An Everyday Story of an Omnibus Edition

As any BBC Radio 4 controller knows, you ‘refresh’ the schedules at your peril. And what’s more, to tinker with The Archers is sure to incur the wrath of any dyed-in-the-wool Ambridge fan. Cue the letters in green ink and emails fired off to Feedback.

But this is exactly what Radio 4 controller Mohit Bakaya is doing from next month as the Sunday omnibus edition of The Archers is shifted by an hour to the later start time of 11am. Taking its place after Broadcasting House is an extended one hour Desert Island Discs. As a sop to listeners whose Sunday morning routines will now be in disarray the omnibus edition will be available online at midnight, presumably so that Archers listeners can play it out for themselves just after Paddy O’Connell has signed off.

To be fair the omnibus edition has been at 10am on Sundays for the last 26 years. It was moved forward by 15 minutes in April 1998 under the controllership of James Boyle. He’d gain himself something of a reputation as schedule meddler -in-chief, changing the time of the weekday editions of The Archers from 1.40pm to 2pm, dropping the repeat of the Friday edition (reinstated in the new changes) and adding a Sunday evening edition.  Boyle also extended Today, changed the start time of Woman’s Hour lopped 10 minutes off The World at One and dropped the likes of Kaleidoscope (for Front Row), Week Ending, Sport on 4 and Breakaway. Interestingly Desert Island Discs also moved from 12.15pm to 11.15am where it also has remained until next month.     

But surely The Archers omnibus edition has always been on a Sunday morning? Well, no it hasn’t, as this dip into the schedules of Radio 4, the Light Programme and the Home Service will demonstrate.

7.30 pm on Saturday

Well that surprised you. Yes, when the omnibus editions first started on 5 January 1952 – a year after the programme had first been nationally broadcast – it was on a Saturday night. In 1952 it was on the Light Programme so followed programmes such as Sports Report, Jazz Club and Radio Newsreel.

4.00 pm on Sunday

From 26 July 1953 the omnibus moves to Sunday. Why? Well I’ll come to that.

7.30 pm on Saturday

Yes even Light Programme controller Kenneth Adam liked to move the radio furniture now and then as the omnibus is back to Saturday night by the end of September 1953. That same week saw the start of Friday Night is Music Night, also recently in the news as it re-appears on Radio 3.

9.10 am on Sunday

Listeners can, in July, August and September 1954, now ‘have breakfast with The Archers’. But what’s behind this Saturday night/Sunday morning swapping? Well it coincides with the summer Proms concerts. In the 1950s the Proms were not the exclusive preserve of the Third Programme and would also be broadcast on the Light and the Home Service. This summer pattern continues in 1955.

7.30 pm on Saturday

This remains the usual slot apart from when the Proms are on in 1955. The Sunday morning versions start at 9.10 am and run for 50 minutes rather than the usual one hour so actually there’s a bit of editing going on here to make the omnibus version fit the timeslot.  

8.00 pm on Saturday

It’s moved on by half-an-hour from 1 October 1955. In the summer of 1956 it again pops up on Sunday, this time at 3.15 pm. In mid July 1957 it temporarily moves to Sundays at 9.10 am.

12.15 pm on Saturday

For some reason, between 28 September and 30 November 1957, the omnibus is now heard on the Home Service on Saturday lunchtime, again in a truncated form. The weekday editions remain on the Light Programme.

9.45 am on Sunday

Finally, from 8 December 1957, the omnibus edition ends up on Sundays where it has remained ever since. Back in 1957 on the Light Programme it was followed at 10.30 am by Easy Beat, so it remains very much edited down from the regular weekday broadcasts.

9.32 am on Sunday  

On 1 January 1961 it moves back a few minutes and is now just under an hour long so presumably we’re now getting the full weekly story. It follows Chapel in the Valley and a two-minute news bulletin at 9.30 am.

9.30 am on Sunday

From 30 August 1964 the Home Service takes the Sunday morning omnibus and, as it happens, Chapel in the Valley. Meanwhile over on the Light they have The Record Show with Geoffrey Wheeler followed by Easy Beat. The fact that Radio Caroline, with its all day pop programmes, had started earlier that year is purely coincidental surely!

