DOCSLIB.ORG

Comedy on Radio 4

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Comedy on Radio 4 V2 last updated by LL 22.02.21 BBC Radio Commissioning Brief_v1.1_2021 01 19 CONTENTS SECTION A: RADIO 4 and COMEDY ............................................................................................... 3 SECTION B: COMMISSIONING OPPORTUNITIES ............................................................... 12 SECTION C: COMMISSIONING TIMETABLE ........................................................................... 17 SECTION D: COMMISSIONING PROCESS ............................................................................... 18 STAGE 1: SHORT PROPOSAL .................................................................................................. 18 STAGE 2: FULL PROPOSAL ...................................................................................................... 19 STAGE 3: CONDITIONAL COMMISSION AWARDED .......................................................... 22 2 of 23 BBC Radio Commissioning Brief_v1.1_2021 01 19 SECTION A: RADIO 4 and COMEDY Introduction Mohit Bakaya, Controller Another year, another commissioning round. Except, of course, it is not really like any other year. We go into this round in the midst of a global pandemic that has caused 100,000 deaths, dramatically altered our everyday lives and is forcing us to question many of our assumptions about the modern world and the way our society should work. Hopefully, by the time the ideas you pitch to us land in the schedule, we will be beyond the earth-shaking intensity of the virus but we will still be feeling the aftershocks. Then there is the very different, but some might argue equally disruptive (in relation to our democracy at least), impact of social media. It’s a forum that can, when all the voices are put together, sound like an angry, attention-seeking child, dishing out truths and falsehoods in equal measure, without any guide to indicate clearly which is which. This infant has upended our democratic debate and poisoned the well of truth. It enables parallel communities to thrive where evidence matters less than feeling, where belonging to a tribe of true believers is more important than engaging constructively with naysayers. And then there is climate change. The biggest challenge of our time. It is into this uncertain landscape that your programmes will be broadcast, and it is this environment you should be mindful of when thinking up your ideas. The first and most important thing we will have to get to grips with is, of course, what this seismic shock has done to us all. People have lost loved ones, livelihoods, friendships, routines, their sense of how the world works. They will still be dealing with the challenges brought on by months of lockdown, as well as illness and bereavement. Our collective mental health has been under severe strain. The generations have simultaneously been placed at odds with each other and brought closer together. Think hard about the communities and groups most affected by Covid: the elderly, the poor, those wrestling with long term health conditions. In these groups no life has remained untouched. We are a nation changed. How do we capture that in a clever, original way? Crucially, how will your ideas complement what Radio 4 will be doing through its live and regular output next year? After a year when we have all gone through a collective trauma, finding different ways to explore the aftermath is going to be a challenge. An equally big challenge is how can we take the audience beyond the misery of the pandemic? After over a year of unrelenting grimness, they will need a break. 3 of 23 BBC Radio Commissioning Brief_v1.1_2021 01 19 What are the dramas, comedies, documentaries and podcasts the audience will need in 2022/23? How can we bring the audience together more, so their understanding of the plight of others improves and the unequal impact of Covid is properly felt? Where, as a result of staring intensely at one story, has our collective gaze not fallen? How can we delight, engage and transport our audience after such a gruelling year? What is brewing out there that we might be able to smell but not yet hear or see? What are the dots that need joining up for the audience to identify the major trends waiting just around the corner? These are some of the questions I’d love you to explore. Also, this far out from when programmes will land, what big statements can we make? Can we set the agenda on the issues that will matter most to the audience but aren’t yet apparent? Are there issues that are best explored through comedy or drama? Is there a big literary work that gets underneath our culture today, maybe one from the last 50 years? Through all of this there are two things that will continue to matter for our audience: truth and wonder. We have a commitment to truth. It runs through all our programmes and podcasts. I’m talking about the truth implicit in a brilliant piece of political satire, a line of poetry or the plight of a character in the afternoon drama, as much as the truth revealed by an investigative documentary, exploratory interview or brilliant storytelling podcast. This commitment is more important now than at any time in Radio 4’s fifty year history. I believe we have an absolutely vital role to play in supporting and developing civic well-being and critical thinking. Like social media, Radio 4 is a space where people come together - but to what end? I think we have a role in providing a nuanced, impartial, more evidence based conversation; supplying more light, less heat. More provoking of thought, less stirring up of rage, or (and this is as bad) complacent reaffirmation of strongly held views. We can think through to truth in a civil way. Our democracy relies on evidence based knowledge, on context and history, on clear analysis and calling out untruths. It