The Daily Mirror yesterday ran a story that BBC GMR in Manchester was to axe its community programmes in a cost cutting exercise. Although the story focussed on the programme Gay Talk which has been running for ten years, for us folkies, this means that along with all the other specialist shows, Ali O'Brien's show "Sounds of Folk" which has been running for nearly three years is also under threat of being dropped. For a radio station that prided itself on being community based this rather smells of the bean counters' actions.
I imagine writing in to the station to complain will make not a ha'porth of difference.
I presume Ali cannot comment on this at present for obvious reasons but it would be a crying shame that a programme that she and others fought for a few years ago will probably now be dropped.
The article had a quote from the BBC saying that the "Gay and Lesbian issues need to be incorporated into mainstream programming rather than just being relegated into a 30 minute weekly show"

"Relegated" suggests that they treat the specialist shows as inferior programmes instead of acknowledging that the concentration of a genre into an hour has a dedicated following.

Projecting that to the folk show does it mean that folk music will feature more heavily in the playlists of the mainstream presenters ie be spread so thinly through the schedules that there will not be a listener base.

Having had more than a passing interest in the show since it started I'm not very happy with current developments.

I'm sure more will come out in the long run.

Mark