Listening to BBC Radio 4 Extra can sometimes feel like they’re just playing Hancock’s Half-Hour and Round the Horne on a loop for the last two decades. But aside from these “much-loved” comedy gems the station has a well-deserved reputation for digging deeper into the BBC’s archives and airing lesser-known comedies, dramas and readings. Indeed this coming weekend we have the first broadcast in nearly 70 years of an edition of Life with the Lyons and an Afternoon Theatre drama from 1974 that’s not had a repeat since 1977.
Despite pulling in an audience of 1.8 million (and hitting a high of 2.1m in 2015) Radio 4 Extra is now on radio’s death row. In May of this year DG Tim Davie announced that 4 Extra would (at some as yet undetermined date but certainly not in the next three years) stop broadcasting “on linear”.
Today the station is twenty years old. It was launched in a flurry of digital radio expansion in 2002 alongside the new services of 5 live Sports Extra, 6 Music and 1Xtra and the Asian Network going national on DAB.
Initially called just BBC7 a press release in November 2002 promised: “A great mix of entertainment with the best of BBC comedy, drama and books as well as a brand new daily live kids' radio show, BBC 7 is the fifth BBC digital radio station to launch this year and completes the BBC's digital radio portfolio”.
Here’s an early promo for the station:
Broadcasting 18 hours a day (7am-1 am) BBC7 was zoned with six hours of comedy (Comedy Hour, Classic Comedy, Comedy Zone and The Comedy Club), a drama zone, crime and thriller strand, science fiction and horror in The Seventh Dimension and four hours of children’s programmes. Of those ‘zones’ just The Comedy Club and The 7thDimension remain. It started broadcasting around the clock from January 2004.
The station underwent a subtle name change in October 2008 to BBC Radio 7 (using just BBC7 was deemed confusing and people thought it was a tv service) followed by a re-launch in April 2011 as BBC Radio 4 Extra.
The original BBC 7 head of programmes Mary Kalemkerian described her job like this:
I am entrusted with the BBC's heritage and I have to select what will go out on the air, but it is not just like a jukebox where you pluck a token out and put something on. I have to make sure the rights are cleared, as the BBC doesn't own half of its archive. So I work a lot with agents and also look at ways of polishing up these radio jewels by repackaging programmes to make them more accessible to a younger audience. I also commission some new programmes – quite a bit of contemporary comedy.
In addition to mining the archives or taking narrative repeats of Radio 4 comedy shows the station has often commissioned its own programmes, albeit a relatively small amount. Its 2007 service licence included a commitment to at least 10 hours of new comedy a year and 20 hours of new drama, though this was later amended to “some” new comedy and drama. It was also expected to contribute to BBC radio’s target of 10% of new commissions to go to the independent sector.
Original commissions include the Saturday morning 3-hour features, The Comedy Controller, Ambridge Extra, dramas such as Trueman and Bailey, The Comedy Club interviews and a number of comedy series, the most successful of which was Newsjack.
Broadcast between 2009 and 2021 Newsjack had six main presenters over its 24 series run: Miles Jupp, Justin Edwards, Romesh Ranganathan, Nish Kumar, Angela Barnes and Kiri Pritchard-McLean. It offered an Open Door policy in which members of the public could email in their sketches and one-liners. These submissions plus sketches from the staff writers are then knocked into shape by the script editor and producers. For this edition from the sixth series in 2012 Newsjack received 675 emails and 27 writing credits were given of which 21 were non-commissioned writers. With Justin Edwards are Pippa Evans, Lewis Macleod and Nadia Kamil.
BBC Radio 7 also had a large commitment to broadcast children’s programming, at one point at least 1,400 hours a year, later reduced to 350 hours when it became 4 Extra. This was mainly the pre-school series The Little Toe Show (later CBeebies on BBC Radio 7) and for older children The Big Toe Radio Show (later known as Big Toe Books). When they ended in 2011 there was just an hour of kid’s programmes now titled The 4 O’Clock Show and presented by Mel Giedroyc. This in turn was pulled in March 2015, justifiably as it only attracted 5,900 10-14 year olds and had an average listener age of 60.
Adopting a magazine style format, The 4 O’Clock Show was something of a pick ‘n’ mix affair with some clips taken from elsewhere on Radio 4’s output. Based on the evidence of this recording from 12 March 2015 it’s not hard to see why it got the chop. Here Mel introduces Dick and Dom investigating How Dangerous is Your School with the help of students and staff at the Cardinal Wiseman School in Greenford, London. There’s an extract from Saturday Live about life on a farm, more science, this time out in space, with Stuart Henderson from Radio 4’s Questions, Questions and musician Pete Roe on restoring and playing harmoniums. There’s an interview with actor Ron Ely (of Tarzan fame, yes, really) and Gabriel Quigley reads from Roddy Doyle’s A Greyhound of a Girl. Oh, and Mel reveals what’s inside her big bag.
