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Let's unleash the BBC's potential to combat fake news and help Global Britain

2020-07-23T10:23:09+00:00

By acting now, we can ensure fair and free news - along with Britain's voice and values - continue to resonate powerfully around the world

The past few months have proved just how priceless are the values of traditional journalism in the ‘fake news’ age. Two forces in particular have brought this home in no uncertain terms.

First, the massive “infodemic” of online misinformation that has grown up alongside the coronavirus crisis. The problem is so severe that, even if a safe and effective vaccine is found, global health leaders warn that the drowning out of reliable, authoritative guidance could dramatically hinder take up.

Second, the growing use of disinformation as a tool for democratic disruption. This week’s report into Russia’s activity in the UK has laid the stakes bare. For the state-backed actors of Russia and China, the provision of news is first and foremost an extension of state influence.

The warning bells ring loud and clear. Last year, Russia’s RT was fined for serious and repeated breaches of our impartiality rules. Earlier this month, we learned that China’s English-language news network, CGTN, could be banned from the UK for similar breaches.

For the BBC, the result has been audiences flocking to us in their millions in search of trusted news and information. And not just at home, but right around the world.

Today, we are releasing new figures which show that our audience has soared to a record 468 million people outside the UK every week. Whatever your views on the BBC, it’s a reminder that we are without question one of Britain’s strongest and best-known brands, synonymous with quality and accuracy worldwide. Our international news services rank first for trust and reliability. Our World Service remains a beacon of democratic values and a lifeline for millions living in fear, captivity or uncertainty.

This is not simply Britain’s gift to the world. Independent research shows that there is an exceptionally high correlation between places where people are aware of the BBC and places where people think positively about the UK. More than that, the BBC helps UK trade.

This has perhaps never been more important. The UK will forge a new relationship with the world in the decade ahead, built on an ambitious vision of ‘Global Britain’. Success will mean drawing on all our considerable international assets, and that means unleashing the full global potential of the BBC.

The Government has long recognised the BBC’s vital role in helping to enhance Britain’s reputation and influence around the world. This is why, four years ago, it agreed to make its largest-ever increase in investment in the World Service.

That funding of £86 million a year has allowed us to complete the World Service’s biggest expansion since the Second World War. We now operate in 42 languages from Korean to Punjabi to Pidgin. We have opened new and expanded bureaux in locations from Delhi to Bangkok to Belgrade.

The result is that we have been able to step up the fight against fake news worldwide and support democracy on the front line. That’s meant journalists on the ground during elections in countries like Nigeria and India, calling out fictions and fact-checking disputed issues in real time. It’s meant world-class investigative journalism from teams like Africa Eye, created to hold power to account across the African continent.

In Khartoum, it was Africa Eye’s investigation into last year’s massacre of peaceful protestors, based on painstaking analysis of more than 300 pieces of mobile phone footage, that revealed it was possibly ordered by Sudan’s military rulers. In Baghdad, it was a BBC Arabic investigation that exposed Shia clerics advising men in how to abuse young girls. In Kashmir, we were able to respond to an India-imposed media blackout by extending our short wave radio services in three languages.

None of this would have happened without BBC teams on the ground. And by working with partner organisations and local independent journalists to promote the highest journalistic standards, our teams also play a vital role in helping to train journalists around the world and turn the tide on fake news.

It doesn’t stop there. Just this month we announced that the Trusted News Initiative – an international partnership of major news and tech organisations, convened and led by the BBC – will focus on fighting disinformation during the US election. This in a country where a recent Reuters Institute study found BBC News to be more trusted than all major US news providers.

All this takes place against the backdrop of a growing battle for global influence, in which news provision has emerged as the key weapon. The first years of this new decade will decide which competing vision of the future of news will triumph: the fake, or the fair and free.

This is a race that the UK is well-placed to win. The BBC is its priceless asset; the pre-eminent provider to the world of facts you can trust. What we have achieved with our additional investment has proved how far we can extend the reach of Britain’s democratic influence and amplify our global voice. It has also shown how much further we can go.

When I became BBC Director General in 2013, I set the challenge of doubling our global audience to reach 500 million people by our centenary in 2022. We are more than on track to achieve that goal. Now I have announced a redoubling of our ambition. The BBC has plans in place to reach a global audience of one billion people by the end of the decade.

We are consulting closely with Government on how further investment could realise those plans and help strengthen Britain’s democratic influence worldwide. We need to seize this moment. Get it right and we have a chance to send out a clear signal about the UK’s place in the world at a crucial time. By acting now, we can help ensure that Britain’s voice and values will continue to resonate powerfully around the globe in the next decade and beyond.

This article originally appeared in The Daily Telegraph

The BBC is committed to arts and classical

2020-06-05T07:50:15+00:00

Eleven weeks ago, the BBC launched Culture in Quarantine - a broadcast and digital festival of the arts during a time of national lockdown. Since then we have been working tirelessly, collaborating with almost every major arts organisation as well as many smaller institutions. The result has been a remarkable roll-call of fast-turnaround programmes and events.

It has brought us everything from World Book Night and the Big Book Weekend to Friday dance classes with the Birmingham Royal Ballet and National Dance Company Wales; from #MuseumFromHome and Headlong’s Unprecedented theatre project to Women of the World and our Get Creative at Home masterclasses.

Our bespoke programming has included BBC Four’s Museums in Quarantine and BBC Two’s Lockdown Culture with Mary Beard, showcasing exclusive new work from major artists such as Margaret Atwood and Martin Scorsese. And there has been a daily schedule of Culture in Quarantine classical music programming on Radio 3, with the BBC Orchestras and Choirs, and the continuing support and coverage of Front Row and other topical shows on Radio 4.

At the start, the goal was simple. As exhibitions were shuttered, performances postponed, and access to the country’s cultural wealth curtailed, we wanted to keep the arts alive in people’s homes. And because we knew the impact on cultural organisations, freelance artists, and the wider arts community would be immeasurable, we wanted to do so in a way that could support the sector as much as possible.

The route ahead

Like many, I began by looking forward to the day the doors of UK cultural institutions would swing open once again and we could pick up as before. And like many I was quickly forced to realise that there will be no return to ‘culture as usual’.

While the weeks ahead may see many forms of retail opening again, culture will effectively remain in quarantine for some time. We will be living with the repercussions of this period for many years to come, and it’s already clear that certain parts of the sector will be more severely affected than others. Many theatres have had to face up to the fact they are unlikely to be able to produce new work until the second half of 2021. For some the consequences will be devastating.

