Jenny Abramsky: On the right wavelength

Who would want to listen to the radio when you can watch the war live on TV? Millions, Jenny Abramsky, the head of BBC radio and music, tells Louise Jury

During the last Gulf conflict, Jenny Abramsky had the idea of a rolling-news radio station to fill the gaps between bulletins for the families of the troops and anyone with an insatiable appetite for war. Scud FM – as Radio 4's News FM network was popularly known – was launched and broadcast 18 hours a day with the help of volunteers, including presenters such as John Humphrys and sports producers who were used to handling long live events. The experiment was deemed so successful that it led to the creation of Radio 5 Live, which celebrated its ninth birthday at the end of last month.

Today, Abramsky has risen from being head of news and current affairs to controlling the whole of BBC radio and music. In between, she thought she had broken the habit of listening to every news bulletin going, but now realises she was only in remission. Since the conflict in Iraq started, she has returned to being a news junkie.

The evidence is that her listeners have, too. While the 24-hour rolling-news channels with live footage from the front line may make television the obvious medium for those hungry for news, she contends that radio is holding its own.

Online listening for 5 Live has increased five-fold since the conflict began, and online figures have doubled for Radio 4. There are 2,000 internet messages arriving every day on Radio 4's message board. All the evidence suggests that radio is experiencing a surge in audiences similar to the increase that occurred in the wake of September 11. "You could say that September 11 was one of the most visual events there had ever been," she says. "But we had record figures." Radio 4 enjoyed its biggest audiences for a decade, with 10 million listeners, and Radio 5 Live attracted a record 6.2 million.

Radio receives its precise audience figures only quarterly, so the numbers of listeners during this conflict will not be known for some weeks. But Abramsky points out that not everyone has 24-hour TV news yet, and radio remains the portable medium. "People have a relationship with their radio station. It's their friend and companion," she says. "I've still not forgotten the e-mails Radio 1 got after September 11 – the sense of anxiety from young people faced with their own mortality, wanting to talk about it with the institution they related to. That is going on at the moment, too."

Abramsky, 56, has spent her entire career at the BBC and was in senior editorial roles during the Falklands war and the first Gulf conflict. Yet she says she has never known a war with such direct access to the battlefield. "That doesn't in itself mean it's more enlightening. You have to make sure that people stand back and the range of views is heard."

That task may be more difficult than it once was, given the proliferation of BBC radio services. Last year, it rolled out an extra five digital stations, providing everything from the best of vintage comedy (BBC7) to the Asian Network. She tried to use the extra spectrum given by the Government to serve audiences that the BBC had previously failed to address, particularly ethnic minorities. There was also an issue about the use of resources. "Radio has the most amazing archive, but, unlike on television, a lot of the programmes were only ever broadcast once."

But, most significantly, Abramsky believes the new digital services are vital to secure the future of the radio broadcasting industry. Staying analogue would restrict radio to a future in which it looked like an old medium, she says, because it would eventually lack the quality and ease of use that the public expects. But she feels that people will take up digital radio only if there are programmes they want to hear.

Anecdotally, the demand is there. Supplies of digital radios sell out as soon as they hit the shops, and 135,000 DAB (digital audio broadcasting) sets were sold in the run-up to Christmas. And she knows that there is a sizeable number of people who like the idea of the extra services – 5,000 people wrote to ask how they could get BBC7.

None the less, there are those who question the extension of these services, just as they question the BBC's digital TV services and its online empire. This focus on the corporation is likely to grow more intense in the run-up to charter renewal in 2006, but Abramsky is sanguine. "There's never a point at which we aren't under the microscope," she says.

And BBC radio, while still a poor relation to television, is in a healthy state. Satisfying audience figures have confirmed radio's standing in recent years, Abramsky says. "The figures have shown that the audience rather likes what we're doing."

In the nominations for the Sony awards, announced recently, Jonathan Ross, Terry Wogan, Mark Lamarr and Tim Westwood were among the BBC presenters to be shortlisted. BBC radio nabbed nominations in the news programme, news output, feature, drama and speech categories. And Radio 2 and Radio 4 are up against Classic FM for the honour of being named station of the year. Abramsky has every right to be chuffed.

Yet, strangely, she is quite defensive and believes that many people still do not grasp the breadth of what is on offer. That may not matter at present, when the resurgence in radio – people are watching less television but listening to more radio – makes the BBC look buoyant and much-loved. But when digital radio takes off, she predicts that there will be twice as many commercial radio stations as there are now. The BBC's five national networks will be up against perhaps 10 national radio stations, compared with the current three.

She knows that it will then be a much tougher game to play. But Abramsky can play tough when she has to. Though as nice as pie, she is clearly willing and able to fight her corner. And however unassuming she seems when she is curled up on her office sofa, espousing the virtues of the comedy Dead Ringers, she certainly will fight for radio. She loves it. "I have the nicest job in the BBC," she says.