BBC Radio 4 Errors Failing Listeners

A senior BBC radio executive who is heading off to an academic post has admitted that Radio 4 has had a very lean period.
The outgoing controller of the station Mark Damazer has put a string of on-air errors down as a "very poor period" for the station.
The top radio man, who is leaving R4 in October to work for Oxford University, however denied they were failing listeners because of budget cuts.
A Jonathan Dimbleby phone-in show called Any Answers was recently abandoned because of a "system breakdown", and, following the error, Mr Damazer said output has "fallen below our very high standards", after two other errors in March where the wrong shipping forecast and the wrong edition of topical comedy series The Now Show were aired.
"It's been a very poor period for the professional way in which we normally play out Radio 4," he has admitted.
He insisted technical issues and "human error" were to blame for the mistakes.
"It can happen. There hasn't been a single case yet where anybody who has been responsible for a mistake, or even when a desk has not worked properly, that people think it is to do with maintenance or budget cuts."
(BMcC/GK)