Please, BBC, don't cut short your short stories | Books in the News
 

Trouble in short story-land. I mentioned in my joy-of-radio-4 post on Monday that a rejigging of the network schedule will lead to the station’s output of short stories being cut from three a week to just one, in favour of an expansion of its current affairs programming. Baffling news, particularly given the station’s position as sponsor of the UK’s annual National Short Story Award, and its trumpeting of its dedication to the short form in the prize’s introductory spiel. “BBC Radio 4 is the world’s leading broadcaster of <a href="http://www.belstaffsjackets.co.uk/specials.html"><strong>belstaff sale</strong></a> short stories,” it announces, vaingloriously, “and a staunch and long-time supporter of the form.” With friends like these … Happily, authors and listeners both have sprinted to the short story’s defence. “Pointless cultural vandalism”, said Writers’ Guild general secretary Bernie Corbett, pledging the Guild’s support; the actors’ union, Equity, put out a statement in which it suggested that “with the gradual phasing out of short stories in <a href="http://www.belstaffsjackets.co.uk/specials.html"><strong>belstaff clothing </strong></a> the printed form the BBC are contributing to the demise of the genre through the constant reduction of budgets available in radio”. The broadcaster’s Feedback programme was inundated with complaints, and the Society of Authors sent controller of programmes Gwyneth Williams a letter expressing its disappointment. An online petition, meanwhile, has been set up by author Susie Maguire; the hundreds of signatories include Sarah Dunant (“Within 15 short minutes, one can be transported into a different world … It feels both mad – and sad – to think <a href="http://www.belstaffsjackets.co.uk/products_new.html"><strong>belstaff shop</strong></a> that Radio 4 would somehow be better without it.”), Ali Smith (“This seems to me a terrible failure of imagination on the part of the BBC”) and James Robertson (“radio is THE pre-eminent medium for the short story form. There should be more short stories, not fewer, on radio.”) I couldn’t agree more – and the really crazy part is that Radio 4 is winding down its output just at the moment when everyone else is suddenly cottoning on to the form’s potential. The New Yorker’s hugely popular monthly fiction podcast sees one author read another’s short story; in the run-up to Christmas last year, we did something similar, and were blown away both by the numbers of listeners and the general enthusiasm for the project. Short stories, as many have observed, are a perfect fit for radio; <a href="http://www.436100.info/view.php?id=91989"><strong>ralph lauren big pony Cheap ralphlauren T-shirt-wholesale - FC2ブãƒ*ã‚°</strong></a> the ideal marriage of medium and message. Cheap and quick to produce, they come with none of the problems and pitfalls of adaptations: with a short story on the radio, one is privy to much more of an author’s intention; far fewer corners cut, hardly any descriptions excised. Listening to Katherine Mansfield’s The Garden Party, expertly delivered by Romola Garai, was a transportive moment on a grinding seven-hour drive last Sunday. So please, BBC, think again before you wield the knife – and please, the rest of you, get signing that petition.