requires us to understand the lives, experiences and beliefs of people different to us and to voice our differences through informed, respectful debate. If people are to make informed decisions at the ballot box and be engaged citizens, Radio 4 has an enabling role to play. That is not just with our existing audience but also those who don’t yet listen to our stuff but could and would … as long as it arrives in a form that works for them. So we need to keep thinking about ways to reach beyond our base, find people where they are with our content so that they, too, have access to all the brilliant thinking and enquiry that we have built our reputation on. 4 of 23 BBC Radio Commissioning Brief_v1.1_2021 01 19 I want Radio 4 to up its intellectual ambition. And I want us to broaden the range of people we hear from, so that we feel relevant in every corner of these islands. We also have a commitment to wonder. People need intelligent delight. They want to be transported at a time when travel is hard. They want to feel close to the lives and experiences of others, whilst possibly still having to observe a physical distance. Things will ease over time but we will not be left unaffected. Radio can help with the post-Covid world. We can bring people closer and supply the joy, laughter and escape that have been so scarce in recent months. I also want us to keep exploring new treatments for our classic genres: arts, drama, comedy, factual. We need to focus more on HOW we tell our stories, how we play with the form to surprise and delight, so we can reach a new audience in BBC Sounds and in the schedule. We’d like you to think about nifty new ways to reach an audience not brought up on speech radio, so that Radio 4 can build on its unparalleled success in Sounds. The mashing up of genres – entertainment with knowledge, drama with documentary – might be worth considering. How can truth and wonder come together to take us to new destinations? You are our spies in the world. It is your knowledge, experience, contacts and insights that will help us get into the stories that will create compelling audio for our audience – existing and potential. That means we need our supplier base to better reflect and represent the nation we broadcast to, both in terms of make-up and of the questions it asks and the territory it explores. We must not make lazy assumptions about who the audience is and what matters most to them. We cannot focus only on the issues, preoccupations and lives of some communities, at the expense of others. We must represent the whole country. So we will up our commitment to diversity, in every sense of the word: class, race, religion, gender, disability, region, political perspective. And we will buy programmes from suppliers across the whole UK in the hope that this broadens the scope of the lives we reflect and the stories we tell. We want ideas that tell us important truths about the world around us, ideas that are clever in conceit so that they can engage new audiences, ideas that create awe and wonder, ideas that reflect the actual country we live in, not just the one we see in the mirror. Finally, I know this has been a gruelling year. You have all done amazingly. You have made programmes, in incredibly challenging circumstances, to provide the audience with essential companionship as well keep them informed and entertained. And the audience feedback has been extraordinary. On their behalf, thank you. I understand that working up new ideas for a commissioning round may feel like the last thing you want to do right now, especially as we had to postpone parts of the last round to take pressure off suppliers in the first lockdown and have only recently issued some results. However, the commissioning round is an important creative moment in the Radio 4 calendar. It allows all suppliers to stand together on a level playing field, as we fire the starting gun, setting off a contest which culminates in 5 of 23 BBC Radio Commissioning Brief_v1.1_2021 01 19 brilliant dramas, comedies, podcasts and documentaries delighting millions of people.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Adult Contemporary Radio at the End of the Twentieth Century
    University of Kentucky UKnowledge Theses and Dissertations--Music Music 2019 Gender, Politics, Market Segmentation, and Taste: Adult Contemporary Radio at the End of the Twentieth Century Saesha Senger University of Kentucky, [email protected] Digital Object Identifier: https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2020.011 Right click to open a feedback form in a new tab to let us know how this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Senger, Saesha, "Gender, Politics, Market Segmentation, and Taste: Adult Contemporary Radio at the End of the Twentieth Century" (2019). Theses and Dissertations--Music. 150. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/music_etds/150 This Doctoral Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Music at UKnowledge. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations--Music by an authorized administrator of UKnowledge. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STUDENT AGREEMENT: I represent that my thesis or dissertation and abstract are my original work. Proper attribution has been given to all outside sources. I understand that I am solely responsible for obtaining any needed copyright permissions. I have obtained needed written permission statement(s) from the owner(s) of each third-party copyrighted matter to be included in my work, allowing electronic distribution (if such use is not permitted by the fair use doctrine) which will be submitted to UKnowledge as Additional File. I hereby grant to The University of Kentucky and its agents the irrevocable, non-exclusive, and royalty-free license to archive and make accessible my work in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known.
