Post by Teddy Bear on Jun 24, 2011 20:13:06 GMT
An apparent ex-fan of the Today programme talks about her disappointment with the quality and manner of the current offerings.
The 'Today’ of yesterday was great. Today, it isn’t
This programme has become almost unlistenable to because of all the shouting , says Vicki Woods.
Because I spent half my life (until my 11th birthday) somewhere east of Suez, I grew up knowing that we were cast out of Paradise. My mother languished and wailed unceasingly about “home”. She pestered my father to twiddle wires for an hour at a time just so she could hear a voice say, “This is the BBC Home Service”, before it wowed and fluttered away.
Perhaps it’s because I feel like a returned exile that I never wanted to buy a place in some foreign part to retire to. Whereas, people I was at school with did exactly that, very smartly (long before 2008), snapping up cow byres and disused mills in France, Italy, Spain or Scotland, with the occasional standout going to Monaco or the Caribbean as a consequence of having made a bunch of money (before 2008).
But I couldn’t think of emigrating. I knew I would miss the BBC’s talk radio far, far too much. Especially Radio 4, and especially the Today programme. One of Wendy Holden’s amusing books (I forget which punning title it is), begins with her heroine waking up one morning – as on every other morning – to the noise of “two men shouting”. She promptly vows to change the course of her life. Me, I much preferred the Today programme when it was two men shouting, I must say. Now it’s often three or four men, plus one woman, shouting, and doing a lot of giggling and talking over.
Talking over is the most maddening thing anyone can do on radio, and everyone in the studio should be alive to the fact that it must not happen. That Dame Jenni Murray never allows it on her programme, does she? No. Crosstalk is more forgivable on television, where you do at least get to see which words are spewing out of which suit, even when you can’t recall if it’s the chubby suit who is anti and the bald suit pro, or vice versa. But on radio, it drives one to madness.
I liked Today better when Rod Liddle was there, frankly. If they want it to sound like Midweek for three hours, why don’t they get Libby Purves to do it? And why is it three hours, anyway? Why do they constantly try to fix what isn’t broken? I liked it when it was Farming Today first. I still miss Lilliburlero spiralling out of the bedside wireless on sleepless nights. I still regret the hole where Yesterday in Parliament ought to be on a weekday morning, especially when I’m in a car and driving to London at that time of the morning.
When Today sounds like a talk programme for grown-ups, I feel both engaged by the issues and soothed by the exposition. On Wednesday, I was boiling the kettle and salting the porridge to the cool, tough-toff tones of Emma Soames, who’d been brought in to slap down Professor Tony Rao, from the Royal College of Psychiatrists, who was fretting about people over 65 drinking more than a small glass of wine or half a pint of beer a day. I am not over 65 and don’t intend to be if that’s how I’ll have to live. “People will be in-fur-iated by this,” said Soames, accurately. “It’s described as a public-health problem. It’s actually a private health matter.” I shouted YES! So hard, I dropped the spurtle.
When Evan Davis starts asking questions as daft as, “What does your favourite number say about you? Have you got a favourite number even?” and Today turns into Sesame Street, I begin to despair. Every time someone mentioned a number, there was a blast of song. “Once, twice, three times a lady”… NO. DON’T. They had an old boy on recently who had been through an air-raid, and they were playing air-raid noises behind his voice.
If the state broadcasting service I have been paying for all my life thinks that it’s a good use of my money, I’m ready to emigrate.
This programme has become almost unlistenable to because of all the shouting , says Vicki Woods.
Because I spent half my life (until my 11th birthday) somewhere east of Suez, I grew up knowing that we were cast out of Paradise. My mother languished and wailed unceasingly about “home”. She pestered my father to twiddle wires for an hour at a time just so she could hear a voice say, “This is the BBC Home Service”, before it wowed and fluttered away.
Perhaps it’s because I feel like a returned exile that I never wanted to buy a place in some foreign part to retire to. Whereas, people I was at school with did exactly that, very smartly (long before 2008), snapping up cow byres and disused mills in France, Italy, Spain or Scotland, with the occasional standout going to Monaco or the Caribbean as a consequence of having made a bunch of money (before 2008).
But I couldn’t think of emigrating. I knew I would miss the BBC’s talk radio far, far too much. Especially Radio 4, and especially the Today programme. One of Wendy Holden’s amusing books (I forget which punning title it is), begins with her heroine waking up one morning – as on every other morning – to the noise of “two men shouting”. She promptly vows to change the course of her life. Me, I much preferred the Today programme when it was two men shouting, I must say. Now it’s often three or four men, plus one woman, shouting, and doing a lot of giggling and talking over.
Talking over is the most maddening thing anyone can do on radio, and everyone in the studio should be alive to the fact that it must not happen. That Dame Jenni Murray never allows it on her programme, does she? No. Crosstalk is more forgivable on television, where you do at least get to see which words are spewing out of which suit, even when you can’t recall if it’s the chubby suit who is anti and the bald suit pro, or vice versa. But on radio, it drives one to madness.
I liked Today better when Rod Liddle was there, frankly. If they want it to sound like Midweek for three hours, why don’t they get Libby Purves to do it? And why is it three hours, anyway? Why do they constantly try to fix what isn’t broken? I liked it when it was Farming Today first. I still miss Lilliburlero spiralling out of the bedside wireless on sleepless nights. I still regret the hole where Yesterday in Parliament ought to be on a weekday morning, especially when I’m in a car and driving to London at that time of the morning.
When Today sounds like a talk programme for grown-ups, I feel both engaged by the issues and soothed by the exposition. On Wednesday, I was boiling the kettle and salting the porridge to the cool, tough-toff tones of Emma Soames, who’d been brought in to slap down Professor Tony Rao, from the Royal College of Psychiatrists, who was fretting about people over 65 drinking more than a small glass of wine or half a pint of beer a day. I am not over 65 and don’t intend to be if that’s how I’ll have to live. “People will be in-fur-iated by this,” said Soames, accurately. “It’s described as a public-health problem. It’s actually a private health matter.” I shouted YES! So hard, I dropped the spurtle.
When Evan Davis starts asking questions as daft as, “What does your favourite number say about you? Have you got a favourite number even?” and Today turns into Sesame Street, I begin to despair. Every time someone mentioned a number, there was a blast of song. “Once, twice, three times a lady”… NO. DON’T. They had an old boy on recently who had been through an air-raid, and they were playing air-raid noises behind his voice.
If the state broadcasting service I have been paying for all my life thinks that it’s a good use of my money, I’m ready to emigrate.