What is heartening - and this is something that couldn’t be taken for granted - is how strong the public appetite for cultural experience has proved. Whether on the BBC or global platforms like the National Theatre’s YouTube channel, audience figures for cultural content are sky high. Book sales are up. And more people are creating at home than ever before.

Last month, our call for the public to join forces with BBC musicians in a ‘lockdown orchestra’ inspired over 1,500 video submissions in a single week. BBC Four’s Life Drawing Live saw over 26,000 people uploading pictures in just a few hours. Half a million people watched Museums in Quarantine while Museum from Home brought 75,000 visits to the site in one day.

The biggest challenge for the world of arts and culture isn’t a question of public appetite then, but of recovery and, in some cases, survival. Culture in Quarantine was set up as a short-term initiative to deal with the crisis as it unfolded day-by-day. But even as this first phase of lockdown comes to an end, it is clear that the role of the BBC remains as important as ever in serving audiences, supporting new work, and reflecting what is being done by cultural organisations and individuals across the UK.

The last three months have been defined by a spirit of co-creation - curating, commissioning, and producing with other organisations. As the whole cultural sector tries to get through the next few years, these new ways of working together need to become the norm. The collaboration must continue. And the BBC needs to be more, rather than less, present in the lives of artists and arts organisations in the future.

Imagine: This House Is Full Of Music

The second phase of Culture in Quarantine

What does this mean for Culture in Quarantine? In short, it will continue. So much is still uncertain, but I see it running in three phases through the year.

The first phase has been defined by frenetic activity and lo-fi ‘lockdown production’ methods. The results have been extraordinary, with highlights such as Headlong’s Unprecedented proving to be outstanding examples of what is now called ‘lockdown art’. But this phase is now coming to an end as certain forms of broadcast activity become possible once more.

The second phase of Culture in Quarantine will run through the summer. Last week we announced that the Proms will go ahead with a fantastic programme of new concerts in August and September - while adhering to social distancing guidelines. This week Radio 3 brought back live classical music to the nation with a series of twenty special concerts from Wigmore Hall that will run throughout June in the Lunchtime Concert slot.

During this time we will also broadcast the Lockdown Theatre Festival on Radio 3 and Radio 4, and a weekend of broadcast and digital activity supporting the spirit of the Edinburgh Festivals. And at the end of the month the BBC is recreating The Glastonbury Experience on air over the Glastonbury weekend, with classic performances from previous years.

Now we can announce that Radio 3 and BBC Four will broadcast the Royal Opera House’s first performances since lockdown with Tony Pappano. Radio 3 will broadcast the first concert live on 13 June. And in July, after the rebroadcast of Pappano’s acclaimed Opera Italia series, BBC Four will broadcast highlights from all three Royal Opera House performances. Alongside this, as part of a wider focus on opera, a number of performances will be made available on iPlayer from opera houses who have had to cancel their runs due to the present restrictions. They will include The Barber of Seville from Glyndebourne and The Turn of the Screw and The Marriage of Figaro from Garsington, and a performance filmed from backstage in La Traviata from Opera North.

We’ll also have a major new Beethoven series on BBC Four and a pre-lockdown performance from the Royal Opera House of Fidelio. This programming will join the wider pan-BBC Beethoven focus in the lead up to the BBC Proms and a Beethoven moment on the first night. BBC Radio 3 will also be broadcasting an audio drama of Beethoven with Peter Capaldi confirmed as the great composer, as well as regular composer of the weeks from Donald Macleod, essays and more.

We’re also delighted to have some stand-out classical documentaries on television. Sheku Kanneh-Mason and his family’s lockdown experience will be featured in a new Imagine on BBC One presented by Alan Yentob which was shot remotely and will lead up to a concert that the talented family perform in the absence of open concert halls. To mark the retirement of one of the world’s most admired conductors, John Bridcut’s film for BBC Four, Bernard Haitink In His Own Words, will explore the secrets of the conductor’s art with Haitink himself and the international musicians who’ve worked with him in his 65-year career. And BBC Four will air Britten on Camera in coordination with the Aldeburgh Festival.

Meanwhile, BBC Children’s will be launching a huge focus on Shakespeare in partnership with the Royal Shakespeare Company as part of BBC Bitesize Daily, our biggest ever push on education. It will see famous RSC actors including Niamh Cusack, Bally Gill, Natalie Simpson and Jamie Wilkes do readings for schoolchildren and will include special online lessons.

Phase 3: Raising the ambition

The third phase of Culture in Quarantine will begin in the autumn. We will continue to run the BBC Arts and iPlayer pages as we have been the last few months, under the title of Culture in Quarantine, and ensure that our regular cultural programmes stay on air whether from living rooms or safe and appropriate spaces. And we will continue to launch new initiatives and programmes designed to connect audiences with the cultural experiences they need.

Meanwhile, BBC Radio 3 will keep its crusade to keep live classical music alive in a time of closed venues. Following the success of the Wigmore Hall live concerts, we will return to the venue again for more specially-created live performances after the Proms Season.

But we want to raise our ambition still higher. That means building even further on some of the collaborations we began over the last few months, including special projects focused on museums and galleries, the performing arts, and the world of books and poetry.

In many cases the public will remain unable to return to the cultural spaces they love, but they will still crave the experiences they used to find there. And they will more and more expect high-quality production to return to our televisions and devices. Our goal will be to rise to this challenge, and harness and reward the increased spirit of cultural participation we have seen over the last months.

The programme is still developing, but I want to pick out two important initiatives. Off the back of the Proms, we plan to launch a new online classical experience to open up access to the BBC’s unique archives. Listeners will be able to explore hundreds of performances in our classical treasure-trove, and delve deeper into the music and composers behind them through episodes of Composer of the Week, The Listening Service and many more.

I can also announce that we’re starting work now on a landmark, seven-part new arts series for 2021. It will be our follow up to Civilisations, which has now become the most-watched arts programme of the last 50 years with nearly 5 million requests to view on iPlayer alone. The Making of Us: The History of British Creativity will be told through a wide cast of artists, makers, creators, and historians who will explore the artistic revolutions that have driven the nation’s story over the last thousand years.

I’m proud of what the BBC has achieved during this crisis, hand-in-glove with the whole cultural sector. It has been a period of incredible invention by artists and arts organisations, but the fact that the BBC can connect their work with our audiences has proved hugely powerful.

It has left me more convinced than ever that the BBC has an essential role to play as ringmaster and champion for the arts in this country. In a period of extreme difficulty, we must work harder than ever to secure the future of British creativity and support the arts and artists that make British culture the envy of the world.

