NEWS STAND
ON TUESDAY, the new controller of Radio 4, Mr Michael Green, announced his plans for 'gradually refreshing some parts of the channel'. One way he means to do this is by the abolition of News Stand, a 15-minute review of the weekly magazines broadcast at 9.50 on Saturday mornings. We cannot comment impartially on News Stand, for it sounds to our partial ears as though the Spectator is mentioned more frequently than any other weekly by its presenter, who changes from Saturday to Saturday and is often some journalist of views very different from ours. But quite apart from that unusual virtue, or even despite that fault, if anyone should think it so, the programme possesses qualities which ought to ensure its retention. It is rarely boring. A journalist has to be singularly incompetent not to be able to find a quarter of an hour's worth of good material in the whole of the weekly press, and the journalists chosen to present it are generally much more than competent. Nor `Nice to see the Government is doing something at last.' can the programme cost much to make. Nor does it take up very much time. No doubt these last two virtues make it an especially easy target for abolition: no great number of unionised staff will object. We do not know what the listenership of the programme is, but would be surprised to learn that this was so low as to justify scrapping it. But we suspect that the new controller's desire to set his stamp on Radio 4, in the way that the previous controller, Mr David Hatch, tried to do with a curious and short-lived innovation called Rollercoaster, is more to blame. News Stand should not be sacrificed to such whims.
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