    [Show full text]
  • Summer 2021 Module Catalogue
    LONDON INTERNATIONAL SUMMER PROGRAMME MODULE CATALOGUE 2021 Introduction Welcome to the London International Summer Programme Module Catalogue 2021. The international summer programme offers students the option of studying modules from an introductory level to a more advanced level, in a given subject area. Students opting to study for the entire six-week session will take two modules in total, whilst students participating on only the three week session will take one module. Module Credits All credits obtained during the international summer school will be awarded via an official academic transcript from the University of Westminster with each module being worth 20 UK credits, which normally equates to 4 US or 10 ECTS credits. All modules must be taken on a credit-bearing basis and students will not have the option to audit any module on offer. Module Levels At the University of Westminster, modules are validated at a level corresponding to a particular year of study. The levels used are: • Level 4, which is equivalent to the 1st year of an undergraduate degree • Level 5, which is equivalent to the 2nd year of an undergraduate degree • Level 6, which is equivalent to the 3rd year of an undergraduate degree The levels used at the University of Westminster may be different to the overseas systems that you are used to. This should be taken into consideration when making module choices. Some overseas institutions (e.g. US and Japanese universities) consider the first year of their undergraduate degrees to be the equivalent to a foundation year of UK university undergraduate degree. Therefore, University of Westminster modules at Level 4 may be considered to be equivalent to modules taken in the second year of undergraduate degrees in the US and Japan.
    [Show full text]
  • Annual Report on the BBC 2019/20
    Ofcom’s Annual Report on the BBC 2019/20 Published 25 November 2020 Raising awarenessWelsh translation available: Adroddiad Blynyddol Ofcom ar y BBC of online harms Contents Overview .................................................................................................................................... 2 The ongoing impact of Covid-19 ............................................................................................... 6 Looking ahead .......................................................................................................................... 11 Performance assessment ......................................................................................................... 16 Public Purpose 1: News and current affairs ........................................................................ 24 Public Purpose 2: Supporting learning for people of all ages ............................................ 37 Public Purpose 3: Creative, high quality and distinctive output and services .................... 47 Public Purpose 4: Reflecting, representing and serving the UK’s diverse communities .... 60 The BBC’s impact on competition ............................................................................................ 83 The BBC’s content standards ................................................................................................... 89 Overview of our duties ............................................................................................................ 96 1 Overview This is our third
    [Show full text]
  • The Justification for Protecting Reasonable Expectations
    Brooklyn Law School BrooklynWorks Faculty Scholarship 2001 The uJ stification for Protecting Reasonable Expectations Bailey Kuklin Follow this and additional works at: https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/faculty Part of the Law and Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation 29 Hofstra L. Rev. 863 (2001) This Article is brought to you for free and open access by BrooklynWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of BrooklynWorks. THE JUSTIFICATION FOR PROTECTING REASONABLE EXPECTATIONS Bailey H. Kuklin* CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION ......................................................................... 864 II. THE REASONS FOR PROTECTING REASONABLE EXPEcTATIONS ......................................................................... 867 A. Deontology ....................................................................... 867 B. Corrective Justice ............................................................. 869 C. DistributiveJustice ........................................................... 875 D. Intuitive Justice ................................................................. 877 E. Teleology .......................................................................... 879 F. Economics ......................................................................... 881 G. Miscellaneous................................................................... 883 Ifi. HARD CASES ............................................................................. 884 A. The Psychology of Expectations......................................
    [Show full text]
  • HUK+Adult+FW1920+Catalogue+-+
    Saving You By (author) Charlotte Nash Sep 17, 2019 | Paperback $24.99 | Three escaped pensioners. One single mother. A road trip to rescue her son. The new emotionally compelling page-turner by Australia's Charlotte Nash In their tiny pale green cottage under the trees, Mallory Cook and her five-year- old son, Harry, are a little family unit who weather the storms of life together. Money is tight after Harry's father, Duncan, abandoned them to expand his business in New York. So when Duncan fails to return Harry after a visit, Mallory boards a plane to bring her son home any way she can. During the journey, a chance encounter with three retirees on the run from their care home leads Mallory on an unlikely group road trip across the United States. 9780733636479 Zadie, Ernie and Jock each have their own reasons for making the journey and English along the way the four of them will learn the lengths they will travel to save each other - and themselves. 384 pages Saving You is the beautiful, emotionally compelling page-turner by Charlotte Nash, bestselling Australian author of The Horseman and The Paris Wedding. Subject If you love the stories of Jojo Moyes and Fiona McCallum you will devour this FICTION / Family Life / General book. 'I was enthralled... Nash's skilled storytelling will keep you turning pages until Distributor the very end.' FLEUR McDONALD Hachette Book Group Contributor Bio Charlotte Nash is the bestselling author of six novels, including four set in country Australia, and The Paris Wedding, which has been sold in eight countries and translated into multiple languages.
