Radio 4 announces partnership with TED Talks

Collaboration begins in January

Sting at TED 2014 (TED, Ryan Lash )

The controller of BBC Radio 4 has appealed to the public and her BBC colleagues to recognise her network as a "modern" station as she unveiled a new collaboration with TED, the ideas-based conference organisation.

Radio 4 and its sister station Radio 4 Extra are to broadcast excerpts from TED Talks through a series called TED Radio Hour. In return, TED will host related content from the Radio 4 archive on its website. TED Talks, which can draw phenomenal audiences online, featured in the series include one from Sting, discussing the creative process and recalling delivering milk with his father, and a lecture by doctor Charles Limb talking about how the brain works during musical improvisation.

The collaboration with TED, which will begin on 4 January, is the latest in a series of initiatives designed to allow Radio 4 to grow on digital media platforms. Controller Gwyneth Williams said the deal with TED was "obvious" because "we have got to have a modern presence in the digital world". She recently commissioned the popular crime podcast Serial as a Radio 4 series.

Ms Williams, who has been controller of Radio 4 since 2010, told The Independent: "We have to stop thinking of Radio 4 as something that just carries on keeping listeners happy as they get increasingly older. In fact a quarter of our listeners are of the younger end."

Gwyneth Williams, the controller of Radio 4 BBC (BBC)

Radio 4 has maintained its average listening age at 55 despite an ageing population.

Ms Williams said: "I think we are such a natural fit for the digital world. The problem is a lot of people don't recognise this. They think Radio 4 will carry on doing their thing for their ageing listeners."

She said 25 per cent of Radio 4 listeners came from the "next generation", meaning they were aged between 35-50, and that "more or less" the entire audience were "digitally savvy".

But she needed to do more to change "the Radio 4 image", she said. "I'm proud of its history and tradition but it does not mean it's not modern. I want to think of Radio 4 as modern because it really is." Ms Williams said it was important that this was understood "both inside and outside the BBC".

She said she was hopeful that big name presenters on a network that includes Melvyn Bragg, Martha Kearney, Eddie Mair and Jane Garvey in its schedule, would act as ambassadors and "spread the word" for the network. "I would like to encourage them to do it but it's up to them."

From Sunday, Radio 4 will further develop its already formidable podcast offering by making The Archers available for download over a 30-day period instead of the current seven days.

Ms Williams rejected recent criticisms that recent Ambridge plot lines - such as a man being crushed by a bull - have become reminiscent of the TV series Dallas. The Archers team were "incredibly fastidious" in their research and "these accidents do happen in the country", she said. The Archers has a long history of high drama, including arson and kidnapping, she noted.

10. TED Lectures Free, ted.com Another one for the intellectual who doesn't want to venture into the autumn cold. TED showcases the best talks by the best minds from all over the world.

As for the recent outrage in sections of the press over her decision to commission Hilary Mantel's "The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher" as a Radio 4 Book at Bedtime, she is sticking to her guns. "She's a brilliant modern writer, of course Radio 4 is going to run her new short story collection. It's fiction and I think we are in a pre-election period. We at Radio 4 will carry on doing the very best that has been thought and said in the world and bring it to air."

As part of the BBC savings programme, Radio 4 has undergone the biggest cuts in its history. She admitted that one third of the schedule was now comprised of repeat programmes, and that audiences would be "surprised" by that. She recently axed consumer show Face The Facts and has taken the axe to Radio 4 Extra's original programming in order to protect the flagship network.

Ms Williams said she had brought science out of the margins of the schedule and into the "warp and weft" of Radio 4, which she said had been "too much mediated by arts graduates" in the past.

News 'must serve ethnic minorities better'

The BBC’s Director of News has claimed that “information inequality” in broadcasting is discriminating against poor young people of minority ethnic backgrounds in Britain.

James Harding said the inequality in coverage was more pronounced in national news and so he was extending local news bulletins. “Rich, old, white people are getting a better diet of news than poorer, younger and non-white people,” he said. “That’s increasingly true in national versus local news. Redressing the balance is one of the reasons we’ve doubled the regional news coverage in England in the 10 O’clock news hour in the months ahead of the election.”

Mr Harding warned politicians that BBC journalists would not be intimidated while covering the General Election campaign. “With an election year ahead, let me say that we need to stand firm – and we will – against any attempts to politicise our journalism. It is the BBC’s job to hold politicians to account – and asking difficult questions is not a form of attack.”

Ian Burrell