WEDNESDAY 5 DECEMBER 2007 ________________ Present Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury, B Eccles of Moulton, B Fowler, L (Chairman) Howe of Idlicote, B Inglewood, L Manchester, B Maxton, L McIntosh of Hudnall, B Scott of Needham Market, B Thornton, B ________________ Witnesses: Ms Jenny Abramsky, Head of Audio and Music; Mr Mark Damazer, Controller, Radio 4 and BBC 7; and Mr Stephen Mitchell, Head of Radio News, BBC, gave evidence. Q1129 Chairman: Good morning and thank you very much indeed for coming. Originally, we had Bob Shennan coming, but I gather that the prospect of appearing before our Committee made him resign from that job. Is that right? Ms Abramsky: That is absolutely right. Bob is going to be the Director of Radio for Channel 4. Q1130 Chairman: So, he is even leaving the Corporation? Ms Abramsky: He is. Q1131 Chairman: Stephen Mitchell, have you taken on his role? Mr Mitchell: No, I have not thankfully, but I am responsible for the news content on Radio 5 Live among other things. We have an acting arrangement while we find another Controller. Q1132 Chairman: But you do not have it under control at this moment? Ms Abramsky: We do not, no. Bob only announced that he was leaving about 48 hours ago. Q1133 Chairman: It is a very intriguing area to go into but I will not! Not so long ago, people were saying that radio was dead and on the way out, television was taking over, and there was no future for radio. You and others seem to be demonstrating that that is not the case. Ms Abramsky: I believe that radio is still one of the most important media in the UK today. Over 90 per cent of the population listen to radio every week and people underestimate it at its peril. I have worked in the BBC for a long time and, in the 1980s, I remember sitting next to a rather senior person in television who told me that radio would be dead by the millennium. In the BBC, radio is contributing over 50 per cent of the consumption of the BBC in terms of just the hours that people spend with radio and I think that it is one of the great strengths of broadcasting in this country that radio is so strong. Q1134 Chairman: Do you see it continuing? Are you optimistic about the future as well? Ms Abramsky: I am optimistic about the future of radio as a medium, yes. I think that there are really great challenges for commercial radio in terms of their business model which is facing real challenges as a result of the Internet, but I feel very confident that they are going to overcome those problems. In terms of listening, it is not declining and I think that the interesting thing about radio in this country is that radio really has led the way in terms of convergence with online and broadband and, if you look at just some of the statistics that we have to deal with, the way people are listening again, are consuming pod casts and are actually listening to radio through the web, what you are seeing is that people are using whatever medium they can to get hold of quality audio. 2 Q1135 Chairman: Tell us about the way that BBC News actually works as far as radio is concerned. You have been having this interesting and doubtless slightly tedious issue about whether it is BBC News for Radio 4, but actually it is BBC News for Radio 4. I do not say that that is how you should label it but that is right, is it not? Ms Abramsky: It is right and I will leave my colleagues on either side to answer the actual phraseology and how we describe it. In terms of news on radio, I regard news as the spine of all our radio networks with one exception and that is Radio 3 where we do not see it playing that role. If you look across all the other networks we run, news is absolutely central, be it just through hourly bulletins, either on the hour or half hour, or the combination of in-depth news programmes which run on every single network. We are running a portfolio of radio stations and Radio 1 is clearly our youth station, Radio 2 with a mass appeal with an average audience age of about 50, through Radio 5 Live and Radio 4. What we are trying to do is ensure that for every audience and every licence fee payer, we are offering them news in a form that is relevant to them. Radio 1 is running news every hour but it is also running two news programmes at lunchtime and at drive time called Newsbeat and they are a very, very important part of the way Radio 1 delivers its public service remit. Q1136 Chairman: Mr Damazer, tell us about Radio 4. Do you get this central production of news from a central newsroom? Is that how it works? Mr Damazer: Yes, broadly. My colleague Steve Mitchell is in charge of the radio news operation and has been for many years. I used to work in the news division myself, so in some senses it is home-from-home. The day-to-day operation of news bulletins and news programmes on Radio 4 is left to Steve Mitchell and his editors but, in terms of where they are placed, who the presenters are and a broad strategic remit – and, it being Radio 4, there is no reason to change it very radically from one year to another – that is set in conjunction between myself, Jenny Abramsky and Steve Mitchell. We have frequent conversations about 3 issues to do with presentation and with tone but, in terms of what actually happens on a day- to-day basis, I would not expect to intervene in advance of any bulletin to discuss the running order or a particular line being taken by a particular correspondent. Q1137 Chairman: Mr Mitchell, would that be down to your organisation? Mr Mitchell: Yes, it is. We provide the content and produce most of the talent, as it were, the on-air talent and off-air talent. Q1138 Chairman: When it comes to a programme like Today which I suppose is one of the best listened to, or is it the best listened to of the Radio 4 programmes? Mr Damazer: It is by a big margin. Q1139 Chairman: You take your news but you also have your presenters and the Today programme has its own staff as well, does it not? Mr Damazer: Yes. Mr Mitchell: The Today programme has the most important thing. The Today programme has a single editor who is responsible editorially for everything on Radio 4 between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. Within that Today programme, there are news bulletins, there are newspaper reviews, sport, Thought for the Day and the weather. Editorially however, one person is answerable for the whole package and he has his own staff who generate content in terms of interviews, in terms of some of the more in-depth journalism and so forth; he has his own staff who work for him as well as taking this material from other parts of the BBC. Q1140 Chairman: How many journalists do you employ? Mr Mitchell: Overall? Q1141 Chairman: Yes. 4 Mr Mitchell: There are about 500/550 journalists doing radio news domestically and another 150-or-so doing the international services for world service radio. Q1142 Chairman: Are those 150 based abroad or is there a mixture? Mr Mitchell: The World Service is the operation in Bush House, that is the production arm. All those 600 people overall are based in the UK but, behind them, we draw upon BBC news gathering which is running a large number of reporters, correspondents and foreign bureaux, and that is a separate part of BBC News but we have access to it for radio. Q1143 Chairman: This must be by far the biggest centre of radio journalism certainly in this country by a mile but perhaps anywhere in the world. Mr Mitchell: In the world, yes. We are members of the EBU Journalism Group and we have relationships with North American broadcasters in radio and they look to us because we are the leaders in terms of, I would like to think, quality but certainly in terms of size and resources. Ms Abramsky: It is also the volume of output that we also do. If you take the range of programming that you have on Radio 4, it is also current affairs and in-depth programming that we do and we also have a good bespoke news service for Radio 1 and for Radio 1 Extra and that was a really important initiative because we felt that it was really necessary to have a bespoke team to be relevant and actually to create in some ways a different news agenda for those audience when appropriate. Q1144 Chairman: What are the audience figures? When we talk about the Today programme, what are we talking about there? Is it eight million? Mr Damazer: The standard radio measurement is the number of people who listen to at least 15 minutes of a particular programme or a particular network per week. The Today 5 programme fluctuates around six million people per week. The peak would be between ten to eight and ten past eight and would be significantly north of two million. The daily reach is probably around 4 million.