    [Show full text]
  • Service Review
    Editorial Standards Findings Appeals to the Trust and other editorial issues considered by the Editorial Standards Committee April and May 2013 issued June 2013 A sentence on page 51 of this document was amended on 24 July 2013. A footnote has been added to that page detailing the change. Getting the best out of the BBC for licence fee payers Editorial Standards Findings/Appeals to the Trust and other editorial issues considered Contentsby the Editorial Standards Committee Remit of the Editorial Standards Committee 1 Summaries of findings 3 Appeal Findings 6 References to Skype in BBC news and factual output 6 Woman's Hour, BBC Radio 4, 18 December 2012 13 Coverage of Rangers Football Club, BBC Online 25 Rejected Appeals 36 The Grammar School: A Secret History (Parts 1 and 2) – 5 and 12 January 2012 – BBC Four 36 Tony Livesey (Presented by Colin Paterson), BBC Radio 5live, 7 June 2012 48 Twitter Q&A with Jeremy Bowen 53 ECU decision not to reply to an out of time complaint 57 Panorama: Price Tag Wars, BBC One, 17 September 2012 62 “Gaza rocket arsenal problem for Israel”, BBC News 69 BBC Breakfast, BBC One, 1 November 2012 75 BBC science programmes 80 BBC News 83 BBC News 86 Decision to cease correspondence at Stage 1 89 Decision to cease correspondence at Stage 1 92 Six O’Clock News, BBC Radio 4, 15 October 2012 94 Conspiracy Road Trip: 7/7 Bombings, BBC Three, 1 October 2012 99 Today, BBC Radio 4, 17 October 2012 108 BBC Scotland decision to drop an investigation 111 April and May 2013 issued June 2013 Remit of the Editorial Standards Committee The Editorial Standards Committee (ESC) is responsible for assisting the Trust in securing editorial standards.
    [Show full text]
  • Teachers Who Have the Write Stuff
    Teachers Who Have the “Write” Stuff: Changing Our Mindsets to Help Improve Students’ Writing Skills Dr. Vicki L. Luther We’ve all been there: We ask children to write and we hear the groans and complaints, we see the shoulders slump and the eyes roll, and we are left wondering how writing has become such a terrible word in the minds of students. Whether we ask for a multiple-page report, a five-paragraph essay, a creative writing piece on their summer vacation, or a simple sentence, many children balk at the very thought of having to write. For these students, writing has become a chore of epic proportions that to them has no purpose or meaning. Frequently, it is not the act of physically writing that makes students stressed; most often, it is the thought process associated with writing that makes it such a daunting task in the minds of students. Creative expression, finding one’s voice, staying on topic, and engaging in deep and expressive word choices can be difficult for students of all ages. Yet writing is a major component in the Common Core State Standards, and in today’s classrooms, children must show proficiency in both reading and writing (Morrow, 2014). The elementary grades are when the process of writing needs to be developed and honed. We all know that writers must progress through various levels in order to advance and improve, and we also know that this progression may never be fully obtained unless children are taught the fundamentals of writing early in their academic career.
    [Show full text]
  • Commissioning Brief
    RADIO COMMISSIONING Commissioning Brief Commissioning Brief No. 47030, Round 3, 2022/23 CONSUMER JOURNALISM PODCAST TENDER from April 2022 to March 2023 with option to renew for up to two additional years V3 updated by LL 02.06.21 BBC Radio Commissioning Brief_v1.3_2021 03 04 CONTENTS SECTION A: EDITORIAL OPPORTUNITY ...................................................................................... 3 Radio 4 ................................................................................................................................................. 4 The Consumer Journalism Podcast opportunity .................................................................................. 5 Treatment ............................................................................................................................................ 5 Diversity and Inclusion ......................................................................................................................... 6 Success Measures ................................................................................................................................ 6 Presenters ............................................................................................................................................ 6 Risk Management ................................................................................................................................ 6 Price ....................................................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Interactive Radio for Development Projects
