The Today Programme has changed a lot in its sixty years on air. Every tweak has been met with outrage from listeners allergic to change of any sort and then been accepted as the new normal.
So am I just betraying my age and small c conservatism when I deplore the direction the programme has taken under new editor Sarah Sands, formerly editor of The Evening Standard? The programme is an audio magazine with a framework of regular slots that listeners become accustomed to; parliament, business, sport, Thought for the Day, weather. Then there are interviews with decision makers and politicians with a heavy political bias. If it was a magazine it would be The Economist mixed with the political pages of The Spectator and New Statesman. In this format it was considered essential listening for politicians, especially after Margaret Thatcher said she always tuned in.
Now it has become a different sort of magazine. There is a maths puzzle, much less political content and more Arts, Science and Literature. Yesterday morning there was a piece about pop band Fleetwood Mac and on Saturday mornings Jim Naughtie interviews authors. This replicates other Radio 4 programmes and now Today is no longer essential morning listening. There is a better news and politics programme: The BBC World Service.
What other changes? The Barons Court chemist is putting up new signage.
And, this may be old news, the advertising at Piccadilly Circus has been upgraded.
I never did forgive Today for dispensing with Prayer for the Day. 5.43 am is just inconveniently early. I agree that the programme has lost some of its seriousness in its attempt to go more mass market (apparently almost anything will pass for ‘news’ these days). I suppose I should be thankful that Radio 4 has persisted with the Daily Service at 9.45am (a much more civilized hour), although it is a pain deviating to the Long Wave.
Nevertheless I much prefer radio to anything television may offer. I find my week happily punctuated by favoured programmes: Today, In Our Time, Gardner’s Question Time, Front Row &c. And how reassuring to dose off to the shipping forecast (even if I reside in a land locked County).
Today aside, daily life would be rather jejune without the instructive diversity of Radio 4 or the invigorating sounds of Radio 3. I must sign off now if I am to catch World at One.