TOT: my afternoon with Radio Four

[Dave Plowman (News]

Same as with the BBC, then. No Fox news here.

[Java Jive]

I base my opinions on evidence, not propaganda, so I'm not the bigot here.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Surely with your engineering knowledge you'd find it easy to get Fox News via satellite?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Always said you needed to get out more.

[Dave Plowman (News]

You dip in at random and only want harmless entertainment?

I take it R4 is totally new to you? Have your kids moved the dial from R2?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Hope you don't 'randomly' drop in on James O'Brien. You'll have an apoplexy.

[Mark Carver]

All the presenters on LBC are allowed to make partisan comments, and declare their allegiances, all the station has to do to be balanced overall, which presumably Ofcom are happy with.

I don't agree with very much some presenters say, but that's fine, and I still enjoy listening  to them.

[Ian Jackson]

I especially enjoy listening to Nigel Farage. It enables me to keep abreast of all the pro-Brexit lies that people have been conned into believing. I also like James o'Brien. He tries to get his pro-Brexit callers to explain why they believed all the pro-Brexit lies they were told - and why they still believe them, even though they now know full well that they ARE lies.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

But if you merely 'drop in' on LBC, you're not going to get that balanced view?

If only they didn't have those incessant ad breaks. ;-) I tend to be listening in the car, and you can't just pop away to put the kettle on.

[Ian Jackson]

In message [e-mail]>, "Dave Plowman (News)" [e-mail]> writes

I find it very odd (even spooky) that every time I switch a radio on to listen to LBC, it's always during an ad break.

[alan_m]

Not much different to Any Answers(?) on radio 4 where the majority phoning in seem to be living in their own little bubble and no-one has a middle of the road view to life. I doubt if they would continue with the programme if those with loony left and loony right political views failed to phone in.

You have to be slightly unhinged to actually phone into a radio talk show in the first place.

[The Natural Philosopher]

And even loonier to spend your life listening to one...

[Brian Gaff (Sofa)]

Yes not only that but when you are on DAB you can sometimes flip through 20 stations of commercial type and every one is in an ad break. They are also far longer than I'd like to cope with myself.

I see BBC Radio London are losing their Overnights in March. That will be a great blow to the many lonely Londoners who seem to call them. The problem with commercial phone ins is that at some point during a call the presenter will fade them say thank you and then lay in on a completely biased view of why the caller is a dingbat, no they don't actually say that. If they were being fair they would argue with them on air instead of gagging the caller. Brian

[williamwright]

Yes I think that's right. And the presenters declare their bias, whereas on the BBC they pretend to have no bias.

Bill

[williamwright]

I don't like Fox news. It's trashy. What I want is a proper grown up news channel that has no overall bias.

Bill

[williamwright]

My feelings exactly.

Bill

[The Natural Philosopher]

Who would make money out of that?

[Tim Streater]

Yes, we heard this on the Today Programme this morning, where the presenter (at around a couple of minutes to 9) was saying that due to brexit we wouldn't be part of the European Space Agency any longer. The guest corrected the presenter on this matter (the ESA is nothing to do with the EU) and said that brexit opens up opportunities for the UK space programme.

The item was to do with a new made-in-the-UK higher-bandwidth antenna being installed on the ISS.

[Andy Burns]

Most days I can put up with him, sometimes he's unbearable, but it makes me wonder what sort of person it takes to get up every day and ensure he finds something new that's wrong with the world/country/politics/business to gripe about for 3 hours ...

[Andrew]

You'd have hated todays The LIfe Scientific when Jim interviewed Chief 'man made' global warming man Myles Allen.