Silence in the air
Kate Chisholm
News announced last Friday that the recent series of economic earthquakes has forced Channel 4 to withdraw from its plans to launch a digital radio network has sent shockwaves through the radio community. But what does the loss of the three new stations promised by Channel 4 — one of which, 4 Radio, was designed as a direct rival to the BBC’s Radio Four — mean for us as listeners? Would we ever have found the time to listen to them? Will we notice that they’re not there?
According to the latest figures, 7.7 million of us have so far been lured into buying a far-more-expensive digital (DAB) radio receiver, but we digital-listeners tune in to just 17.9 per cent of all radio, and most of that we could have heard on our oldfashioned analogue sets. Have we wasted our money on a technology that is going nowhere? The BBC has successfully developed new digital-only stations which offer different kinds of programmes to new audiences — especially the Asian Network and the newly renamed BBC Radio Seven — but there’s only one commercial station, Planet Rock, which lives up to its name as a music-only station. The rest have all gone; too expensive to keep going, or run out of business by the BBC’s canny competitiveness. Genuinely independent and innovative DAB stations such as Oneword, which was devoted to the spoken word in literature, drama and conversation, found it too difficult to create a financially viable niche, even though it costs just £18,000 to create a one-hour radio drama (compared to at least £200,000 for the equivalent on TV).
Digital radio, you may have noticed, is no longer being sold on the quality of its signal. When it works, it’s brilliantly clear, but who cares whether those embarrassingly sploshy kisses on The Archers can be heard more explicitly via DAB if the signal cuts out just as Lilian rounds on Matt. The digital signal can be as fickle as the voters of Florida; you’re never quite sure whose side it’s on. And when it decides against you, it doesn’t just fade away and come back again like the soothing ins-and-outs of a tinny transistor, but viciously crackles and pops at you before disappearing altogether. It’s the transmitters, I’m told. They’re not up to the job.
But the loss of Channel 4 radio is not just about digital technology; its demise takes down with it the possibility of some truly inventive radio experiences. Not that we don’t love our BBC stations, especially Radios Two, Three and Four (it’s no good pretending that I’m a Radio One fan), but 4 Radio would have created an interesting challenge. Take a look at the Radio Four schedule in any given week and you’ll find a surprising number of programmes that have not just been around for decades (and decades) but whose broadcast format is very little different from what would have been heard on the Home Service. Of course these programmes have a loyal, not to say ardent, following of listeners who would be outraged at any slight alterations. Who would dare tamper with Just a Minute or Desert Island Discs? They’ve become institutions. But what about Any Questions?, which celebrated its 60th birthday last Friday? Shirley Williams, who was on the panel, was not too bashful about her age to tell us that she remembered listening to its first edition, with the venerable Freddie Grisewood in the chair. Baroness Williams was far too polite to say how much more creative the conversation was in the days when politics was genuinely divided between left and right. The Home Service bosses would never have allowed a whiff of indelicacy in the questions (on Friday-night’s programme one questioner dared to ask where the panellists put their savings; not something that would ever have been discussed on air in the 1950s), but the panellists’ answers would have veered, in perfect Queen’s English, from the defensively ribald to the offensively funny (at least that’s what I recall from the late, very late 1960s when we laughed at what was being said as much as huffing at the hot air).
Last Friday’s audience in Winchester was so subdued, hardly ever clapping, let alone muttering their disapproval at an answer or even heckling, which used to happen quite a lot when the country was under Margaret Thatcher. The panel (which also included Harriet Harman, Oliver Letwin and Peter Hennessy) was so sedate, never daring to crack a joke, and definitely not interrupting each other — as if the slumping stock market has engendered a truce and no one is any longer allowed to disagree with anyone else. This may be the true outcome of the past month’s weird and shocking financial events; not so much the loss of Channel 4 radio, but a more sinister development heard not on the airwaves but underneath and through them. A gradual silencing of dissent; an acquiescence in what is decided for us by those above us. ❑
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