It wouldn't even cost much to do that, and there'd be the possibility of getting revenue through putting it out as a CD-Rom.

Maybe its the kind of thing the digital TV chanel BBCFour could be doing.

I suspect what would get in the way is that the people who run the BBC these days are embarassed by the Ballads, because it shows up so much of what they do these days as pretty second-rate.

Mind, as the saying goes, the good thing about good radio is that the pictures are so much better.

It occurs to me that one thing that has in a way grown out from the Radio Ballads has been the various folk plays and so forth we've had over the years since then, though there are other sources for that as well.