Radio 4 Extra doesn’t broadcast live (with a couple of exceptions) but is built in advance from a number of pre-recorded elements. Obviously there’s the programmes themselves and then the separate links for The Comedy Club and The 7th Dimension. All the continuity elements – intros, outros, top of the hour junctions, trailers and promotions and station imaging (from Mcasso) – are added to the playout system. If a programme goes out more than once a day the same intros/outros are used.
Those live broadcast exceptions are, back in the days of BBC7/BBC Radio 7, the weekday editions of The Big Toe Radio Show, originally presented by Kirsten O’Brien and Jez Edwards. The only other instance I’m aware of is for an hour on 14 November 2012 when Jim Lee provided the live continuity around the all station link-up for Radio Reunited as part of the BBC’s 90th anniversary.
Here’s part of Jim's ‘live’ continuity:
When BBC7 started presenters or announcers would be associated with different strands of the station’s output. This changed from 2010 when the same continuity announcer was heard throughout the day (with the exception of The Comedy Club and The 7th Dimension).
In 2014 Feedback’s Roger Bolton visited 4 Extra and spoke to Commissioning Editor Caroline Raphael, announcer Joanna Pinnock and producer Nick St George.
The continuity announcers are either current or former Radio 4 announcers plus a small number of voiceover folk who just provide 4 Extra continuity. The 4 Extra day runs from 6.00 am to 5.59 am and the announcers record two 24-hour days in one session. Back in 2019 one of the station’s most regular voices, Alan Smith, told me how it all works:
About 3 weeks before transmission, the programmes appear in the 4Extra schedule in the order they’ll be played-out. It’s at this point that announcers can listen to the programmes to get a feel for them. We don’t listen all the way through; we hear just enough to get a sense of what’s going on. Our listening is supplemented by written information which is held in the programme database. This database is a fantastic resource as it contains a plot summary of every programme together with its transmission history, cast & crew details and any contentious/sensitive factors which need to be flagged up.
Then the writing process begins! All of us who present on 4Extra write our own scripts, so everything you hear us say on air is information taken from the database that’s given a personal twist in our own style. It takes two working days to write two 24-hour on-air days. We all have different amounts of time committed to 4Extra – in my case I do two 24-hour on-air days every five weeks; some presenters do a bit more, some a bit less.
Then, about 10 days before transmission, its recording day when we go to the studio with the producer, armed with our completed scripts. This part of the process is super-efficient as we simply record all the individual links we’ve written, one after the other, plus the promos and trails. It takes about three hours to record the two 24-hour days. The announcers then leave the producer to put all the links into the schedule and build the final on-air audio.
In this sequence you’ll hear a number of familiar voices introducing the programmes on BBC Radio 7 and 4 Extra. In order you’ll hear Zeb Soanes, Steve Urquhart, Wes Butters, Neil Sleat, Debbie Russ, Luke Tuddenham, David Miles, Alan Smith, Penny Haslam, Joanna Pinnock, Jim Lee, Chris Berrow, Alex Riley, Kathy Clugston, Susan Rae, Amanda Litherland, Toby Hadoke, Nick Briggs, Andrew O'Neil, Arthur Smith and Jon Holmes.
BBC7 presenters/announcers included Joanna Pinnock, Penny Haslam, Jim Lee, Alex Riley, Michaela Saunders, Phil Williams, Richard Bacon, Kevin Greening, Etholle George, Alan Smith, Helen Aitken, Kerry McCarthy and Alex Riley.
Radio 4 Extra announcers include or have included Joanna Pinnock (there from the start in 2002), Alan Smith, Jim Lee, Wes Butters (the station’s “bit of rough” according to a recent Radio Times profile, who’s been on since 2009), Susan Rae, Kathy Clugston, Rory Morrison, Zeb Soanes, David Miles, Neil Sleat, Luke Tuddenham, Debbie Russ, Chris Berrow, Amanda Litherland and Steve Urquhart.
The 7th Dimension presenters have included Toby Hadoke, Nick Briggs, Natalie Haynes, Andrew O’Neil and Nicola Walker.
The Comedy Club introductions and interviews have been looked after by Arthur Smith, Jon Holmes, Jake Yapp, Jessica Fostekew, Paul Garner, Angela Barnes, Laura Lexx, Rob Deering, Jade Adams, Cariad Lloyd, Sarah Campbell, Harriet Kemsley, Diane Morgan, Iain Lee, Tom Wrigglesworth, Tiff Stevenson, Lou Conran, Isy Suttie and Thom Tuck.
With thanks to Alan Smith and Chris Aldridge.
Postscript: Well wouldn't you know it. After saying how few shows on Radio 4 Extra are live, one appears in 2023. In January Jake Yapp's Unwinding started a 20 programme run live on weekday evenings between 7 and 10 pm.
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