Scheduling of family radio content on the BBC’s adult speech network, R4Extra, continues to be of concern.

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In February 2011 the BBC’s Strategy for Children’s Audio wrote off a core duty to provide children with public service radio and all content for listeners aged under-seven was replaced with 15 minute podcasts. This disadvantages those in homes without the internet, who may be the most needful group of listeners.  Remaining radio for children aged seven to 14 years was re-launched as ‘family hours’ on R4Extra – the official home of horror, sci-fi stand-up comedy.  Of the £640.1 million annual budget for BBC domestic radio, under £1million is reserved for children, who now have less licence-funded radio than ‘Children’s Hour’ provided in the 1940s when the Home Service was the only delivery platform.

A meeting of the Sound Start Group, hosted at the House of Lords by the Baroness [Floella] Benjamin; the Baroness Howe and the Baroness Warnock, recorded the concerns of attending parents, educators and child-care professionals and called on BBC Trust Chairman, Sir Michael Lyons, to delay the Strategy and review the role of public radio in children’s leisure and cultural development. The request was denied and a further appeal to his successor, Lord Patten, was also refused.

Radio has no watershed and, over the two years since launch, BBC R4extra has broadcast, repeated and rotated unsuitable material during daytime when children may be listening.  In addition, copies of this adult material, including offensive language; violent crime; horror; sexual content and adult comedy,  can be readily downloaded alongside the family hours.

By way of excuse, the BBC argues that R4Extra is an adult-focused network to which very few children tune and advises parental monitoring.  Decades of BBC research has proved that children are not drawn to adult speech formats, which tend to favour a middle-aged, middle class audiences, however, having failed to engage children via R5, R4 and R7, their content remains on adult speech station R4Extra.

Concerns about this conflicted scheduling, logged through the BBC’s official complaints procedures, have taken over a year reach to the Trust Editorial Team who have ultimately refused to escalate them to the Trust. Below is a link to this surprising and disappointing decision, together with our response.   Children do not pay the Licence Fee but they have a rightful place in broadcasting across all publicly funded platforms. We continue to lobby for that place.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/our_work/complaints_and_appeals/editorial.html

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