This sunday marks the B24 to A25 seasonal schedule changes for many international broadcasters, including the BBC World Service.
Here's a cursory look at the changes to the weekly World Service Online schedule. Programs leaving schedule: The Global Story, HARDTalk It was mentioned this past week that The Global Story was "...taking a break...". That's too bad; it filled a somewhat unique niche in the World Service schedule by taking a single issue and providing background, context, and analysis over a 28-minute weekday program. Some topics seemed trivial, while most were interesting and relevant. The Global Story's program slot will be filled by an extra airing of several weekly series: The Conversation, In The Studio, The Food Chain, Heart and Soul, Science In Action, and Unexpected Elements. The end of HARDTalk's run had been mentioned a few months back. This is an interview program hosted by Stephen Sackur that interviews a single subject over a given program; the subjects tended to be well-known public figures. The end of the program has not sat well with Sackur, who is leaving the BBC. See https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/mar/24/i-feel-really-really-cross-at-incredibly-dumb-decisions-stephen-sackur-on-the-end-of-hardtalk-and-leaving-the-bbc. The program is being replaced by "The Interview", which is also billed as a single subject being interviewed over a half hour, but without the calling-to-account overtones of HARDTalk. There may be some other rotational substitutions on the World Service schedule, for example with Unspun World departing and The Media Show filling slots in "The Explanation". These changes also don't account for the projected removal of "BBC Sounds" access for non-UK listeners. As of March 28, BBC Sounds is still accessible here in the USA. Richard Cuff / Allentown, PA USA _______________________________________________ Internetradio mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/internetradio To unsubscribe: Send an E-mail to [email protected]?subject=unsubscribe, or visit the URL shown above.
