Listeners 'dismayed' at cuts to World Service
This week on Over to You I鈥檝e been hearing from World Service listeners about their reactions to the wide-ranging cuts which were announced last week.
The cuts are required to meet cash savings of 20 per cent over the next three years and mean the loss of 650 World Service jobs, the closure of five language services and the end of some long running programmes on the English Service.
Director of 麻豆官网首页入口 Global News Peter Horrocks announced the changes last week. Picture: Getty Images
On Over to You last week Global News Director Peter Horrocks told me that he very much regretted the loss of an estimated 30 million listeners because of the savings.
A typical reaction came from Victoria Pritchard who contacted us to say that she is dismayed at the proposed cuts to the 麻豆官网首页入口 World Service because she enjoys all aspects of the radio 鈥 which she finds far more varied than television.
In particular Victoria said, the World Service give us a global view of politics, the arts, current affairs etc with voices from far flung parts of the globe.
She says 鈥淭hey enrich our lives for the knowing. Please reconsider. The World Service is a voice for many people in many places.鈥
Jerome Wynter contacted us to express sorrow that the 麻豆官网首页入口鈥檚 Caribbean programmes are to close.
鈥淚'm working here in the US, and my nephew who visited for about two weeks last summer, listened - for every day that he was here - to the 麻豆官网首页入口's Caribbean Service! Antiguans, and I'm sure every West Indian, listened avidly to the 麻豆官网首页入口; it was one of the biggest wireless forms of education in the region.鈥
Rita Suksenna from Chandagar in India and Bob Darnell from Perth in Western Australia are bitterly disappointed about the axing of Politics UK.
Bob says 鈥淚 would have thought that the most important job of the 麻豆官网首页入口 World Service would be to inform the rest of the world about what is going on in the UK.
"Instead of this you appear to be totally obsessed with Islam, Africa and the Middle East. It seems that almost every programme I hear is dominated by these topics and there is comparatively very little on life in Britain and Europe.鈥
One of the recurring concerns you had following last week鈥檚 interview with Peter Horrocks is the loss of short wave transmissions to Russia and in particular, China.
Listeners pointed out that listening on line is a painful experience because the there is insufficient bandwidth for international online traffic, internet connection is still very expensive in China, where internet connection is also liable to be shut down on some occasions.
We asked listener Keith Perron who contacted us from Taipei to join the Head of 麻豆官网首页入口 Chinese, Raymond Li to discuss the changes to the 麻豆官网首页入口鈥檚 output in China.
Finally with global journalists reporting around the clock from Cairo鈥檚 Tahrir Square the mass media鈥檚 coverage of the protests in Egypt has been extensive to say the least.
But much like those in Tunisia, the protests were driven by social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter, so I spoke to Mohammed Shukri, a Middle East analyst from the 麻豆官网首页入口鈥檚 Monitoring service, about the role social media has played in the uprising.
Keep your emails and calls coming.
Rajan Datar is the presenter of Over To You.
Over To You is your chance to have your say about the 麻豆官网首页入口 World Service and its programmes. It airs at 00:40, 03:40 and 12:40 every Sunday (GMT).
- Listen to previous episodes of Over To You
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- Send the team your feedback by email (overtoyou@bbc.co.uk), telephone (44 144 960 9000), SMS (447786 202006) or by leaving comments on this blog
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