Top Gear will help us kick-start TV production after the Covid crisis

2020-05-14T11:00:00+00:00

The UK’s film and television industry has long been the jewel in the crown of our creative sector. It’s a unique national asset which allows us to punch way above our weight worldwide. As the Coronavirus struck, it was the fastest growing part of the British economy.

Since then, TV production has been forced to an abrupt halt. Filming has paused on big BBC shows like Line Of Duty, Peaky Blinders and Call the Midwife. We have cut back on broadcasts of EastEnders while new episodes could not be made, just as ITV has done with Coronation Street. Live events have been postponed or cancelled, leaving huge holes in the schedules. Collapsing ad revenues have brought major challenges to the wider market.

As the UK takes its first tentative steps to ease the lockdown the question is: what can we do to kick-start the TV industry and support our brilliant production sector nationwide?

At the BBC, we’re determined to do everything we can. We’ve been looking very carefully at how we can safely put some of our shows back into production, and I’m pleased to announce that we plan to begin filming again on both EastEnders and Top Gear by the end of next month. We’re also exploring ways to re-start filming on more dramas and other major BBC shows as soon as possible.

This is great news for viewers, but it’s also essential for the success of the many independent companies around the country who make these programmes and who have felt the economic shockwaves of this pandemic. It’s a sign of what we do to support this sector in every part of the UK that getting our shows back on the road will include filming from Cardiff to Dumbarton, Birmingham to Belfast.

Of course, we will be working within government guidelines. Crews will be strictly limited. Cast members will do their own hair and make-up. Social distancing measures will be in place. The filming now underway on our new productions of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads monologues is showing what’s possible under Covid-19 restrictions. The BBC’s coverage of VE Day and this week’s Hospital specials from the coronavirus front line are examples of how well we can rise to the creative and technical challenge.

We want to serve our audiences and help TV production get back on its feet, but the number one priority will remain the safety and well-being of production teams and those who work with them.

That’s why the UK broadcasters and independent producers are working together. We want to work out how we can produce great programmes in the weeks and months ahead. We’ve made a start but we will need to think more about what we can do differently.

How we make shows will continue to evolve in the months ahead as lockdown restrictions are eased and government advice develops. But we all want the whole industry to safely return to production. Our shared goal is to find new ways of working to help fire up the engines of British TV production - safely and sensibly.

The BBC is determined to do all we can to support this aim. We have always been the cornerstone of the UK’s creative strength – the lead investor in, and platform for, British voices and talent across the UK. But delivering on our remit to make world-class content for all audiences depends on a thriving and diverse independent production sector.

That’s why within a week of lockdown we donated £700,000 to support The Film and TV Charity to help freelancers affected by the hiatus in filming and production. Within two weeks we produced a five-point plan designed to maintain the health and viability of our producers in all parts of the UK during a period of unprecedented disruption.

This package of measures included a doubling of investment in our Small Indie Fund – from £1 million to £2 million. This supports small and emerging British producers, two-thirds of which are from around the UK’s nations and regions and a quarter of which have diverse leadership. Our measures also targeted support towards the most vulnerable companies and those most immediately affected by lockdown. And they included a plan to supercharge development by injecting more money into keeping the pipeline of quality ideas and programmes flowing in both the short and the long term.

I am proud of how the whole sector has responded to the Covid-19 crisis. Like others, the BBC has had to improvise, experiment and reprioritise to keep services up and running. We have worked hard to provide audiences with not only the news and information they need, but the comfort and companionship they value.

Shows like The Repair Shop, Race Across The World, Masterchef and The Great British Sewing Bee have all achieved their highest ever audiences. Dramas like Normal People and Killing Eve have provided must-watch escapism for millions. The Graham Norton Show, The Ranganation, Have I Got News For You and the Mash Report have all adapted to lockdown to provide much-needed humour and entertainment.

It’s a reminder not only of the creative excellence of the UK’s television industry, but also of its importance to British audiences. Now is the time to make sure that this remarkable national success story, built on a thriving independent production sector reaching every corner of the UK, can continue through the coronavirus crisis and beyond.

This piece first appeared in The Telegraph on Thursday 14 May 2020.

From in the room to on the air: new theatre, arts and museums programmes as part of Culture in Quarantine

2020-04-30T11:00:00+00:00

From the many Shakespeare plays that this blog highlighted last week as part of BBC Arts’ Culture in Quarantine, I’m delighted this week to announce that we’ll be broadcasting more contemporary plays as part of our virtual repertory theatre giving audiences contemporary plays that they aren’t able to see as a result of the pandemic.

Like other parts of the BBC, BBC Radio 4 is finding new ways to team up with cultural institutions and bring artistic experiences into people’s homes as part of Culture in Quarantine. We, along with our colleagues at BBC Radio 3 and BBC Arts, are particularly pleased to be bringing listeners broadcasts of great stage plays that had runs cut short as part of Lockdown Theatre Festival.

The project was created by actor Bertie Carvel and we’ll be broadcasting the plays on Radio 4 and Radio 3 on Saturday 13 and Sunday 14 June.It’s wonderful to be able to provide a new or different lease of life to these works whilst they can’t be on stage and bring them to a wide audience. The plays are: The Mikvah Project by Josh Azouz and originally showing at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, Love Love Love by Mike Bartlett recently revived for Lyric, Hammersmith Theatre, Rockets And Blue Lights by Winsome Pinnock - sadly suspended before its world premiere planned at Manchester’s Royal Exchange, and Shoe Lady by E.V. Crowe - cut short into its run at the Royal Court Theatre.

Josh Zaré in The Mikvah Project, Rachael Stirling, Nicholas Burns, Isabella Laughland in Love Love Love, Rochelle Rose and Karl Collins in Rockets & Blue Lights, Katherine Parkinson in Shoe Lady.

On the project, Bertie Carvel told us: “All this work was going to waste! I wanted to create a cultural snapshot for posterity, because who knows what the future holds? Theatres up and down the country are facing an existential crisis. I hope Lockdown Theatre Festival will demonstrate our community’s positivity and resilience - but also shine a light on the challenges we face.”

Those involved in these plays, such as cast including Katherine Parkinson, Nicholas Burns, Karl Collins, Rachael Stirling and more, are rising to the challenge of doing something different. We are not simply broadcasting an existing audio recording taken from rehearsals or performances. Instead actors will record ‘down the line’ from isolation, drawing on the muscle memory of fully realised stage productions to reimagine their performances for the radio. Whilst it will be a different experience to going to a theatre, we hope they will be a reminder of the magic of live theatre and how precious it is, as well as a wonderful piece of audio in their own right. Produced by Jeremy Mortimer, a Reduced Listening production for Radio 3 and Radio 4.

