Radio 4 News FM - History

History

When coalition forces began military operations against Iraq following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait the previous year, the BBC discontinued broadcasting the usual mixed schedule on BBC Radio 4's FM frequency and replaced it with a rolling news service, known by the emergency staff as "Scud FM", named after "Saddam Hussein's most notorious weapon," the Russian-made Scud missile which Iraq was firing at Tel Aviv.

BBC staff had managed to launch a 17 hours-a-day rolling news channel (without time to concoct an official name) with less than 24 hours notice and provided the listener with "access to the raw material, the events as they unfolded, from the daily military press conferences, the Presidential briefings to what it was like living in Baghdad, in Tel Aviv, with the troops in Saudi Arabia".

The service was run by Jenny Abramsky and produced by volunteers, working on their days off: Brian Redhead, John Humphrys, Nick Clarke, Robin Lustig, Nicholas Witchell, Bob Simpson and Nick Ross.

Journalist Georgina Henry wrote at the time:

The continuation of Radio 4's rolling news service on the FM frequency has created friction at the BBC. Radio news and current affairs have the backing of the deputy director-general John Birt to keep it running for the duration of the war. But others see it as another example of empire-building by the expanding News and current affairs directorate. And there is concern about other Radio 4 programmes which are now only being heard on poorer quality long wave. Michael Green, controller of Radio, is resigned to being unable to reclaim FM until September (unless war ends sooner) when it becomes Radio 4's dominant frequency. But, to reinforce the point that FM is not superseding his main service, most Radio 4 news and current affairs programs are banned from the FM schedule.

However, many BBC radio executives and Radio 4 listeners were unhappy about the loss of the FM stereo service, so when the conflict ended on 2 March 1991 the rolling news service stopped. A later Henry article reported:

Internal BBC politics lies behind the decision to abruptly close Radio 4's FM news service last Saturday with so much still to report in the aftermath of the war. It appears that a move by the top brass John Birt and Michael Checkland to appease senior radio executives, less than happy with the rolling news services that took away their Radio 4 FM frequency for the duration of the war. If the frequency immediately reverted to the regular Radio 4 service, it was argued, tempers would be calmed and the way smoothed to more reasoned discussions about whether the BBC should have a permanent radio news service. Those who have become addicted hope that it will: audience research shows that it has attracted new listeners to Radio 4, although the BBC has a problem over what frequency it could allocated in the long term. It can't be FM, due to become Radio 4's main frequency in September, but long-wave listening is diminishing among the BBC's target audience for such a service.

Despite this, 29% of all radio listeners and 68% of Radio 4 listeners heard it and an extra 1.5 million people listened to Radio 4 on both longwave and FM frequencies.