Meanwhile from 14 December 1964 the Home Service starts to repeat the previous day’s Light Programme broadcast. From Monday 2 January 1967 the Home Service broadcast all editions of The Archers .The Home Service becomes BBC Radio 4 on 30 September of that year.

6.15 pm on Sunday

In 1976 Ian McIntyre is appointed as the new controller of Radio 4 and a year later, from 2 October 1977 he causes major consternation by moving The Archers omnibus to Sunday evening at 6.15 pm; at the same time dislodging Letter from America from Sunday morning to lunchtime. Listeners complain in droves. Correspondents to the Radio Times were not happy: ‘I feel like weeping...the most disastrous change of all” (Renee Obard, Salisbury) and ‘change for the sake of change has no appeal’ (S.C. Russell, Bolton). Even the offering of a quadraphonic stereo transmission – for the first omnibus edition at any rate – failed to impress: ‘the pleasure afforded to a few listeners of hearing The Archers in stereo and quad must surely be outweighed by the discomfort caused to those who, like myself, are now denied the pleasure of listening at all, albeit in humble mono’ (R. Collingwood, Camberley)   

The incoming Director General Ian Trethowan tells McIntyre to think again. Bizarrely someone protests by nailing both an abusive letter and a kipper to the door of McIntyre’s son’s room at his Cambridge college. BBC Governor Lady Seota complains that it has “up-ended her life”. Eventually after increasing pressure from listeners and the governors McIntrye relents and the omnibus programme reverts back to Sunday mornings from July 1979.

10.15 on Sunday

This becomes the new time for the omnibus edition for the next 19 years. Returning to Sunday morning on 1 July 1979 it is preceded by Letter from America (which had already been moved back to Sunday morning) and the Morning Service and followed by Weekend Woman’s Hour, back on air after been dropped in late 1974.

10.00 on Sunday

On 19 April 1998 there are changes to Radio 4 Sunday morning’s schedule as mentioned above. At 9 am we get a brand new programmes Broadcasting House in which ‘Eddie Mair presents a fresh approach to news’ followed by The Archers now 15 minutes earlier and also 15 minutes longer. And that is how things have remained until now.  

Ambridge Revisited

Disaster in Ambridge. No, so far the Borsetshire village remains COVID-19 free. But as a result of the pandemic the stock of recordings of the Radio 4 serial have run dry. New episodes are currently being recorded but with a difference as some of the actors record their lines at home (Tim Bentinck, who plays David Archer pictured above). According to The Archers website "Storylines will continue and you will still hear about the comings and goings in Ambridge, but you will hear its residents as you have never heard them before. Instead of multiple characters interacting each episode will have fewer characters and you will have an insight into more of their private thoughts".

These new episodes air from 25 May so to fill a three week gap this month we'll hear a selection of 'classic' episodes from the last twenty years. But while the programme takes a furlough, and for those with a longer memory, here's a chance to go back into the last century.

I've previously written about the night that Grace Archer died in 1955 and the passing of Doris Archer in October 1980. From just three months earlier comes this omnibus edition. The omnibus versions had started in January 1952 on Saturday evenings but moved to Sunday mornings in the summer of 1955. For 30 years they were introduced by Tom Forrest (played by Bob Arnold) who would directly address the listener and regale them with a countryside story and segue into the opening scene. This edition was heard on 24 August 1980 just days after the death of actor Norman Shelley who played Colonel Danby.

Moving on a few months the programme marked its 30th anniversary with this New Year's Day edition from 1981 as a party is about the start at Brookfield Farm.

The day before that 30th anniversary edition radio critic Gillian Reynolds explored the popularity of the serial in this edition of the Radio 4 arts magazine Kaleidoscope titled An Everyday Story.


In this omnibus edition from 14 February 1982 there's havoc on the roads of Ambridge - though it takes place 'off mic' - with the death of (spoiler alert) Polly Perks. 

From August 1983 Jack Woolley (played by the late Arnold Peters) is hit by the news that his former wife Valerie (they'd divorced in 1974) has just died.

This is a bit of a rarity called Vintage Archers from Christmas Day 1986 as various characters get together over the holiday period and remember times past leading to the replay of some old clips including a reappearance of Grace Archer.



From 1987 yet another programme celebrating the genesis of the The Archers. From the documentary strand The Saturday Feature Barry Norman looks behind the scenes of the programme that was originally introduced as a farming version of Dick Barton. An Everyday Story of Country Folk was first heard on 27 June 1987.


