Gwyneth Williams: controller of BBC Radio 4 'To keep good, Radio 4 must change'

Ben Dowell from The Guardian has interviewed Gwyneth Williams, the new controller of BBC Radio 4 three months into her role, but when asked recently by John Humphrys recently about leaving the network alone because Mark has left it in such good shape said "To use the cliche, in order to keep it good it must change," So we can expect to start to see changes in Radio 4 to keep it on top and she is starting to announce some of those changes now after a 3 month consultation process. If you want to read the full article then go the Ben's article on the Media Guardian site. But here are a few extracts that I found interesting...

It would be hard to imagine Damazer walking around the office without shoes, as Williams is wont to do. Or describing Humphrys as "incredibly sweet", as she does at one point. In fact, following her appointment, Williams spent her first weeks talking to staff, trying to "make sense" of the network and "understand it as an organic thing". "It is not as if Mark didn't listen – far from it – but he was a very authoritative presence and there was more of a sense that he said what was what," says one in-house producer. "You feel that things will be different under Gwyneth."

So it looks as if we will see the softer side of Radio 4, that was submerged under Mark's tenure, re-emerge.

One immediate difference will be felt once her proposal to cut the number of commissioning rounds a year from two to one is implemented; this will allow a looser process of "continuing commissioning", intended, she says, to reduce bureaucracy ("I know everybody says this and it is probably easier said than done"), with producers given more freedom to pitch ideas at other times. "I am really keen to add a layer of creativity," Williams explains. "Having met the producers and the people, I know that is perfectly possible and can happen. If we can't take creative risks at this point, with Radio 4 in such a good state, then we never can."

I have mixed views about this, as someone from the regions, loosing a commisioning round potentionaly reduces the face to face contact with the commissioning editors by 100% as it isn't very easy to pop into see any of them from up this end of the country. That said if this flexibility to pitch ideas at any time is real then I welcome it with open arms. There have been many times when an idea has surfaced but it hasn't been worth pursuing because by the time it had been commissioned, made and delivered it would be so out of date or not relevant any more that it probably wouldn't have got commissioned anyway!

There are no specific proposals to expand news bulletins such as The World at One or The World This Weekend. Nor is she planning to change the roster of Today presenters in spite of the rumoured interest of the BBC's political editor, Nick Robinson (although she does have hopes to "get more women on the network"). Instead, reporters such as Robinson will have a chance to exercise their interviewing skills on a new autumn show – a 15-minute slot on Tuesdays at 9.30am in which the BBC's army of reporters will be free to quiz whoever they like from whatever fields. There will also be a boost to science coverage in the half-hour slot preceding this. Williams is axing the existing rota of Tuesday 9am interview shows, Taking a Stand, The Choice and On The Ropes, in which people recount extraordinary experiences in their lives. The thinking is that interviews of this type are replicated on other programmes (such as Saturday Live and Broadcasting House) and they no longer need a designated place in the schedule.

I have to say that I am personally disappointed that The Choice is going as I have edited over 5 series of this illuminating programme, where you have time to really hear someone's story in detail that I don't believe you will get on either Saturday Live or BH. Neither of these programmes give a 28 minute slot to one interview and even these 15 minute slots (which are 13'30" really) will enable a very deep exploration of an issue. That said Gwyneth is planning to use the Tuesday interview slot to increase the profile of science on the network and I commend her for that.

"There is a quieter bit to Radio 4, science and information, which is a bit buried in the schedule," says Williams. "It is a potential heartland for Radio 4 which could beat more loudly for people who want to come to Radio 4 for understanding. We want to add in the quieter exploratory and analytical voices of scientists." Another plan is to give what will in effect be grants to "around five or so wise men or women" each year to "go off and do their own research". Thinkers of any kind would be given the money and the time to spend a year "tracking how we live now".

and from the Radio 4 blog she said....

From October I plan to launch a new 9 a.m. science programme - not about the ideas of science which Melvyn Bragg covers regularly in the brilliant In Our Time - but about science and working scientists, about the scientific method, across a range of subjects: physics, biology, engineering, technology, natural history. The Science Department will lead the work on developing this and I have been talking to various people, among them Jim Al-Khalili, a scientist and an experienced broadcaster, about possibly presenting it.

These plans will in my opinion help to redress the balance of Radio 4's output that under Mark made it into a relatively hard news station but it looks as if  Gwyneth is going to give more space to reflection and considered analysis.

"I want [Radio 4] to be more easily modern and forward looking and perhaps slightly more relaxed and more creative and to add that to the intellectual rigour,"