You know this is where I think they are I said to her myself make yourself a bit.

I want to know what you done with that money to get yourself some teeth.

I was there to the sound comes out of the character which comes out of place which comes out of also, what is there an emotional state and then you find the sound.

Individual acts as a number of factors to identify honest the poetry is coming from a particular person and then you looked at it from coming for particular place or places, so when Thomas went to look for the sounds of it, where did you go? Where do you get some of them from all over the place including taking his sound recording equipment down onto the force or a Greenwich standing on street corners standing on London Bridge some of it was collected specifically for this and was collected using this Dolby Atmos are using binaural work with his genius and designers.

They have the most phenomenal can library of sounds and he was picking sound from his own archive and there was a lot of new sound when you talked about binaural sounds callousness.

I may be talking to myself here may not probably binaural is what is it? I hope I get this right when we listen in stereo.

We are listening to left and right it kind of surgeon somewhere in the middle.

So when you put on your headphones and you listen to these binaural or surround sound so used to be called Productions sound is happening 360°.

So you may have something behind you you might hear something slightly behind you but in the deep distance some sounds will be and what you do is you you do I said you do grandma is David Thomas did all of this is you then place the sound in a 3D environment the great thing about Dolby Atmos the new programme which increasingly has been used but certainly was developed particularly for cinema.

Is that it works the best of all when you're listening on headphones, but if you don't it's still work coming out of your speaker or coming out of your age.

I wonder whether people are put off sometimes these poems because the poets themselves read them alright my love you but when I listen to Yates reading with his.

Play really puts me off actually a very good then some ways the poets do their own poems a disservice by reading yes perhaps.

It's a choice.

They choose to represent a flat as possible, but it's always been an issue.

It's the same authors reading their own book a bedtime or book of the week or there an audiobook.

Is it to an actor as I said yes, this is poetry but the way I worked with the actors was very much to look and feel way through so they may be horses where the punctuation wouldn't necessarily suggested on the page.

It's very much not approach it as a piece of poetry but as the first drama.

I think it's worth saying that it wasn't long after this that sell it really turned his eye and hearing his vision on to the theatre.

I personally really love his Theatre place and not stage very often but I

Thinking about TS Eliot the dramatist and his interest in Elizabethan drama Renaissance drama the fact that is one of the academic says you could possibly interpret this is and Drama a radio play before such a thing have been invented this.

I don't think that farfetch.

This is a man who went on to write strawberry pieces of Theatre such as murder in the cathedral.

I want the leading woman of Canterbury in a production and Gallagher cedral Raphael thank you very much.

Well, you can hear that extraordinary version of The Wasteland on BBC sounds.

It's one drama on 3 series and was broadcast last Sunday annual plan came out this week and can be accessed on the corporations website for the director-general Tim Davie has already announced the end of Radio 4 Extra as a broadcast network in a few years.

He says it will be online only well.

We've had a lot of comments from listeners.

Upset or horrified at the decision here is a small sample of what they had to say.

I'm Sally warmer from Longford Town in Dorset I've had Insomnia for many years now and the advent of radio 7 that Lee Radio 4 Extra has been a great comfort offering such a wonderfully diverse range of programs entertaining and informative all the way through the night it's such a comfort Simon Davison Cardiff I might television radio can be listened to on the move in addition the majority of Radio 4 Extra listings will be the older generation the elderly will be the least likely to have a computer or internet radio so will be cut off from Radio 4 Extra Pauline Jenkins Tynemouth where I listen to the radio on an actual radio.

I am a word that many people use BBC sounds I do myself but I welcome the variety of listening to what?

It comes on often programs.

I would not choose to listen to turn out to be very interesting serendipity is valuable, but of course would like to discuss this with a senior member of the management, but nobody is available however, we are delighted to be joined by Roger Mosey the former editorial director of the BBC but also has on his TV controller of BBC Radio 5 Live I'll be Today programme Roger Mersey do we know this decision means the director-general has said that for extra is going online but we need anything else.

I don't think we do know yes, and it's not clear with that would mean I would be a schedule online or where the simplified be part of BBC sounds of would be labelled as an extra.

Have you be able to get some but I suspect by no means all the programs currently on for extra so it's unclear and it's saying that was general said was.

