Woman's Hour
"aims to stimulate woman's mind at a time of day when their hands are
likely to be occupied with knitting, sewing, ironing, or the more routine
household chores." So said the BBC Handbook of 1960 without a hint of condescension.
Now it is more succinctly described as "programme that
offers a female perspective on the world". And if the household chores are
proving too onerous you can always catch it on the Radioplayer or a podcast.
Woman's Hour was
first heard on the BBC Light Programme at 2 pm on Monday 7 October 1946, so
today it celebrates its 70th anniversary.
Famously the first presenter was a man, Alan Ivimey, a
London-born journalist and ex-RAF intelligence officer who "specialised in
writing and talking to women". BBC bosses at the time were adamant that
this was the right approach. "You are right, I feel, in putting a man in
'talking' charge. Woman can't bear being talked at by other women. What they
will take from a man - I speak purely radiographically - they will resent from
a woman." This was despite the original suggestion, from female listener
J.M. Schofield of Rochdale, suggesting a show presented by a woman for women.
"In view of the fact that the BBC pays large sums to dance bands and
crooners, I think they might engage the woman with the right personality to
host a woman's hour ... I assume the right type of person would make a big
success of it."
At first listener reaction was not overwhelmingly glowing:
"Surely it’s not too much to ask that we may have our minds removed from
the monotony of housekeeping by a programme which gives us a glimpse of a wider
existence.”
By way of contrast this week's editions have included items
on the Columbian peace process, the Conservative Party conference, group texts
etiquette, workplace rights, Zimbabwean music, columnist Julie Burchill and
businesswomen Jo Malone.
In those austerity years Woman's
Hour wasn't all cookery and thrift and would regularly deal with the
serious issues of the day. Light Programme controller Norman Collins was clear
that it should appeal to "intelligent women" and that the programme
would be provide "a popular medium for talking about serious
matters", even if that meant breaking the so-called 13 and a half minute
rule on the minimum time you could devote to more challenging topics. Here's
Collins talking to Marjorie Anderson on Woman's
Hour on 2 October 1967.
As was the case with many daily shows at that time each
edition of Woman's Hour was heavily
scripted; indeed the 2 pm start time allowed for a full morning rehearsal and a
lunch break before returning to the studio. This is the opening script for an
early 1946 edition:
Ivimey: Good afternoon. I have three ladies round the table
to keep me in order today- Edith Saunders who has been to a fascinating
exhibition of Second Empire Styles at a big West End store.
Saunders: Good afternoon.
Ivimey: Marion Cutler, who's been looking into the working
of that splendid service to housewives and mothers begun during the war, the
Home Help service.
Cutler: Good afternoon.
Ivimey: And Marguerite Patten, who wants to save some of
those tea-time tragedies when the lovely cake you've baked comes out of the
oven with a hole in the middle instead of a nice brown bulge...
When Sue McGregor took over in 1972 she'd been working in
the high pressure environment of The
World at One: " I think up to the point I joined, the presenter of Woman's Hour always read the questions
as they were written down for her by a producer. And this was anathema to
anyone who'd come from news. It used to be heavily rehearsed - and that meant
that the editor listened to the rehearsal in her office at 11.00 am and then
sent down, probably on flimsy memo sheets, her instructions."
 |
| Editors Janet Quigley & Joanna Scott-Moncrieff |
Listener
participation. In 1959 the Reading
Your Letters slot (which began in 1951) discovered agoraphobia and helped
found The Open Door self-help group for sufferers. The programme began to stage
confrontations between listeners and experts (e.g. Margret Thatcher being asked
about the school-leaving age). The Points
from the Postbag slot where people discussed their personal problems was a
forerunner of such programmes as If you
think You've got Problems!
Breaking taboos.
Many subjects particularly those to do with sex, were simply not discussed on
the radio until Woman's Hour talked
about them. Homosexuality was first discussed in 1958; the Pill in 1962;
frigidity and impotence in 1965, transsexuality in 1970; and so on.
Consumerism. From
the beginning the programme took up listeners' complaints and answered queries
in Answer and Comment. Watchdog began in 1969; Checkout in 1971.
World events.
Even before the CND marches Woman's Hour
discussed the dangers of nuclear fall-out with Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd
and a panel of experts. Under the title Press
Conference women journalists grilled prime ministers and other leading
politicians. From the early 60s Gladys Yang recorded talks from Peking. Special
editions have come from all over the world including Moscow, Ghana and Mexico.
According to Sally Feldman (at the time acting editor in
1991) "not all listeners were thrilled by the programme's frank and
fearless approach. One lady was puzzled by the mention of the word 'lesbian',
with which she was unfamiliar. When she looked it up in the dictionary, she
turned the radio off immediately in disgust. She did not listen again for 20
years, but then she finally did decide to switch it on again, the first word
she heard was 'lesbian'. She switched off once more and wrote a bitter letter
of complaint".
 |
| Olive Shapley & Joan Griffiths |
In the early 50s Jean Metcalfe and Mary Hill introduced the
programme and a regular Friday regional edition was heard - a feature that
remained until April 1998. There was also a chance to hear selected items again
in a Sunday Woman's Hour Digest and
then the much-longer running Sunday supplement (later moving to Saturday)
called Home for the Day (1952-68,
heard on the Home Service then Radio 4) which, from April 1968, became Weekend Woman's Hour.