Another programme I’m really pleased to be bringing to Radio 4 as part of this drive to ensure culture remains in the nation’s homes during lockdown is a special series with eminent historian Simon Schama. Following his project for BBC Four as part of Museum in Quarantine, he will take Radio 4 listeners on The Great Gallery Tours of four world class galleries, explaining their unique significance and why they draw him back time and again. Through the series Simon will share works which have moved him, such as Manet’s glorious A Bar at the Folies-Bergère from the Courtauld Gallery, London.

He’ll virtually visit the Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands, home to many paintings by Rembrandt, an artist much revered (and studied by Simon) who will look at both the artist’s grand and intimate works. In Madrid’s Prado Museum, we encounter Velazquez and Goya, and Edward Hopper’s A Woman in the Sun at the Whitney, New York. At each stage we also hear from the directors and curators of these museums as they reflect upon the current circumstances. Simon Schama: The Great Gallery Tours will begin 16:00 on Monday 13 July and is produced by Susan Marling, at Just Radio Productions for Radio 4.

At a time when galleries around the globe have closed their doors, Simon Schama will remind us of some of the stories and treasures they hold. This will sit alongside The Way I See It, a radiophonic art exhibition of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, featuring leading creatives including Roxane Gay, John Walters, Margaret Cho and Fiona Shaw; which first aired on Radio 3 and - with museums closed - we’re broadcasting on Radio 4 bringing it to our audience as well.

We asked Simon why he was so keen to be involved in the project he said: "Like many of you I'm badly missing the joy of museums and galleries during the lockdown. So I'm really delighted to be able to talk about four of my favourite treasure-houses of great art - the Prado, the Courtauld Collection; the Rijksmuseum and the Whitney in New York, and to convey in full-colour radio the transforming power of some of their greatest paintings.”

As Simon says, we know how much culture means to our audience. Our regular programmes such as Front Row are doing a brilliant job at continuing to bring the arts into people’s home. The team has risen to the challenge presented by lockdown, employing technical wizardry to connect with creatives, where ever they may be in the world. In the coming week, Front Row features music from Nicola Benedetti and Artist in Residence during lockdown, Víkingur Ólafsson performing Philip Glass from the Harpa Concert Hall in Rejkyavik. The programme also welcomes actor Emma Thompson, writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce, director Damien Chazelle, and we look ahead to a special extended edition on Friday 8 May with Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller.

We have wanted to look at other ways too that we could support institutions in getting to the public. As part of the Culture in Quarantine initiative, the BBC has a special role at the moment in giving the audience access to artistic treasures, working with theatre productions and museums to bring listeners some joy and delight, and enabling institutions to give us all a reminder of the nourishment that arts and culture can give us now, during the pandemic, and in the future when the world starts to return to something that approximates to normal…whatever that will be.

BBC Local Radio’s most successful campaign to date

2020-04-27T10:30:00+00:00

In a month that has seen the world go into lockdown - I think it’s important to reflect on the pure human kindness that has emerged from across England recently.

BBC Local Radio launched the Make A Difference campaign on Tuesday 17 March, and it has been the most successful campaign for BBC Local Radio ever.

The stations have taken over 300,000 calls and texts from listeners, and reporting on stories such as Captain Tom Moore, has helped unearth a story that has captured the nation, resulting in raising over £26 million for the NHS and key workers.

While the BBC has been reporting on hard news as well as keeping the nation entertained, BBC Local radio has been connecting communities, serving those in need, recognising key workers and continuing to be the friend it is to so many.

I am so proud of our teams, in the office, working from home and out on the road, who are continuing to keep their shows going and keeping some kind of normality.

One month in, I wanted to take the opportunity to look back at some of the remarkable stories that have emerged from our stations:

BBC Three Counties Radio discovered the story that’s captured the nation of Captain Tom Moore who set out to do 100 laps of his garden before he turns 100 on April 30, and in doing so raise money for the NHS. His target was £1000 and he has to date raised over £26 million.
BBC Radio Devon ran a story on the rise of domestic abuse during lockdown, which resulted in a fourteen year-old boy walking to the station in his pyjamas. He had very sadly not left his bedroom for nearly a week because of some issues that he had been facing at home.
Gary Barlow thanked BBC Radio Merseyside and all radio stations broadcasting during the coronavirus crisis in a chat with presenter Sean Styles. Speaking about his Crooner Sessions - where he duets with famous pals on social media to keep spirits up - Gary spoke of the importance of radio and entertainment in these times. He said: “It definitely makes a difference, everyone who is broadcasting right now - this is the time when they’re needed the most. It takes people out of the real world for that couple of hours that they’re listening - it’s such a lovely escape.”
BBC Essex successfully helped Tracy and Mark Booth and their five pets find a new home after they went on the breakfast show asking for help. Their house tragically caught fire and they had nowhere to go - resulting in a night camped in their back garden. The Colchester Anti Loo Roll Brigade came to their rescue and the couple moved into a house that evening.
Radio Solent was contacted by a listener called Hannah, her great-grandparents - Jean and Allan Goddard - were celebrating their 70^th Wedding Anniversary. They were supposed to have a big family party to celebrate but the 90-year old couple are self-isolating. Jean and Allan are avid listeners of BBC Radio Solent and they wanted a shout-out for their wedding anniversary, but instead of a regular shout-out, the team decided to set up a surprise virtual party for the couple in the ‘function room’. Jean and Allan thought they were coming on the show to talk about ‘the secret to a happy marriage’, little did they know their family were joining the virtual party.
BBC WM had a call from a woman whose husband had died two weeks previously. She was on her own in the house and had run out of food and didn’t know what to do. She had no other family. Within two hours of hearing the appeal The Real Junk Food Project had contacted us wanting to help and had delivered groceries to her. They’re staying in touch with her throughout this to make sure she’s OK.
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire covered the story of a school teacher from Sutton who has been singing virtually to care homes in Cambridgeshire via Skype to help keep spirits up. Stuart Green recently performed virtually to Waterbeach lodge - but he’s keen to connect and sing to many more people in the county. He’s also performing shows live on Facebook to raise money for Ely foodbank.
Radio London highlighted the story of a woman who is using her daily exercise to cycle around her neighbourhood donating old books. "Book fairy" Stella von Koskull has been delivering books from her own collection to her neighbours who are self-isolating. She’s been through Fulham, Chelsea, Tooting, Hammersmith, Shepherds Bush, Barnes and elsewhere. She says people are so happy to see a friendly face.
Radio Tees covered the story ofJames Cook Hospital patients in palliative care who cannot have visitors. They did an appeal on BBC Radio Tees for some tablets/iPads etc. so that they could facilitate video calls with loved ones. A listener got in touch with them and they now have two devices to keep in touch.

