Open letter to BBC executives. Save Radio Foyle

Below is the text of a letter emailed seperately to Tim Davie and Rhodri Davies, senior executives in London behind proposals to cut services at BBC Radio Foyle. The emails were cc-ed to Adam Smyth, the interim director of BBC NI, based in Belfast. A vigorous campaign is underway to oppose the propsals.

See Facebook: Save Radio Foyle

tim.davie@bbc.co.uk (BBC Director General)

rhodri.davies@bbc.co.uk (BBC Director of Nations)

adam.smyth@bbc.co.uk (Interim Director BBC NI)

Open Letter, 18.1.2023

Heavy snow has fallen here. Schools are closed. The government website does not list them. Many roads are treacherous. An early morning update on road-gritting on BBC Radio Foyle news is repeated this afternoon on BBC Radio Ulster news, out of date and far too late for users. The BBC Radio Foyle morning news programme responds to local enquiries, information and contacts by making its own enquiries and updating listeners on a regular basis on school closures and road conditions. 

Any hope that a digital BBC output would provide the same public service to the same all-age audience is mis-placed.

Such a pertinent and current instance of the benefits of BBC Radio Foyle drove two MPs from the region the station serves, one of them an Irish nationalist (Colum Eastwood, SDLP), the other a British nationalist (Gregory Campbell, DUP) to speak in Westminster against BBC plans. Given the democratic deficit experienced in Northern Ireland consequent to Brexit and the Protocol, to have our two MPs strongly argue against planned moves underlines just how much BBC strategies need a review.

BBC Radio Foyle should not be added to the pile of democratic deficits we live with.

It is retrograde to cut an award-winning service. Proposals to develop the service across radio and digital output are more in keeping with the BBC’s charter and mission. A retreat to a citadel is defeatist. It will embolden people who wish to do down a much-used public service. Balance-sheet driven planning alone does not make for good broadcasting. 

Cuts in a far flung region are easy to make, especially when they satisfy a metropolitan “on trend” urge. Trends pass. Radio persists and grows. Growing and developing takes courage, vision and persistence. BBC Radio Foyle already engages in digital production. It could do more and continue its excellent radio news output. It’s not either/or. Fetishising the digital as “new” and “modern” at the expense of other media leads to entrapment in the "crash and break" economics of Musk, Zuckerberg and their fellows.

As a self-employed writer, I am familiar with the need to manage a balance sheet. I don’t do that, however, by lopping off a successful activity, say, writing radio drama for BBC Radio 4, in order to enhance my work in the blogosphere.

It is time for a strategic re-think at senior BBC levels. It is time to let BBC Radio Foyle flourish. 

In the words of one of your BBC Five Live soccer pundits, Chris Sutton: “Come on, BBC. You’re better than this.”

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