The NUJ and its members in Salford are “dismayed” that the only live daily programme made for BBC Radio 4 outside of London is being axed.
You and Yours is one of Radio 4’s heritage titles and has what the NUJ describes as “solid listening figures.”
Its listener numbers since Covid have grown while other, bigger programmes have seen falls and stagnation. Currently, the You and Yours live audience is at similar level to Desert Island Discs, and the union says that BBC was “inundated” with thousands of messages of protest that this consumer specialist programme,that has changed laws and lives, will go at a time of prolonged cost-of-living pressures.
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The BBC has recently invented Your Voice to garner stories from licence fee payers, yet You and Yours has already done this for more than 50 years. In response to its audience, the programme has charted the growth of fraud and scams for 20 years – long before fraud even featured in the British Crime Survey.
It has recovered millions of pounds in total for victims of crime. The work of You and Yours has led to reform in laws and regulations on online banking security, gambling and insurance terms and conditions. It would, says the NUJ, be “hard to think of a better example of public service broadcasting.”
In the latest round of cuts in Salford, the teams making Radio 4 programmes are facing 11 post closures. The Religion and Ethics department is being cur back, including its head of production, and The Daily Service, one of the longest-running radio programmes in the world, will have a significant budget cut, with a new digital format amid uncertainty over where it will be broadcast. In Touch, the weekly programme for people who are blind or partially sighted is also losing funding, while episodes of Loose Ends, the long-running comedy strand are being reduced.
The NUJ is urging BBC management to reconsider these decisions and avoid heading towards a “doom spiral”of cuts and diminishing services. It will continue to engage with the government on this and hopes these damaging decisions can be reversed.
