The Daily Telegraph

Is BBC radio safe in the hands of James Purnell?

- Jemima Lewis

Is BBC radio safe in James Purnell’s hands? When the former Labour minister was made director of radio, in 2016, he took on a delicate task. You could call it the Marks & Sparks conundrum: how do you drag a venerable institutio­n into the modern age without alienating its loyal users?

It isn’t going well. Insiders grumble that Purnell doesn’t actually believe in radio. He thinks (rightly) that the future lies in podcasts and music streaming: hence, his obsession with the BBC Sounds app, which is supposed to pull in younger audiences. But rumour has it that listener numbers are embarrassi­ngly low.

Neverthele­ss, Purnell is doubling down. The BBC announced last week that it is cutting 50 radio jobs, in order to “reinvest in the key strategic objective of attracting more young listeners to BBC services”. Staff at Broadcasti­ng House are in despair. Radio 4, the jewel in the Reithian crown, has already suffered repeated budget raids to pay for BBC Sounds content. Much-loved series have been killed off (Something Understood) or eviscerate­d (The Briefing Room). Presenters are fleeing to commercial stations, where they get more money and more love. Gwyneth Williams, Radio 4’s long-serving controller, threw in her towel two months ago.

All this disruption might be worthwhile if it got the job done. But why would young people listen to BBC Sounds? The interface is awful, the music playlists aren’t a patch on Spotify, and the youth-targeted podcasts are so patronisin­g they make my palms sweat. Today’s teenagers are highly educated and politicall­y engaged, and living through a period of extraordin­ary global change. So what does the BBC offer them? Unexpected Fluids: a 45-minute mess of high-pitched squawking and giggling about sex.

The irony is that, in America, where podcasts have been going for longer, young people have gravitated to much the same content as older people: Radiolab, The Moth, This American Life, TED Talks. They like programmes that are intelligen­t, entertaini­ng and sincere. Like the best of the BBC, in fact.

Purnell has his eyes so firmly fixed on the horizon that he hardly seems to notice the treasures at his feet. Why waste money on unique (and uniquely awful) podcasts for BBC Sounds, when the BBC already produces so much that is worth listening to? Almost all broadcast programmes go on to BBC Sounds anyway – so why not make them the stars of the show?

Here’s a case in point: having missed the previous two series of

because it was on the World Service while I was at work, I am now binge-listening to it via BBC Sounds. The conceit is gloriously simple: presenter Catherine Carr stops random strangers on the street and asks them where they are off to, as a way of starting a conversati­on. Previous series have darted about the globe, from Tokyo to Reykjavik to Tijuana. But the current series, because of Brexit, is all set in Britain. So far we have visited Glasgow, Cardiff and, yesterday, Belfast.

Carr is a gentle but determined interviewe­r, coaxing her subjects into intimacy with the sheer force of her niceness. “Forgive me,” she’ll coo, or “Do you mind me asking…” Next thing you know, a lesbian mother finds herself confiding where she got her sperm sample, and a kind old lady reveals that she feeds homeless people as a way of rememberin­g her dead alcoholic son.

No Triumph, No Tragedy, the Radio 4 series in which Peter White interviews disabled people who have achieved amazing things, is another series that is practicall­y a podcast already. A “best of ” collection – with Ian

Dury talking about his mischievou­s disability anthem, Spasticus Autisticus, or philosophe­r Tony Judt raging against the motor neurone disease that eventually consumed him – would be high on my “subscribe” list.

It would have to include last week’s episode, in which the Paralympia­n swimmer Victoria Arlen described how, aged 11, she slipped into a persistent vegetative state. For four years, Arlen was fully conscious but unable to move a muscle. She recalled listening to two nurses chatting over her helpless body, mocking her parents for believing she might recover (“This child’s a goner.”). My scalp tingled when she described the moment she regained control of her eyelids, and started blinking furiously at her mother. “She called my dad, and everyone’s like, ‘She’s in there, she’s in there! She’s been in there the whole time!’”

Listen to it on BBC Sounds, and make the best of a bad app.

 ??  ?? Reshuffle: BBC director of radio Purnell is making savings to radio to reinvest
Reshuffle: BBC director of radio Purnell is making savings to radio to reinvest
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