We’re all in this together and your BBC Local Radio station is on hand to remind everyone that you are not alone, to provide you with some cheer as well as keeping you up to date with the latest news from your area.

The Big Day In… leading up to The Big Night In

2020-04-22T15:30:00+00:00

Across our radio stations, we will tomorrow get together to cheerlead for The Big Night In - an evening of special programming on BBC One celebrating acts of kindness, humour and the spirit of hope and resilience that is keeping the nation going during the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic. We want to do our bit to support this special event, which brings together for the first time the BBC’s biggest charitable partners, BBC Children in Need and Comic Relief, to help vulnerable people affected by the crisis.

Radio plays such an important role in our listeners’ daily lives, now more so than ever, and millions of people are having our stations on as their companions as they stay at home to help beat the coronavirus. So during the day, in the lead up to the evening event, we’ll be keeping them company across our stations with our Big Day In plans by featuring some extraordinary music performances, hearing from brilliant guests across our shows and helping to fundraise for the important cause.

Our five pop stations - BBC Radio 1, 1Xtra, BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 6 Music and the BBC Asian Network - will be sharing two special music moments.

At 9am, we’ll be dedicating The Great British Singalong to charity workers. We started these singalongs when the lockdown was introduced, and every Thursday our pop stations now join forces for a mass singalong designed to lift the nation’s spirits, providing a sense of community and much-needed escapism. They’ve become a regular fixture in our weekly rhythm, and in the spirit of the day, we’ll be dedicating this week’s singalong to all the charity workers across the UK in recognition of the important role they play. And from noon, listeners will be able to hear for the first time the Stay Home Live Lounge single, bringing together some of the music industry’s biggest stars to collaborate on a cover of Foo Fighters’ Times Like These to raise money for charities. The accompanying video will receive its world exclusive premiere during The Big Night In.

Over on Radio 3, listeners will be able to relax with a special slow moment in Essential Classics, escape with slow radio in a tribute to the landscape and past poets of the heart of Snowdonia, and enjoy a Home Session as part of In Tune with cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason and his family, plus other special guests Joanna Lumley and Danielle de Niese. On Radio 2, Sara Cox will celebrate key workers throughout her show, Woman’s Hour on Radio 4 will reflect the plans for the day and night, and Radio 5 Live will be looking at what the world of football is doing to support the cause.

From 10pm, Rickie, Melvin & Charlie host the official Big Night In afterparty on Radio 1. Expect a show full of energy, interactivity and a lot of lols, as well as playing some of the greatest urban anthems from the last 20 years to keep everyone’s Big Night In going into the night.

And of course throughout the day, all our stations will be signposting towards the evening programme, we’ll air appeal packages featuring charities around the UK who are supported by both Comic Relief and Children in Need, and there’s more planned, including from our colleagues in Local Radio. Highlights from the day including the singalong and the Stay Home Live Lounge single will be available on BBC Sounds too for people to listen live or to listen to again.

I hope many of you will spend the day, and the night, with us tomorrow for this special occasion.

You can read more about The Big Night In here.

The Bard comes to the BBC and launching Museums In Quarantine

2020-04-22T12:30:00+00:00

If I was looking for a manifesto for Culture in Quarantine, then Mary Beard and her contributors provided it on last week’s Front Row Late (henceforth known as Mary's Lockdown Culture).

"It’s in dark times like this," Mary said, "that art and music and literature and culture are more essential than ever… They can cheer us up, they can calm us down, but they can also help us to think harder about the state we’re in and what might come next." Artist Anthony Gormley agreed: "For our early ancestors, art was one of the most important tools of survival, was one of the most important expressions of our connection with all living creatures, and I’m beginning to feel that is coming back to us in this time of enforced hermit-like existence." The full interview with Gormley goes out in tomorrow’s episode.

These are sentiments that our greatest playwright knew all too well. Shakespeare’s lifetime was chequered by outbreaks of the plague and it is believed he wrote King Lear during a period of lockdown when his theatre was closed. For his public, the act of seeing a play was an immense and joyous privilege afforded by moments of relative good health across society. His plays celebrate human communion and never shy away from confronting those forces - like illness and death - that threaten it.

Tomorrow, 23 April, is World Book Night. It is also thought to have been Shakespeare’s birthday and - with the poetic symmetry we might expect - the day he died. For this reason, BBC Arts is delighted to join with two of the world’s greatest Shakespearean companies - the Royal Shakespeare Company and Shakespeare’s Globe - in releasing first-rate productions of some of his greatest works in a Culture in Quarantine special on iPlayer, which will be available for over three months.

From the RSC, we are hosting Hamlet with Paapa Essiedu, Macbeth with Christopher Eccleston, Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo And Juliet, The Merchant of Venice and Othello - all stella productions from the last five years. They will be joined by productions from Shakespeare’s Globe: The Tempest, with Roger Allam as Prospero, and Emma Rice’s brilliant interpretation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. They will be published on iPlayer on Thursday 23 April. Not only are these entertaining productions of great plays, but they are also on the curriculum and support home education.

These titles will be joined by the BBC’s own production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as adapted by Russell T Davies in 2016, which was repeated on BBC Four last Sunday. And from this Sunday, they will be joined by the BBC’s King Lear of 2018, directed by Richard Eyre and with an unforgettable cast of Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Florence Pugh and Andrew Scott. All together, this forms an iPlayer box-set of ten extraordinary productions of Shakespeare’s greatest works. We are also adding the beautiful BalletBoyz production of Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet, featuring the stars of The Royal Ballet and set to Sergei Prokofiev’s original score instead of Shakespeare’s words.

On BBC Radio 3, a new production of Othello was broadcast last Sunday, starring Khalid Abdalla and Matthew Needham, and Henry IV, Part 1, featuring Iain Glen and Toby Jones, goes out this coming Sunday. These new productions join the huge back catalogue of plays and documentaries on BBC Sounds’ The Shakespeare Sessions.

And of course Shakespeare will feature elsewhere across BBC services. BBC Radio Ulster’s Culture Café, available on BBC Sounds, hears from director Zoe Seaton who is streaming a live performance of The Tempest in Lockdown with audience interaction via zoom. Mary's Lockdown Culture (BBC Two, Friday at 7pm) this week features Derek Jacobi reading Sonnet Number 98 and, as part of Get Creative at Home Masterclasses, Simon Callow will talk audiences through how to deliver the sonnets, while exploring the intriguing story of why - and to who - William Shakespeare wrote them. Finally David Tennant is joining Zoe Ball on the Radio 2 Breakfast Show tomorrow morning to talk about the experience of performing Hamlet and other Shakespeare roles.

