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Today programme

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This article refers to the BBC radio programme; for the NBC Today Show see The Today Show

Today, commonly referred to as the Today programme to avoid ambiguity, is BBC Radio 4's long-running early morning news and current affairs programme, which is now broadcast from 6am to 9am from Monday to Friday and from 7am to 9am on Saturdays. It is also the most popular programme on Radio 4. It consists of regular news bulletins, serious but often confrontational political interviews and in-depth reports.

Contents

[edit] History

Today was launched on the BBC's Home Service on October 28, 1957 as a programme of "topical talks" to give listeners a morning alternative to light music. It was initially broadcast as two 20-minute editions slotted in around the existing news bulletins and religious items. In 1963 it became part of the BBC's Current Affairs department, and it started to become more news-oriented. The two editions also became longer, and by the end of the 1960s it had become a single two-hour long programme that enveloped the news bulletins and the religious talk that had become Thought for the Day. It was cut back to two parts in 1976-1978, but was swiftly returned to its former position.

Jack de Manio became its principal presenter in 1958. He became notorious for on-air gaffes. In 1970 the programme format was changed so that there were two presenters each day. De Manio left in 1971 and, by 1975, the team of John Timpson and Brian Redhead was well established.

This arrangement lasted until Timpson's retirement in 1986, when John Humphrys and Sue MacGregor joined the rotating list of presenters. After Redhead's untimely death on 23 January 1994, James Naughtie became a member of the team. Sarah Montague replaced MacGregor in 2002. Edward Stourton and Carolyn Quinn are also regular presenters of the show. Other more occasional presenters include the BBC's Stephen Sackur, Tim Franks and Justin Webb.

The show reached a peak in terms of influence in the 1980s, when prime minister Margaret Thatcher was a noted listener. Ministers thus became keen to go on the programme and be heard by their leader; but the tough, confrontational interviewing style they encountered led to accusations that the BBC was biased. Criticism was particularly directed against Redhead, who was widely seen as being on the left. The style of the male interviewers was analysed and contrasted with that of MacGregor, who was alleged to be giving subjects an easier time. The "big 8.10" interview that follows the 8 o'clock news remains an important institution of British politics to this day.

[edit] Notable features

Today regularly holds an end-of-year poll. For many years this took the form of write-in votes for the Man and Woman of the Year. This was stopped after an episode of organised vote-rigging in 1990, but was soon revived as a telephone vote for a single Personality of the Year. A further episode of vote-rigging, in favour of Tony Blair in 1996, forced the programme-makers to consider more innovative polling questions. In 2004 listeners nominated candidates for a peerage, in 2005 the question was set of 'Who Runs Britain?'.

Since 1970 the programme has featured Thought for the Day, in which a speaker reflects on topical issues from a theological viewpoint. Notable contributors to the slot include Rabbi Lionel Blue and Richard Harries, the Bishop of Oxford. Over the years the slot has featured an increasing number of speakers from religions other than Christianity, though Christian speakers remain in a substantial majority. In August 2002 University of Oxford professor Richard Dawkins gave a non religious humanist thought for the day, however this did not replace the regular thought and was broadcast an hour later as an alternative thought.

The programme has a regular slot for sports news and items between 26 and 30 minutes past each hour. It is an established in-joke that that the presenters will pour scorn on the reliability of the programme's racing tipster.

Journalist and historian Peter Hennessy has asserted in several books that one of the tests that the commander of a British nuclear-missile submarine must use to determine whether the UK has been the target of a nuclear attack (in which case he has sealed orders which may authorise him to fire his nuclear missiles in retalliation) is to listen for the presence of Today on Radio 4's frequencies. If a certain number of days pass without the programme being broadcast, that is to be taken as evidence that the envelope may be opened. The true conditions are of course secret, and Hennessy has never revealed his sources for this story, leading Paul Donovan, author of a book about Today, to express some scepticism about it. However, the longwave signal of Radio 4 is capable of penetrating to depths where submarines normally operate, although it does not have the range required to be heard at this depth far from the UK's coastal waters.

[edit] Controversy

Today found itself in the midst of controversy again in 2002, when its editor Rod Liddle wrote a column in The Guardian that was extremely critical of the Countryside Alliance and which raised questions about his own impartiality. In the article, he wrote that catching "a glimpse of the forces supporting the Countryside Alliance: the public schools that laid on coaches; the fusty, belch-filled dining rooms of the London clubs that opened their doors, for the first time, to the protesters; the Prince of Wales and, of course, Camilla ... and suddenly, rather gloriously, it might be that you remember (why you voted Labour) once again." He eventually resigned from his post on Today.