    Interactive Radio for Development Projects A Toolkit for Practitioners BY JOSH WOODARD, FHI 360, AUGUST 2014 // The original version of this toolkit was developed by U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Fostering Agriculture Competitiveness Employing Information Communication Technologies (FACET) project implemented by FHI 360 from 2009 to 2013 under award number EPP-A-00-09-00007, which is an associate award under the FIELD- Support LWA (EEM-A-00-06-00001-00). Interactive Radio for Development Projects A Toolkit for Practitioners © 2014. FHI 360 and USAID. All rights reserved. The contents of this Toolkit may be photocopied or adapted, in whole or in part, provided the material is distributed free of charge and that credit is given to FHI 360 and USAID. Suggested Citation: Woodard, Josh. 2014. Integrating Low-Cost Radio into Development Projects: A Toolkit for Practitioners. Washington, DC: FHI 360. Contents Acronyms .......................................................................................... i How should we identify appropriate What is our role in the process ..................................... 99 Acknowledgements ................................................................... ii radio station partners? .......................................................25 Which interactive methods are About the Author .......................................................................iii How can we plan to implement our activity? ........30 most appropriate for our situation ..........................103 About
    [Show full text]
  • Lloyd, Justine. "Listening to the Listener: Constructing Woman's
    Lloyd, Justine. "Listening to the Listener: Constructing Woman’s Hour at the BBC, 1946–1955." Gender and Media in the Broadcast Age: Women’s Radio Programming at the BBC, CBC, and ABC. New York,: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. 97–136. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 3 Oct. 2021. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781501318801.ch-006>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 3 October 2021, 20:25 UTC. Copyright © Justine Lloyd 2020. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 5 Listening to the Listener: Constructing Woman’s Hour at the BBC, 1946–1955 Here, with my hand on the latch, I am two persons. I am the woman with the basket, the passer-by in the street, Unnoticed, anonymous, an infinitesimal part Of a great multitude that, with purposeful feet Plodding the pavements, streams on perpetually Into the abyss of time past. One person: I have only to push the gate open, And, in a step, I shall be wholly that other; For here, where so small a plot contains a world, I have a face, a name; I am wife and mother, Blessedly beloved. The stored years wait in the house, And as I cross the threshold, their warm sweet breath Will welcome me again into that happy bondage Intangible as the hearth smoke, and stronger than death. With familiar incompetent click the gate half-closes behind me, I have all things, I am myself, I have come home.
    [Show full text]
  • Coca-Cola, Globalization, and the Cultural Politics of Branding in the Twentieth Century
    The Company that Taught the World to Sing: Coca-Cola, Globalization, and the Cultural Politics of Branding in the Twentieth Century by Laura A. Hymson A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (American Culture) in The University of Michigan 2011 Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor, James W. Cook, Chair Professor Philip J. Deloria Professor Susan J. Douglass Professor Penny Von Eschen © Laura A. Hymson 2011 Acknowledgements I owe an extraordinary debt to the people and institutions that helped and supported me as I worked to complete this dissertation. While working on this project, I spent time in several cities, including: Ann Arbor, New York, Atlanta, Urbana- Champagne, Alexandria, Washington, D.C, Newark, and Hartford. In all of these places where I have lived, researched, or taught, I have been shown incredible kindness and I am grateful for everyone who has helped me along the way. Thanks first to the chair of my dissertation committee, Jay Cook, who has been exceptionally generous with his time. Without his insightful feedback, invaluable advice, and thoughtful comments this dissertation would not have been possible. I can only hope to be as effective and compassionate as a teacher and mentor as he has been to me. My entire dissertation committee was composed of scholars whose work I truly admire and I am grateful for the time they devoted to my ideas and my work. Penny Von Eschen and Phil Deloria provided important feedback on drafts, and made suggestions for research and writing that helped advance my thinking on a number key issues at the heart of this project.
    [Show full text]
  • The Power of Radio - Basic Skills Manual
    The Power of Radio - Basic Skills Manual The Power of Radio Introduction Radio is very powerful because it reaches a huge audience quickly and because it allows the people in that huge audience to interact with one another more easily than television viewers or newspaper readers. There are different types of radio stations: community, commercial and public. They have different types of owners and audiences and different programming, but they share a common goal: to connect with the listener in a way that is immediate and relevant.Radio is powerful because it has the ability to reach and influence so many people. This module discusses the challenges faced in using such power responsibly. Radio is powerful because: Radio presents challenges because: It is immediate. News can be It is temporary. Stories often air only once, reported more quickly on radio so if the information is confusing or if you than in newspapers or on miss a point, it's difficult to get clarification. television, because the Radio reports need to be clearly and simply technology is simpler. written. And radio presenters and reporters It is accessible. You can tune in must take extra care to speak distinctly. to radio wherever you are. You can take a radio to the fields, or listen to it in a car. You can also do other things while you listen. It is inclusive. Radio can reach most people, including the poor, the marginalized and those who cannot read or write. At the end of this module, you should be aware that: (Some challenges that occur in Radio are bellow).
    [Show full text]