Museums In Quarantine

Next week, Culture In Quarantine turns its attention to our museums and art galleries. These are buildings which carry our national collections and set the cultural agenda through exhibitions and artist commissions. They are, to an extent, the soul of our nation, revealing our history, our customs, our identity, and where we are heading. This is why free access is so fiercely defended in this country, and why the way they are run and the stories they tell are rightly debated and contested. When they close, we are to an extent untethered. We find ourselves wishing we visited them more when we could - and make mental plans to do so when the lockdown lifts.

Museums In Quarantine is a week-long celebration of the museums and galleries. We are offering extraordinary access to exhibitions and objects that are for the time being beyond reach. Like parents looking in on sleeping children, we will reassure ourselves that some of our best-loved treasures are safe and sound. Over the course of the week, four programmes (made by Swan Films) will run nightly on BBC Four that take us behind the closed doors of big national institutions. All four have been filmed in exceptional circumstances - when not only the public, but most of the staff, are unable to enter the buildings. To film in an empty gallery is normally every documentary director’s dream. When it happens, it is out of hours - early in the morning or late at night - so to do so in the middle of the day is eery and disconcerting.

Alastair Sooke’s solitary exploration of the Warhol exhibition at Tate Modern puts an unfamiliar light on this most iconic of late 20th Century artists. Those sumptuous stacks of soup cans seem more desirable than ever bearing in mind how empty such shelves have been in supermarkets in recent weeks. The other three programmes are collaborations between art historians, scripting and voicing remotely, while a lone camera roams the empty halls and galleries capturing the objects they talk about. Rembrandt’s warts and all celebration of human society, as revealed in an exhibition currently shuttered in the Ashmolean in Oxford, is more appealing than ever for Simon Schama in isolation. For James Fox, works from Tate Britain’s permanent collection - from William Hogarth to Mona Hatoum - remind us that artists have always tackled grief and despair, as well as offering signs of hope. And for Janina Ramirez, the British Museum is full of treasures revealing how great civilisations have confronted the mysteries of life. Both Fox and Ramirez recently recovered from coronavirus and they leapt at the opportunity to talk about works, from the safety of their homes, they long to see again.

These four films, running from Monday onwards, provide the build-up to MuseumFromHome: a whole day of broadcast and social media activity on Thursday 30 April delivered in partnership with Art Fund, National Museum Directors’ Council, the Museums Association and #MuseumFromHome.The ambition is simple: to ensure the public continues to have access to the collections and exhibitions they love even when they cannot enter the buildings that house them.

A MuseumFromHome live page will host content from museums and galleries across the UK with things to watch and do at home. This will include further commissions with BBC Arts: the Art Deco show at The Sainsbury Centre in Norwich, and a blockbuster exhibition on The Clash (marking the 40th anniversary of London Calling) at the Museum of London. We're also going to be joining with Museum of the Home to ask audiences to share their personal experiences of home life in lockdown as part of a new national collecting project called Stay Home.

From the greatest plays ever written to the finest collections and exhibitions to be found anywhere in the world, over the next ten days Culture in Quarantine continues to provide precious access to the arts, helping to keep culture alive in our homes and our hearts.

Life Changes: looking at how we respond to change

2020-04-03T11:00:00+00:00

Kang Nara: A North Korean defector to South Korea who is now an online celebrity streaming and telling stories about life north of the border.

A new season of programmes and features is launching across the BBC’s global TV, radio and online networks exploring the theme of change - how we change ourselves, our lives, and how we respond to changes in the world around us.

Reporting from across the world - from Ethiopia, Korea, Rwanda and Paraguay to Egypt, the US and Russia - the documentaries and digital stories cover a diverse range of topics, from sexuality to sustainability, from peace to war, and from neurodiversity to migration.

Why Life Changes?

Early on in the Coronavirus Crisis someone asked me how much I thought life would change as a result. I have no idea, I made clear - I am a journalist, not a sociologist, politician or that newly discovered profession, an epidemiologist. The only thing I knew for certain, I suggested timidly, was that it would not be how we might predict.

And so it isn’t. China apparently moves on and Europe and America are in the midst of a pandemic claiming many thousands more lives.

With life changing so much and so grimly, why now have a season of programmes called Life Changes - prepared over the last year - in what now seems like another age?

Here’s why

Coronavirus is something so big, affecting so many countries that everyone feels they are sharing in it - and by and large we all are in one form or another. Most news is not like that. Mostly the wars and famines that devastate communities, even countries, leave the rest of the world looking on hopefully with compassion and concern, but life goes on.

The experience of those caught up in disasters remain theirs not ours.

To understand those experiences and to break down the barriers between one person and another that may prevent that understanding is one of the jobs of good journalism. If you want to understand how a person’s life is changing you must hear their story.

Life Changes is not about Coronavirus, but it is about understanding what changes us and what can make us happier, more peaceful, and stronger. As it turns out, all that may be quite useful right now.

The Community

Women living on the Ethiopia Eritrean border, opened after 20 years of conflict but then partially closed again.

Life changed forever for the border town of Zalambessa when Ethiopia and Eritrea went to war 20 years ago - separating families and communities on either side of the border. It changed again when that border reopened just 18 months ago thanks to a rapprochement between the two countries. Lives are being transformed. Our film Between The Earth And The Sky begins with a family in their Sunday best walking across the huge flat plains where there is so much sky the earth seems to float in the dazzling sunshine.

The family set out to cross the border. It’s a religious festival so they stop to bow and kiss the hand of the priest walking the other way. It looks like peace itself has been made real. As he walks the young father points to the mounds and dips along the route. They and the old trenches, he explains, and we are taken back to the shelling, the trench warfare, the suffering that has kept their community in aspic. But this is a film infused with life and hope whether it’s imagining a hotel being built or prayers at a baptism.

Elsewhere in the season, we look at how North Korean defectors are turned into celebrities in South Korea, but do the popular reality TV shows and social media platforms the exiles front give a real picture of the North and give them the best chance to integrate into the new home they took so many risks to find?