One of the long-forgotten elements of Woman's Hour is the signature tune. My research on this is far from
conclusive but when the programme first started it was using the Light
Programme's Oranges and Lemons sig
tune. By 1948 it was the Overture to The
Merry Wives of Windsor by Otto Nicolai. In the 1950s the Masque et Bergamasque Overture by
Gabriel Faure was used. In the late 50s Smetana's piano piece Ze Studentskeho zivota was played. From August 1960 Natasha's Waltz from War and Peace by Nino Rota was selected. In 1962 it changed to William Walton's Facade and then went jazzy in 1963 with the MJQ's version of Vendome. and in 1965 Charlie Byrd's Jordu. By the time I made this recording on 8 April 1980 a sig
tune was still in use - anyone know the title/composer?
In 1973 there was a major shake-up: firstly after two
decades Marjorie Anderson retired through ill-health and was replaced by Sue
McGregor, who'd already joined the team the previous year, and then from 2 July
the programme bade farewell to Radio 2 and moved over to its new Radio 4 home. But
not all the team welcomed the station change. Editor Wyn Knowles in a memo to
the network controller: "Whilst recognising the case for transfer, we feel
that there is much to be said for our remaining on Radio 2. First of all, we
know that our present audience is predominantly working class and that while many
of these may switch over to Radio 4 in order to hear Woman's Hour, a sizeable number may not be in the habit of
switching channels and will lose us..."
 |
| Sue McGregor photographed for the Radio Times in 1976 (Credit: Tony Evans) |
From the 1970s the Woman's
Hour production team started to extend the brand, leading to the weekly
phone-in Tuesday Call (1973-86), for
the large part presented by Sue McGregor along with Judith Chalmers, Jill
Burridge and Barbara Myers. There was also It's
Your World (1984-87) a co-production with World Service that allowed
listeners to question world leaders and royalty such as Margaret Thatcher, King
Hussein of Jordan, Kenneth Kaunda, Pik Botha, the Duke of Edinburgh and
Princess Anne.
Reflecting the fact that 42% of listeners to Woman's Hour are men there were
occasional Man's Hour specials in
1978, 1986 with Terry Jones, 1988 with Willy Russell and 2004 with Jon Snow.
Eventually the blokes got their own series of Men's Hour with Tim Samuels on Radio 5 Live between July 2010 and
January 2016.
Interviewed for The
Guardian in 2008 Jenni Murray once again addressed the issue of the
seemingly perennial question as to what class of listeners was tuning in to Woman's Hour. "I tell you what I
really get cross about - it's this middle class idea. To me, the only
qualification you need to be a Radio 4 listener is an enquiring mind. An
inquiring mind exists in the working class - and I know because I came from it
- in the middle class and in the upper class. It's absolutely nothing to do
with class at all. There's nowhere else where you find a programme that has the
breadth of subjects that Woman's Hour
has - and treats it with rigour."
1990 saw a potential threat to the programme as Radio 4
controller Michael Green wanted to shake-up the schedule and address the
mid-morning dip in audiences. From September 1991, he announced, the programme
would be in a new time slot and, perhaps, with a new title. Radio 4 listeners,
ever resistant to any tinkering with the listening habits, were not happy.
Actress Anna Massey, a guest on many occasions summed it up: "To lose the
2 pm slot could be counted as a misfortune, but to lose the title as well must
be counted as carelessness".
But Green was insistent: "Twice as many women are
available to listen to the radio at 10.30 in the morning as at two in the
afternoon - five million as against two-and-a-half million - so a programme
directed at women in the mornings could win double the present audience. I'm
not going to change the nature of Woman's
Hour dramatically: the female perspective will continue to dominate. But
the idea that middle-aged women stay at home to listen to the programme is
outdated; partly because far more go out to work; but also because research
shows that the age profile of the Radio 4 audience is getting younger."
The shift from 2 pm to 10.30 am occurred in September 1991
and the move to the current 10.00 start in April 1998.
 |
| Jane Garvey & Dame Jenni Murray |
On the Boxing Day 2013 edition Jenni Murray was joined by
Sue McGregor to launch the online archive of Woman's Hour audio clips, the oldest dating back to September 1957.
At the start of this 70th anniversary year Jenni Murray and
guests reviewed the history and considerable impact of the programme. This
aired on 1 January 2016.
Woman's Hour celebrates its 70th anniversary on Monday with a live programme from the BBC Radio Theatre. Jenni Murray, Jane Garvey and a guest panel "discuss the results of a poll specially commissioned to find out about UK women's lives in 2016. How has life changed for women at home and at work from 1946 to the present day?"
References:
Life on Air: A History
of Radio Four by David Hendy (OUP 2007)
And now on Radio 4
by Simon Elmes (Random House 2007)
The responsible woman:
the BBC and women's radio 1945-1955 by Kristin Skoog (University of
Westminster PHD thesis 2010)
Woman's Hour: three
decades of pioneering radio by Wilfred D'Ath, Radio Times 2 October 1976
Move us if you must
by Angela Lambert, The Independent 23
January 1991
Ideas above their
station? by Russell Miller, Sunday Times
Magazine 15 September 1991
National institution -
I think not by Vicky Frost, The
Guardian 14 April 2008
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