In the summer of 2003, the Today programme once again found itself at the centre of allegations of political bias, this time against a Labour government. The controversy arose after Today broadcast a report by its correspondent Andrew Gilligan. The report alleged that a dossier the British Government had produced to convince the British public of the need to invade Iraq was deliberately exaggerated, and that the government had known this prior to publishing it. In his live 2-way (interview with presenter John Humphrys) just after 6.07 a.m., Gilligan asserted that the Government "probably knew" that one of the main claims in its dossier "was wrong". Gilligan's anonymous source for the claim was Dr David Kelly, a key adviser on biological weapons who had worked in Iraq - though it was never established whether Dr Kelly had actually used the words Gilligan attributed to him.

In the furore that followed Gilligan's report, David Kelly's name became public and he was forced to appear before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. Shortly afterwards he committed suicide. In the ensuing public inquiry (the Hutton Inquiry) that reported in January 2004, the BBC was heavily criticised. This led to the resignation of the BBC's Chairman Gavyn Davies and Director-General (equivalent to Chief Executive) Greg Dyke; Andrew Gilligan also resigned.

[edit] Message board

The Today programme message boards starting in 2001 and was one of the most successful (albeit often controversial) political message boards on the BBC website. It grew in success until between 2 Nov 2005 and 10 November 2006 it had some 17890 separate discussion threads on the "Home News" forum, with one discussion on the "The strange logic of anti-war types" having over 3000 separate posts. In addition to the highly successful "Home News" forum there were four other forums with 2886 (International News), 2505 (The Green Room), 498 (Parliament) & 386 (Business & Economy) separate threads respectively.<ref>2 Nov 2005-13 Nove 2006</ref>

Controversy

The management of the board has been controversial. Although the BBC have stated that their web based services are built "around user-generated content".<ref> Gaurdian April 2005 [1]</ref> On 31 August 2004 the BBC closed their general debate forum: "The Great Debate" despite recognising that "The Great Debate has been very popular and encourages a high quality of debate".<ref>The Great Debate is closing pip - HOST - 1725th post - 25 Aug 2004 13:49</ref> Users were still able to initiate their own discussion on the other Today forums, but on the 9 November 2006 the BBC announced that as of 16 November (the day after the Queen's speech[2] which usually triggered enormous numbers of discussions on the board) it was banning user initiated discussion threads. The message annoucing these 'Changes to messageboard' to only allow messageboard hosts (BBC News journalists) to initiate new topics, did itself generate a huge discussion (some 511 replies in 4 days not counting the other numerous discussions that were initiated on the subject). Typical of the reaction to this change was:

"Yes it looks like they are only going to allow discussions to be discussed that they want discussed, inconvenient views that don't fall into line with the establishments won't be permitted." (i.moore)
"tough times coming up for the government - with criminal proscecution in the offing for the PM , and all sorts of inquiries into Iraq possible in America , and people coming out of the woodwork here to dish the dirt on dodgy dossiers etc, the BBC probably got cold feet about what people might be saying in months to come on these boards." (lucíllã døry)
However a minority of posters felt that:
"It's high-time the BBC did something like this. Many have noticed that Today's boards are too obsessed with anti-government propganda and Mulism-bashing....it is driving people away from them who may otherwise have commented and had things to say"(darryl)

Many users were already unhappy with the Today board resulting in several alternative message boards being set up such as JamesStGeorge & Freespeech. Some other users have changed to other boards such as the Guardian Newspaper's Guardian Talk.

[edit] Presenters

[edit] Editors

[edit] Guest Editors

Beginning in 2003 for over one week at the end of December guest editors have been invited to commission items for one edition of the programme. These usually reflect their social or cultural interests and at the end of each edition the guest editor is interviewed by a member of the regular presenting team about the experience.

2003 Guest Editors

2004 Guest Editors

2005 Guest Editors

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  • Ash, Russell (2005). The Top 10 of Everything 2006. Dorling Kindersley. ISBN 1-4053-1068-5.
  • Paul Donovan: All Our Todays: Forty Years of Radio 4's "Today" Programme; London, Jonathan Cape, 1997; ISBN 0-224-04358-7 (revised paperback edition is ISBN 0-09-928037-X)
  • Peter Hennessy: Muddling Through: Power, Politics and the Quality of Government in Postwar Britain; London, Victor Gollancz, 1996; ISBN 057506361
  • Peter Hennessy: The Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War; London, Allen Lane the Penguin Press, 2002; ISBN 0-7139-9626-9

[edit] External links

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