Radio remains remarkably healthy in Britain. Around 88% of adults listen every week, a figure that has held up far better than print or linear television, and the BBC’s national stations are organised in a way that has no American equivalent.
The BBC stations
They are split by genre, nationally, rather than by city:
- Radio 1 — new and chart music, aimed at under-35s. Its Live Lounge sessions are a national institution.
- Radio 2 — the most listened-to station in Europe. Broad popular music for an older audience.
- Radio 3 — classical, jazz, opera and arts.
- Radio 4 — speech only. News, drama, comedy, documentary and discussion.
- Radio 5 Live — rolling news and sport.
- 6 Music — alternative and archive music, saved from closure in 2010 by a public campaign after the BBC proposed shutting it.
- Plus Asian Network, national stations for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and around forty local stations.
Radio 4
The station that most puzzles visitors, because there is nothing like it. It is entirely speech, it carries no advertising, and its schedule runs from news to radio drama to panel comedy to a fifteen-minute short story without apology.
Its fixtures are genuinely part of national life:
- Today — the flagship morning news programme, where cabinet ministers are interrogated before eight and the results make the day’s headlines.
- The Archers — a rural drama running since 1951, the longest-running drama in the world.
- Desert Island Discs — since 1942. A guest chooses eight records, a book and a luxury for a desert island. The interviews are frequently the most revealing a public figure ever gives.
- The Now Show, The News Quiz, I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue — comedy formats with decades of history.
The Shipping Forecast
Four times a day, Radio 4 reads gale warnings and sea conditions for 31 sea areas around the British Isles, in a fixed format and a strictly limited vocabulary: Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, Forties, Cromarty, Forth, Tyne, Dogger.
Almost nobody listening is at sea. It has become something else entirely — a soothing, near-liturgical recitation of place names that people fall asleep to, and one of the most loved things the BBC does. The late-night broadcast is followed by Sailing By, a piece of music chosen partly because it is easy to identify in poor reception.
Commercial radio
Dominated by two groups. Global runs Heart, Capital, Classic FM, Smooth and LBC; Bauer runs Absolute, Magic, Kiss and the Hits network. LBC is the significant one editorially — a national phone-in and talk station whose interviews frequently make news.
Most listening is now digital, through DAB radios, smart speakers and phones, though FM has repeatedly outlived predictions of its switch-off.