Farewell Crossing Continents

The programme that is the home of some outstanding reporting from abroad is one of those that has fallen victim to BBC cuts

While From Our Own Correspondent enjoys hallowed status on Radio 4 as one of the network’s most time-honoured institutions, it’s actually Crossing Continents that, in my view, has long provided the listener with the most in-depth coverage of “abroad”, opening up the world and telling stories that you simply won’t hear anywhere else.

The axing of Crossing Continents, along with that of the late-night news programme The World Tonight (both of them victims of BBC cuts announced today), sends out a regrettable message. I’m sure these cuts have been made with a heavy heart, but they remove areas of new discovery, close off a little bit more of the world, and reduce the journalism of which Crossing Continents and The World Tonight are outstanding examples.

Editions of Crossing Continents I’ve found fascinating that spring to mind include stories about a cocoa crisis in the Ivory Coast, how Vienna achieves affordable housing, Israelis moving to Cyprus, and one of many that came out of Ukraine in recent years — that of its relationship with Poland in the light of Polish victims of Second World War massacres who still lie in mass graves. Some 465 editions of Crossing Continents are available to listen to on BBC Sounds.

Reporters of the calibre of Tim Whewell and Lucy Ash — longtime mainstays of Crossing Continents — are for me just as much the heart and soul of Radio 4 as any of the station’s bigger names. I trust we’ll continue to hear them.

The World Tonight’s history is long and venerable. Of Radio 4’s flagship news programmes — along with Today, The World at One, and PM — it’s always been the most serious and considered, an oasis of calm comparable to an old-style broadsheet newspaper, with foreign reporting at its heart. 10pm may not be peak listening time but the sheer substance of The World Tonight surely counts for a lot.

Current presenter James Coomarasamy is for my money the best of any of these news shows’ regulars, a relaxed but authoritative voice that one might have heard on the programme in decades past — a worthy heir to figures of the stature of John Morgan and Robin Lustig. There remains something timeless about The World Tonight — with a lasting feel to its first rough draft of history.

Post-The World Tonight we are promised a simulcast with the World Service’s programme Newshour (whose presenters include Coomarasamy), which points to some continuity. But the overall reality of a shrinking service is inescapable.

I’m surprised to see the end of Antisocial, the programme that seeks to understand what’s really going on with whatever this week’s hot online issue is. Presenter Adam Fleming steers a path through the arguments with tremendous skill, but perhaps there are those who feel that the position the programme occupies — outside the online world, looking in – sits uneasily with the zeitgeist. After all, the new BBC DG Matt Brittin — who with these cuts is making his first big statement — was for many years a colossus at Google.

The Law Show is also going, which means that Joelle Grogan only had two years in the presenter’s chair after succeeding longtime occupant Joshua Rozenberg. How expensive is The Law Show? Probably cheaper than Crossing Continents but until we know what might fill the slots they occupied, Radio 4 feels the poorer for the demise of them both.