The Individual

In ADHD And Me, one BBC reporter with the condition decides to find out if our world is really ready to accept those who might see things a little differently to the herd. Once seen as nebulous or problematic, as Saeedeh Hashemi - herself diagnosed with ADHD - will show, there is now increasing understanding that living with the condition also brings positives. She meets others who, for all the downsides of the disorder, feel that life without it would be like “living cramped within a frame” and who would not give it up an element of themselves that has fundamentally shaped their personalities.

Integration

Refugee teachers retraining to teach in schools in Germany.

Naomi Scherbel-Bell looks at the integration of refugees into German society and asks whether teachers are the key to matching Germany’s needs and the newcomers’ skills. But as special retraining courses reach completion and despite a huge shortage of teachers in the country, being a refugee teacher to German children might not be as popular as they hoped.

The Millennials

The BBC has tried hard to improve diversity of its workforce and the age spread - so that many departments have a good number of millennials. Now they are full of anxiety as we hear from Ekaterina Venediktovaa in Quarter Life Crisis as she talks to those her own age in four continents and finds that coming of age in the world where old social patterns do not work and uncertainty is a permanent feature means they have only one thing in common - uncertainty.

Orgasms

Yes, that’s right; the BBC World Service is talking about sex, and never more frankly than here.

According to one reasonably recent US based study, 90% of heterosexual men said they climaxed during sex, while only 60% of women said the same. So is there a way to bring more equality into the pleasure equation? To find out we look at Rwanda and debate over the controversial practice known as gukuna that involves labia elongation. Lily Freeston and Kayleen Devlin present a candid examination of whether the Rwandan experience indicates a more open attitude to discussion about sex, or is there still a long way to go before equality is really found.

The Life Changes season is the result of the BBC World Service’s annual ‘Creative Challenge’ in which BBC staff, regardless of their role, can pitch their own ideas for programmes.

My colleague Natalia Touzovskaya, Creative Challenge Editor, described this as the ideas journalists come up with are never dull when told with passion and curiosity. The people you meet as a result of that passion and curiosity in these programmes represent something hopeful, but realistic; life changes and mostly, but not always, for the better.

Life Changes is available now on BBC World Service.

Reporting on a pandemic while trying to keep staff safe

2020-03-31T08:15:55+00:00

John Beattie broadcasts from home

These are difficult and worrying times for all of us. For staff at the BBC, like everywhere else, there are constantly escalating stresses and strains, both at work and in our personal lives.

In BBC Scotland we are acutely aware that what we do each day has never been more important to our audiences than it is now. The quality, accuracy, clarity and trustworthiness of the public service broadcasting that we are producing has a vital role to play at this moment of national jeopardy.

We know it's vital because people in Scotland are turning to the BBC in record numbers, more than to any other broadcaster, because they trust us to give them the facts.

A few examples: Over the past couple of weeks audiences for Reporting Scotland on BBC One at 6.30pm have topped 700,000, figures we haven’t seen since the Beast from the East swept through the country two years ago.

On the day when the Prime Minister and First Minister announced lockdown, a special live programme, produced by The Nine team, was watched by more than a million people.

And hundreds of thousands are tuning in to our special additional Politics Scotland programmes each day to cover the Scottish government briefings on Coronavirus. These usually go out live on BBC One Scotland, the BBC Scotland channel, Radio Scotland, and are streamed live on the BBC Scotland News website.

The Nine on the BBC Scotland channel has recorded the highest ever audience since it launched just over a year ago.

On Radio Scotland, we’ve had loads of appreciation for our new schedule of news programmes across the day, starting at six every morning with Gary Robertson and Laura Maxwell on Good Morning Scotland. We’ve added in - for our radio audiences across the whole day - updates on breaking news, even on our non-news programming.

Good Morning Scotland presenter Gary Robertson broadcasts from home during the Coronavirus crisis

And our BBC Scotland News website, with its live pages, analysis and context, has doubled its readership.

But the BBC - not surprisingly - is not immune from the impact of the virus. More than ten per cent of BBC Scotland’s workforce is either self-isolating, shielding or actually unwell, and sadly we can only expect that figure to grow.

We’re making changes to the way we work - for example, reducing the numbers of people in our TV and radio studios, so that we can comply with the two metre social distancing rules. Most of our interviewees appear via Skype. Our radio presenters, including Gary Robertson and Laura Maxwell on Good Morning Scotland and Drivetime host John Beattie, are presenting many of their programmes from home - from sitting rooms, attics and kitchens. Even Judith Ralston and the rest of our weather team are, for some of their time, working from home.

BBC Scotland weather presenter Judith Ralston works from home

Although our reporters and technical staff are designated as key workers and are able to move around legally to do their jobs, we are limiting their movement as much as possible. Last week we ran a story on Reporting Scotland about the effect of the virus on Arran without any of our staff travelling there: All the material was filmed for us by the local residents.

We’re moving staff from other production areas into news, while still trying to protect as much of our non-news programming as possible: In the absence of live sport and other programmes, we’ve discovered huge audience enthusiasm for classic comedy and sport.

In the space of just a few weeks, our business has been transformed. And the effect of our staff shortages means that something has had to give. We’ve had tough decisions to make about where we cut back. I never want to lose any output, but we just don’t have the people now to carry on with everything we do.

So yesterday we’ve stopped - temporarily - our short Breakfast TV bulletins. It’s a decision we’ve reluctantly had to take across the whole of the BBC in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland, in order to protect our output through the rest of the day. The Breakfast programme will of course still be on the air, but without our brief inserts of news from Scotland, the other nations and the English regions. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

For our legions of regular viewers at breakfast time in Scotland a full news service can still be found on BBC Radio Scotland, BBC Radio nan Gaidheal (for Gaelic speakers), and the BBC Scotland News website.

In addition to pausing the Breakfast bulletins, we are also having to reduce the length of some of our Gaelic news programmes; we’ve temporarily stopped making The Edit and Seven Days, our weekly news review on the BBC Scotland channel. We may need to look further at what news output we need to stop doing while Coronavirus is at its peak.

So the suspension of our Breakfast bulletins is not some conspiracy, as a few people on social media have suggested over the weekend. It’s about the realities of coping with high levels of sickness, realities also faced by network news teams in London, who are having to cut back and simplify their output; and by our colleagues at STV, who have announced cutbacks to what they can do. Coronavirus is affecting everyone and everything we all do.

In these anxious days and weeks, what we do at BBC Scotland News has never been more important to our audiences across the country. I’m very proud of the dedication and commitment of our news teams in providing the information that everyone is crying out for. And very grateful to the millions who are trusting the BBC to help them make it through the biggest national crisis most of us have ever known.

