The Naked Scientists - Changes To The Naked Scientists Broadcasts

Changes To The Naked Scientists Broadcasts

In August 2012, the Naked Scientists were informed by BBC East of an impending change to the Sunday schedule, which would see the show discontinued.

This was made public by the team in November 2012, resulting in a significant international audience response of sufficient magnitude to see the head of BBC East, Mick Rawsthorne, interviewed on national radio about the decision to end a cherished and valued programme.

The excuse offered by Rawsthorne to BBC Radio 4's "Feedback" programme that the Naked Scientists was not sufficiently local was so lame that it provoked intensification of audience complaints. Even local MPs, including Julian Huppert MP for Cambridge, and the local and international press joined to protest.

Consequently the BBC reconsidered their decision to terminate the programme and have instead developed a proposal to enable it to continue and also to better integrate the content generated by the team within the other mainstream mid-week outputs of BBC Cambridgeshire, significantly increasing the reach of the programme.

At the same time, when the team made public this outcome just ahead of Christmas 2012 in an announcement on Facebook, they also gave Australian fans a double Christmas present: the programme would be airing from January 1 across Australia on ABC Radio National (RN).

Also in the pipeline is a significant overhaul of the group's website and some exciting initiatives in the arena of streaming internet radio. This is the release from their Facebook page:

"We would like to say a massive thank you to everyone who got behind us to support our campaign to save the programme for the local people who value it.

We would also like to thank the BBC staff who recognised that something needed to be done and altered their initial decision. It would have been very easy for them to dig in their heels and walk away.

So what does this mean for our programming output and, critically, for our podcast audiences?

1) The Naked Scientists will continue on the BBC, including our weekly input to national network BBC Radio 5 Live, on Sundays. This content will be available via BBC iPlayer and a BBC podcast respectively.

2) From January 2013, the Naked Scientists will also be airing on the ABC's 'Radio National (RN)' network across Australia, initially on Tuesdays at 1400 over the summer, then switching to Sunday mornings from the autumn.

3) The Radio National (RN) programme will become the Naked Scientists podcast, meaning that this is secure and will continue; A major change is that publication day will shift to Thursdays and with a slightly stronger emphasis on news. The change in publication day means that the news in the show will be literally hot off the scientific presses for listeners.

4) The other Naked Scientists current offerings, including Naked Astronomy - http://www.thenakedscientists.com/astronomy - Naked Genetics - http://www.thenakedscientists.com/genetics - and Naked Neuroscience - http://www.thenakedscientists.com/neuroscience - will continue as before.

5) The Naked Scientists will be revealing a brand new website with a host of improved features and layouts on February 1, 2013.

6) We have launched a science streaming service; this currently schedules and delivers our entire back catalogue; during 2013, we will be inviting other broadcasters and podcasters to contribute to this service, and we will be offering listeners an embeddable player for their own blogs and websites to enable you to help us to distribute your favourite show. For a sneak preview of the player at work, here's a link to a beta version: http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/typo3conf/ext/naksci_radio/popout_player.html"