Bang on Dave and Jim. The BBC had a tradition of feedback within it's public service brief, however for very many years they have undermined the process. They usually have a comedic figure to read out the complaints and then pay lip service to impartiality having first taken the piss out of the listeners. This has been so obvious that other TV shows have lampooned the programmes on and off for years.
BBC 4 are not able to do the piss take ploy, so they do the next best thing. Nothing! See above.
Now I'm going to tell you about a flaming row I had with a BBC producer in Broadcasting house. He referred within a tutorial to the listeners to my show as no better than pond life! I ripped into him, and he retreated into 'your a specialist audience' defence.
I then went on a mission with with the news team tutors.
At the time Maxwell had just been found dead, and his sons were being dragged in front of an all party commons committee but remained silent. We were asked to produce a headline for a news programme.
Most people came out with something like 'The Maxwell brothers maintain silence despite etc. etc. by way of reply I wrote 'Maxwells forced into silence by all party commons committee.
It went down like a bodily function in church.
And so it goes.....