A version of this article appeared in The Scotsman

BBC Sounds - an audio treasure trove for everyone in the coming months

2020-03-28T10:41:47+00:00

Now more than ever, we know people want things which make them laugh and smile, tell them what’s going on and help support their health, education and wellbeing.

We’re making sure BBC Sounds is the best possible audio treasure trove for the nation over the coming months.

We’re adding special new titles and unlocking classics from the archive, so I wanted to share more about what people are going to be able to find on Sounds in the coming weeks and beyond.

The Coronavirus Newscast

BBC Sounds will play an important role in helping people in the UK impacted by the crisis with information, education and support.

Our daily podcast The Coronavirus Newscast will keep listeners updated with the latest from Adam Fleming and other BBC correspondents.

Next week we’ll have a podcast series called 10 Today, which will also be heard regularly on Radio 5 live sports extra; working with Sport England, they’re ten minute workouts aimed at older listeners to help them keep active. We also have special music mixes such as Pacesetter and new mix Solo Rave for those of all ages looking to work out - or rave - at home.

Pace Setter

Our children need help to fill the gap left by school closures so we will have two daily education podcasts, one aimed at primary and the other secondary students, and we’ll also have a new series of short, fun history lessons for all the family with Greg Jenner.

There are twenty classic novels in full on Sounds, and more than 100 short stories. All for free, and many such as Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson and Silas Marner by George Eliot appear on the GCSE syllabus. There are also fifteen children’s stories, including The Children’s Joke by Louisa May Alcott and Finn and the Scottish Giant by Harold F Hughes.

The BBC has an incredibly rich archive of audio, and we’re making sure there’s a huge variety of new and archive programmes on Sounds to help keep listeners of all ages entertained and connected to the world. We’ve especially brought back six series of the classic Hancock’s Half Hour and The Goon Show so whether you prefer those, classic episodes of Just A Minute, The Boosh and Flight of the Conchords, or one of the many episodes of Infinite Monkey Cage, there will be the best of comedy from across the decades to make everyone laugh at a time when it’s needed.

If you haven’t heard the radio series from some of today’s most popular comedians such as Mae Martin, Tez Ilyas, Sarah Millican and Twayna Mayne, they’re on Sounds now too.

Sounds is the place for the best of the BBC’s audio storytelling and escapism too. People can enjoy classic dramas such as Middlemarch, alongside all four series of conspiracy thriller Tracks (awarded best fiction at the British Podcast Awards) and more recent podcast dramas including The Whisperer In Darkness and Fake Heiress.

For those who want to get lost in an audiobook, we have lots for listeners to enjoy including: The Testaments by Margaret Atwood which we’ve just brought back to Sounds, Maya Angelou's Autobiographies, Life On Earth by (and read by) David Attenborough, Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, The Mirror And The Light by Hilary Mantel, Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams and Adults by Emma Jane Unsworth. All of these abridged books, and many more, are available for people to indulge in.

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

I’m one of the many, many people in the UK missing live sport. If you’re looking for a sports fix and good chat, we’ve got Colin Murray unearthing classic sports commentaries and interviews in Replay; our brilliant new podcast Match Of The Day: Top 10; forty of the most memorable conversations from Test Match Special’s View from Boundary archive with the likes of the youngest Nobel Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai, singer songwriter Lily Allen, comedy actor John Cleese, and writer Ben Travers (who was the first and watched WG Grace play cricket) are being re-released from next week; and the fourth series of hugely popular That Peter Crouch Podcast is arriving sooner to entertain its many fans.

Match Of The Day: Top 10

All of this great classic and current audio sits alongside our new podcasts landing soon too. Radio 5 live’s Elis and John are making special episodes - The Isolation Tapes - finding big laughs even amidst what’s currently happening, Too Rude For Radio with 1Xtra’s Dotty starts this month, and Perfect Sounds with the brilliant comedian James Acaster launches next month. New podcast You’ll Do has celebrity guests talking about the reality of relationships, and Radio 4 has just commissioned some of the biggest UK comedians including Rufus Hound, Marcus Brigstocke, Rachel Parris, Matt Lucas and Miranda Hart, who are currently not able to do their usual shows, to share their isolation experiences on Radio 4 and BBC Sounds in a new series.

Dotty

We know how vital the news and analysis, music, entertainment and escapism we provide is in these challenging times. Last week live listening to our radio stations went up by 18% on BBC Sounds and there was the highest number of Sounds users - 3.5 million (200k more than the week before). Our top music mix, the Mindful Mix, had more plays last week than throughout February.

It’s because listeners turn to us during significant events that we’ll keep making sure Sounds has what people need over the next few months. In addition to the company of the BBC’s brilliant radio stations, we’ll give people classic and new programmes, audiobooks and podcasts for escapism and laughter, as well as things that help educate our kids, provide trusted information and means to help support the nation’s health and wellbeing.

BBC News and Coronavirus

2020-03-26T12:51:52+00:00

BBC News has never had a more important role to play. Millions of people are turning to the BBC for accurate information they can trust in these strange and difficult times.

We’re committed to bringing you a continuous news service during this crisis, as I announced last week. Current and anticipated staff shortages have meant we’re streamlining our schedules, suspending some programmes and sharing staff between others, and the way we’re doing things already looks a bit different. This is a rapidly evolving situation.

Many of our staff are now working from home (which is sometimes giving viewers an unexpected insight into the kitchens, attics and basements of familiar BBC presenters). But many cannot - including the technical staff who keep us on air and some of our reporters across the UK.

It’s our responsibility to you, our audiences, to report ‘on the ground’. To show you what is happening across the country and the world; to record the effects of the government’s measures to fight the virus; to talk to the staff on the frontline of the NHS; to chronicle how the UK is faring during its ‘lockdown’.

And, as ever, to question, explain, and give context to what is happening.

That’s why BBC journalists and operational technical staff have been designated by the Government as key workers, and why some are still outside when so many people can’t be.

But we, like everyone else, have to do things differently. We have to prioritise everyone’s safety. And, like everyone else, we’re learning and changing things as the situation progresses.

We have to question ourselves before every interview - could we be doing this via phone or video call?

You’ve probably noticed our new ‘socially distanced interviews’ where boom microphones are rather more visible than usual.

You might also hear a bit more background noise than you’re used to when we’re not using our normal microphones.

We’re cutting down on everyone’s travel by making more use of our network of local reporters around the UK, as well as around the world.

And as you’d expect, we’ve tightened hygiene and safety measures inside and outside our offices, to avoid contact between colleagues. For example, our presenters are now doing their own make-up.

So things may look and sound a bit different and we might need to make further changes to how we do things as time goes on. But we’ll be with you throughout this emergency.