Friday 18 October 2019

Radio 4 listeners I


The main story on tonight's Feedback was the BBC''s coverage of Extinction Rebellion. 

If the range of voices chosen by Feedback was representative then Feedback's complaint bag is bulging with pro-XR people griping that the BBC isn't covering their rebellion anywhere near enough. 

I did rather admire the listener who complained that Radio 4 had ignored the Met's clearing of the protests on Monday evening. She'd obviously monitored the stations output during Monday night and through most of Tuesday. She said The World Tonight hadn't reported it, the following morning's Today hadn't reported it, nor had The World at One. PM reported it in its headlines, and Radio 4's Six O'Clock News reported it 20 minutes in. I checked TV Eyes to see if she was faking it, but she wasn't. She was right in every respect.

Such complainants could, of course, be activists writing in as part of a campaign or just your average Radio 4 listener. We'll probably never know for sure.

Anyhow, Roger talked to an ex-BBC journalist turned academic, who was largely sympathetic to the XR-friendly listeners' complaints - as, indeed, sounded Roger himself.

It's an odd programme at times. I still think Newswatch does it better. 

1 comment:

  1. Too often Roger Bolton questions some programme producer after a listener's complaint and gets a fobbed off answer that either the listener's complaint doesn't match other people's experience (how do they know?) or the BBC is trying to explore new areas and then brush aside the complaint.

    The BBC programme makers and producers never get a hard time from Roger, and he is far too polite when they fail to answer a question by talking about something else not complained about.

    In addition there is a lot of feedback on how wonderful something was, which is just sick making gushing stuff.

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