Lisa next three years because the moment are still delivering value to millions of views of listers at low extra cost so if that situation doesn't change and not quite sure that she would change and shut down for the cost of 4 Extra it's 3 million a year currently understand your report that's to Gary Lineker's this won't go anywhere near sorting out the BBC's financial problems.

It's basically and those times irrelevant.

Isn't it? You're right the Radio 4 Extra has just about the lowest cost polistena of any service and we should know the BBC has to face financial challenges of course, but it's channel strategy.

Overall is a mess so it close BBC Three on television as a linear channel brought it back it kept BBC4 but then now wants to close it on radio it launched services for very good reasons it then threaten 6 Music which as a result.

Popular and now they are proposing Close Radio 4 Extra well very strict to arguments with your advance in support of such as for extra the first is the BBC has to be a digital BBC that's the future transition may be difficult but that's where we're going Germany sympathy for that aren't I think of radio and television are different and clearly television is heading to and I clear future and appointment of you in television is becoming a thing of the past.

I can't accept that I don't think it's true in radio where people like radio for company and they like Clive Anderson 20-30 years ago.

We recognise there comes a time when you choose whatever music you want and then start thinking will we need Radio 2 actually Radio 2 has grown since then the audience of the bigger than when I worked on it, so I think people like a schedule that give some a curated choice of listening having radio linear is still very important.

There's also like serendipity.

I mean the number of written to us about that the idea that you don't always know what you're going to get and therefore you run into things which surprised you and you might learn to love that's true.

We also recognise that there is a deliberate strategy here is not completely mad the strategy is that the BBC needs to reach younger and more underserved audiences so the argument for extra is that it's part of the super served traditional use the BBC so most people listen to Radio 4 Extra get value from other BBC services such as radio for itself and BBC Four and if you want to reach younger audiences, you need to prioritise the services word for bringing people who wouldn't otherwise listen to the BBC that's foolish because as possible strategy for survival you see you whisk threatening a loyalty other people who is most ardent supporters, but the strategy you can see it has some clear is behind it so it has arrived.

Outcome what's 6% of households? I think do not have access to the internet at home and as you say tend to be older citizens and some will feel that being unfairly targeted, but there's another interview someone suggest this is actually Tim Davie just trying to wind up the supporters of the BBC to lobby against the government to lobby for a greater licence fee.

Do you think there's any truth to Martin Davis rest of January have some very difficult choices to make what worries me more is the traditional champions of radio the Old managing director radio radio and no longer.

There was on content to be made by a new division dominated by television and therefore.

I'm not sure that it's quite a silicone has just why I worry.

It's just people who don't understand radio by the top table.

There's no Direction radio anymore the director of content is responsible for everything that not specifically idea.

There's no one at the very top with speaks for radio alone is a medium is still.

Important and I think that you can absolutely I buy him totally the idea that BBC should have a digital future but I think God look at where Network radio is the local radio fits into that and it's live in is serendipity all those things are really powerful.

That is why radio channels will in my view and you even if BBC 2 on BBC Four because things of the past I'm on lasting Roger longwave is under death sentence again is that just inevitable shall we just accept that and not pay much attention? This is one news bits of deja vu all over again and remember even when I was 25 years ago.

We were debating the future of Media my princess the future of long way and I don't understand the technicalities of the transmitter.

But longwave really is about obsolete and I don't know how many people listen on way, but must be finishing school number and I can't believe that most people can't some.

Get Radio 4 by other means and if it's prohibitively expensive book you Bulbasaur have you put the transmitter well maybe that is one thing that has to go out.

Thanks to Roger Mosey the former editorial director of the BBC and now master of Selwyn College Cambridge and of course we would love to have someone from BBC management to come onto feedback and explain the Four Extra decision, but no luck so far in the meantime.

We have been sent this statement over time we expect to consolidate and share more content between services as we be digital-first BBC and expect to stop broadcasting some of our smaller channels on linear including Radio 4 Extra but we won't do this for at least the next 3 years is for the moment.

They are still delivering value to millions of viewers and listeners at no extra cost and that's it for this week.

Due.

Please keep in touch with your comments and questions.

And all next week goodbye.