By May 1989 The Archers hit the magic 10,000 episodes. From 25 May this is edition number 9,999.

The following day the special edition features Terry Wogan who's staying at Grey Gables whilst taking part in a pro-celebrity golf tournament. He's greeted by Pru Forrest, played by Judi Dench, a character who was seemingly silent in the 70s and 80s though she'd previously been played by Mary Dalley After this episode Pru once again lost her tongue.

Roland White looks at the programme's history for that week's Radio Times. 

No special guests for the 12,000th episode on 24 January 1997 as we join the action at Grange Farm.

In this Radio Times article from the same week Alison Graham asks whether the serial has come too far away from its roots as "an everyday story of country folk".

A couple of documentaries about The Archers. From 1991 Archers fan and radio critic Gillian Reynolds looks at the first forty years. It includes the voices of creator Godfrey Baseley, BBC executive Jock Gallagher, editor William Smethurst, actors June Spencer (Peggy Woolley) and Tim Bentinck (David Archer) Susie Riddell (Kate Aldridge), scriptwriter Mary Cutler and agricultural advisor Anthony Parkin. Apologies for the iffy quality of this recording.

From December 2000 is this edition of The Archive Hour in which Simon Hoggart looks at the how the development of the characters and storylines has adapted to reflect changing social roles and attitudes.     

Finally some fun from 2001 when the Dead Ringers team pay an affectionate tribute to the show on its 50th anniversary. Starring Jon Culshaw, Jan Ravens, Mark Perry and Kevin Connelly this edition first aired on 1 January 2001.

 

The Night Grace Archer Died

Thursday 22 September 1955, and British broadcasting was on the verge of a new era: commercial television was launched. Admittedly it was only in the London area and, it was estimated, just one set in five was tuned to 'Independent Television'.

However, the big news in the press the following morning was not just about the first commercials but that there had been a 'Death in the Family' as poor Grace Archer had met her untimely and shocking demise whilst attempting to rescue her horse from a blazing barn. Graces' screams of "Midnight! Midnight!" and Phil's plea "Grace, come back! The roof's collapsing" were heard by about eight million listeners to the BBC Light Programme daily serial The Archers just an hour before Postmaster General Dr Charles Hill and Sir Kenneth Clark, Chairman of the ITA made their inaugural speeches in London's Guildhall.

The opening line-up for ITV in London published in the
new magazine TV Times

The next morning the headline in the Daily Mirror read 'Radio fans weep as Grace Archer 'Died'' whilst the News Chronicle asked 'Why did Grace have to die?'. Even The Times was moved to report 'Death of BBC Serial Character'.    

The events surrounding that fateful night in 1955 are this weekend recalled in the BBC Radio 4 drama Dead Girls Tell No Tales. Written by former Archers scriptwriter Joanna Toye it depicts life in and around The Archers' production office and studio. Amongst the cast is the original Grace Archer played by the now 90-year-old Ysanne Churchman.   

But was the turn of events in Ambridge mere coincidence or, as some claimed, a stunt? At the time scriptwriter Edward J. Mason denied that Grace had died in the cause of publicity rather than art. The Herald, however, pointed out that the death "ensured that The Archers made headlines when 'in all theory' sound radio should have been pushed right off the news pages by the advent of Independent TV."

Mary Crozier of the Manchester Guardian perhaps summed it up best, in verse:

She dwelt unseen amid the Light,

Among the Archer clan,

And breathed her last the very night

That ITV began ...

She was well loved, and millions know

That Grace has ceased to be.

Now she is in her grace, but oh,

She scooped the ITV.

The truth of the matter was that the exact timing Grace's death was no coincidence. Her 'exit' had been planned months before, just not when, or how.  According to Asa Briggs' history of the BBC the decision to kill off Grace had been taken in January 1955, months before her marriage to Phil Archer that Easter. The creator of The Archers, Godfrey Beasley, wrote to Rooney Pelletier, the Controller of the Light Programme, on 10 January that "at a suitable opportunity, either at the end of August or early September, Grace will be involved in a motor vehicle accident which will prove fatal".  

By 11 May 1955 the plan had been hatched by Pelletier in a memo to Denis Morris, Head of Midland Regional Programmes. He wrote: "the more I think about it, the more I believe that a death of a violent kind in The Archers timed if possible to diminish interest in the opening of commercial television in London is a good idea".   

