If, in Australia, someone had asked me to describe my ideal radio station I would not have described Radio 4. I wouldn't have been able to. My understanding of radio has been completely transformed by the experience of listening to this. There is so much that one can do with radio, which I never knew was possible. I have had the very rare experience of feeling like I am the target audience of a media outlet. The irony of this is unsettling, but that just means it's a truly English experience...
Some highlights include:
The gameshow that is based around literary figures. Contestants have to answer questions about the person and write a parody of their work amongst other things. The first one I heard was on Jonathan Swift and I was amazed and delighted. The second show I heard was on one of my favourite authors - George Eliot - and I was amazed and delighted and excited! Here was a nation where George Eliot was not just known, but read and appreciated. The parody of Dorothea's letter (from Middlemarch) still makes me smile when I think about it. I could never have imagined such a thing could exist!
And it's not stuffy and boring. It's clever and witty and laugh-out-loud funny. Often.
I can't remember laughing at things on the radio in Australia. Mostly I only ever listened to it to either keep myself awake or put myself to sleep (depending on the context and therefore on the station). I enjoy listening to BBC Radio 4!
The second thing they do really well is that they don't Have An Agenda like Australian radio (and other media). Yes, of course they have an agenda, but not so much that they won't let someone get their views across. Radio interviewers seem to be fairer and seem somewhat interested in divergent views. It almost makes me believe that there are some media workers who are interested in truth.
The outcome of this is that listening to debate on radio is interesting. Not the frustrating exercise of quasi-censorship which was my experience in Australia. Here, even where it is clear the reporter has an axe to grind they just grind it instead of using it to create severe structural damage.(This has certainly not been my experience of the newspapers over here, by the way, but I've only bought about 3 during our entire time here).
The third thing I've enjoyed about BBC Radio 4 is one of the few genuinely positive things about colonialism. In Australia, we've realised that the empire is dead. For some time. Over here, not so much. In fact there are segments of society who seem quite sure that the Empire is alive and well, and they are in charge of it. Still. It's disconcerting. Makes one retrieve the atlas just to double check.
But one of the good things about this attitude is that reporting is far wider than England and far less parochial. I've listened to segments on the development of hip-hop in Beijing, the rise of child evangelists in America, methods of water preservation in Australia and various farming experiments undertaken in Africa. It isn't limited to countries where Britain has had some involvement (though those countries are few and far between!) It's is a better style of investigative journalism as well, which asks many questions and doesn't feel as driven as Australian journalism to get a particular outcome. It feels like the reporters really want to know. I think it's very cool.
Also, reports undertaken referring to ex-colony trouble spots are far more passionately reported than I am used to. It's as though people really care what happens in tyrannical regimes and disasters. Oddly, emotion isn't completely absent (despite the stiff-upper-lip reputation of the English), and the cool professionalism of Australian reporting (which flies in the face of its largely non-objective content) seems unappealing in contrast.
Finally, I love the English interest in curious details of its own history or current life. The story about architecture of nineteenth century factories and how that relates to the breastfeeding policies imposed by many factory employers. The one about the discovery of a large number of artificial hands discovered in the basement of the house and the investigation into why they were there and where they came from. The array of explorations into why some migratory creature does or does not appear in smaller or greater numbers in this or that part of the UK for greater or lesser time than normal and why this might be. And so on.
It is fascinating.
There is something about this which betrays a grand, rich view of life. It is not all boiled down to the pale, bland lowest common demoninator resembling yesterday's cabbage which is often what is served up by the Australian media. With BBC Radio 4, no one listener could possibly be interested in all that is reported. (I confess that I wasn't that interested in the discovery of the artificial hands; I just continued listening in a kind of fascinated horror as the story unfolded). Few would have the background and education required to access all of it.
But that doesn't mean that the story is canned. It goes to air anyway, and those who can or want to, access it. If you can't or aren't interested, you just hang about till something you like comes on. Or, you get interested or try to access it and get your world expanded in the process. (I now know the secret of those hoarded artificial hands and I feel I am a better person for it).
The overall effect is of stimulation and engagement, which I would never have expected to be really possible with radio.
Can't stop the signal, Mal.
And why would you want to stop this signal? There's a world in these radiowaves. JMB.
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