I had a strange feeling of deja vu on reading about the axing of the Manchester folk programme.
In the dim and distant past, Vic Smith and I presented a long-running folk programme, Minstrels Gallery", on BBC Radio Brighton which went on to become BBC Radio Sussex, then BBC Radio Sussex & Surrey and currently BBC Southern Counties Radio.
We were dumped in exactly the same way, along with the jazz, country and other specialist programmes. No advance warning, not even a word of thanks for the 20 or more years we'd been doing the show. They said they were going to change to a speech-based station, with no music whatsoever. They even said that they'd done research which showed that was what listeners actually wanted, but they eventually brought back music on record, but no specialist shows and no live music. Nowadays it's almost all 'phone ins and pop music!
Our show was pre-recorded but for those shows which went out live, they had engineers standing by to take the presenters off the air if they said anything untoward about the loss of programmes. What a way to run a radio station!