At the same time Briggs observes that this was not the whole truth of the matter. The scriptwriters were also "anxious to cut the number of characters in the series: they felt it was becoming 'cluttered up' and that it would be desirable to introduce 'greater validity' into the situations described".

There was also a degree to which radio was flexing its muscles, showing it was still a force to be reckoned with, despite the rise in television viewing. It's no coincidence that all this happened just two years after the BBC had issued a Ten-Year Plan that concluded that sooner or later "with the growth of television audiences and a consequent shrinkage of audiences dependent on sound alone" there may have to be realignments of the radio services. Did the death of Grace Archer mark the beginning of the end of radio's Golden Era?    

This is what listeners to the Light Programme will have heard that week in September. This edition of The Archers is the omnibus version that was broadcast on the Saturday evening.

As a postscript to this blog post it seems that The Archer's may have made the news in 1955 for other reasons, as an early example of a transfer from radio to television. I stumbled across this aborted attempt to have the folk of Ambridge fill part of BBC tv's Toddler's Truce closedown period in Leonard Miall's Inside the BBC:

At that time, when evening television only began at 7.30 p.m., the Post Office set a strict limit on the number of hours of television that the BBC might transmit each week. However, when ITV started in 1955 the Post Office allowed the evening's viewing to begin at 7 p.m.

Unfortunately this daily increase of thirty minutes' television time was not accompanied by any more studio space or film resources, which were then what limited programme expansion. Every production studio at Lime Grove was fully committed, so Cecil McGivern, BBC Television's Controller, decided to fill the extra time with a quarter of an hour of news originated from a studio at Alexandra Palace, followed by a daily television version of The Archers, produced in Birmingham.

The pilot programmes of The Archers were not up to standard, and at short notice McGivern asked if the Television Talks department could provide a substitute daily programme.

That programme turned out to be Highlight which in turn begat Tonight.

Miall goes on to say:

The Archers may have muffed their own television launch, but with panache they pre-empted the press coverage of ITV's Guildhall launch by having Grace Archer die in a brave attempt to save a horse from a blazing barn. (Donald) Baverstock immediately invited The Archers' writers to be interviewed on Highlight by its initial presenter MacDonald Hastings. Mac introduced the item with the words 'And now for a slight case of murder.' Castigated for causing national grief, the scriptwriter Ted Mason countered by demanding, 'Why blame us? Did people blame Shakespeare for the death of Desdemona?'

Dead Girls Tell No Tales will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday 19 September 2015 at 2.30 p.m.

Sources:

The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom Volume IV: Sound and Vision by Asa Briggs (OUP 1979)

Inside the BBC by Leonard Miall (Weidenfeld & Nicholson 1994)

Note:

Recent press coverage of the play Dead Girls Tell No Tales (and indeed the Radio 4 news report above) states an audience for infamous edition of The Archers as hitting 20 million, this is probably overstated by more than 50%. Briggs quotes an audience of 8 million and the BBC Year Book for 1956 states the usual figure as 9 million. Bearing in mind that there would have been no pre-publicity about the tragic storyline (how unlike today's coverage of events on Coronation Street and EastEnders) it seems unlikely that 20 million tuned in.  

Since I wrote this post the BBC have issued Dead Girls Tell No Tales as a CD or audio download as part of The Archers: The Death of Grace Archer

The Archers – Death of Doris Archer

The death of any long-running drama character is always difficult to handle both for the production team and the listeners. This has challenged The Archers scriptwriters a number of times over the soap’s long history.

Many listeners still haven’t forgiven last year’s much publicised rooftop shenanigans of Nigel Pargetter. We also had the recent ‘off-stage’ exit of Phil Archer following the death of actor Norman Painting.

But back on this date in 1980 the problem was the deteriorating health of actress Gwen Berryman who played matriarch Doris Archer. Crippled with arthritis she was unable to continue recording the show and so producer Jock Gallagher decided that her character was be written out, dying peacefully at Glebe Cottage. Gwen Berryman herself died three years later.

The day before the broadcast Radio 4’s The World this Weekend covered the news from Ambridge in this report by Julia Somerville. Introducing the programme is Gordon Clough.


And here's the episode of The Archers from 27 October 1980.