Our research also shows us that The Archers is one of the most popular programmes on air, with one of the loyalest audiences, so our strategy is to place The Archers at a time when it will prove a lure, not only to stay up late, but to carry on listening to the next programme.Caller: As a matter of interest, what is the next programme?Boyle: The Shipping Forecast.Caller: Why couldn't you leave The Archers where it is and move the Shipping Forecast to a daytime slot?Boyle: Because our research shows that the audience for the Shipping Forecast, which is very small but loyal, prefers to listen in the middle of the night.Caller: Why?Boyle: To keep awake and prevent their ships from running into things and sinking. Next?Caller: Mr Boyle, you have said publicly that Radio 4 listeners are choosers. They are selective.Boyle: That is so.Caller: You have also said that you want to lure Radio 4 listeners to listen to certain slots by dangling popular programmes in front of them so that they will listen to the succeeding programmes.Boyle: Certainly.Caller: How can Radio 4 listeners be choosers AND easily lured? It doesn't make sense.Boyle: Well, our research shows that Radio 4 listeners come from the upper age end of the population They are, to put it in English, older. This means that they can't move as fast as the rest of us, so when their favourite programme ends, it may be four or five minutes before they have clambered or manoeuvred their way across the room to the radio. By that time they may have got interested in the next programme.Caller: Or, of course, forgotten what they were coming across the kitchen to do, and go back again without switching off.Boyle: I'm glad you said that I didn't feel it was right for me to say so.
Next?Caller: Mr Boyle, are you the same Jimmy Boyle from Glasgow who was put in prison for murder and then became a sculptor?Boyle: No, I don't think so.Caller: Is that why you kept your name as James rather than Jimmy? To avoid confusion?Boyle: Yes. We've done a lot of research into this one, and we found that people didn't particularly want Radio 4 run by an ex-murderer and sculptor. Next, please.Caller: Why are you making the Today programme even longer?Boyle: Our research shows that it is one of the most popular programmes on air.Caller: Might it not be that it is only the listening slot that is popular? Might it not be that people tend to switch on the radio for the news, weather etc, more at that time than any other and will listen to anything that happens to be on, whether it is the Today programme or not? Might I also suggest that if the Today programme were truly popular, people would call it Today, and not the Today programme? Might I suggest that you try moving the Today programme to the Shipping Forecast slot and see which gets the better audience?Boyle: No, you may not. Next!Caller: Until recently I was working in Radio 4 programme production, but I was made redundant to help pay for all this revamping of Radio 4...Boyle: Next!You can get a transcript of this programme if you send lots of money to the BBC.. YOUR Iraq appeal has given me a sense of comfort that the people of Iraq are not forgotten. I lived in Iraq for 12 years, through the Iran and Gulf Wars. On 2 August 1990, during my school holiday, I woke up to hear that Iraq had invaded Kuwait.
The Iraqis I met could hardly believe what had happened or why The events after that are like a very bad nightmare. The Iraqis have not yet woken up from it. Sanctions were imposed, and all of us watched food and medicine becoming more and more scarce, more children becoming sick and dying, starvation becoming common People began to aim for getting through one day at a time. Ambitions of a good education changed to ambitions of providing food and not sleeping hungry every night.When the air-strikes arrived, slowly we could see the country collapsing Civil buildings were bombed Electricity, water and sewage works were bombed. Driving in the streets of Baghdad you lost count of the black cloths, with the a soldier's name printed in white, hanging over the walls of houses, a custom in Iraq when a soldier dies. The Iraqi government later announced victory on national Iraqi television, to the millions of people who were still crying over their dead loved ones.With the destruction of the essentials of health through the bombing - electricity stations, water purification plants and so on - more and more children began to die of diseases like diarrhoea.
