Nigel Morgan wrote:



What gets my goat more than anything (and yes, I totally agree the BBC
forecasts are a VERY poor shadow of what they used to be in the days of
Bert Ford and Jack Scott) is the now mandatory FIVE MINUTES or more of the
BBC blowing its own trumpet at 18:55pm (and I suspect at many other times
during the day as well) by showing shedloads of unwarranted and largely
ignored marathon trailers for its own rubbish programmes. I counted EIGHT
in succession the other evening!

I thought the license charter says "NO ADVERTISING": shame it doesn't say
anything about trumpet blowing!! This slot used to be one of the few if
not the only time in the day when enough time was allocated to give
something approaching a decent forecast. But alas, blowing its own trumpet
is now considered more important by the BBC management than providing what
it started out doing in 1922 i.e. giving a SERVICE to the public!

Over 50 years ago, on the Home Service near eight o'clock in the morning,
the weather forecast used to last five minutes and was a script read by an
announcer - similar to the Shipping Forecast. However, nearby in the
schedule was Programme Parade, a five-minute programme of radio highlights
for the remainder of the day. So what's new?

Other highlights of the morning were Lift Up Your Hearts - the 5-minute
God-slot, and the Radio Doctor. I remember the latter answering a worried
mother that her son would eat nothing but beans on toast. He told her not
to worry as baked beans were full of nutrition and roughage (they didn't
talk about being "high in fibre" in those days). So Mums were worried that
kids were into "junk food" in those days - except it wasn't junk.

--
Graham Davis
Bracknell
It was raining cats and dogs and I fell in a poodle. - Chic
Murray(1919-1985)