Thought for the Day

Infobox Radio Show
show_name = Thought for the Day


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format = Religious
runtime = 2 minutes, 45 seconds
country = flagicon|United Kingdom United Kingdom
language = English
home_station = BBC Radio 4
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presenter = Varies
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audio_format = Stereophonic sound
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website = [http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/thought/ Thought for the Day homepage]
podcast = [http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/thought/ Thought for the Day podcast]

"Thought for the Day" is a daily scripted slot on the "Today" programme on BBC Radio 4 offering "reflections from a faith perspective on issues and people in the news", [cite web |url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/ |title=BBC - Religion and Ethics - Programmes |accessdate=2008-01-15 |publisher=BBC] broadcast at around 7.45 each Monday to Saturday morning. Nowadays lasting 2 minutes and 45 seconds, it is a successor to the more substantial five-minute religious sequence "Ten to Eight" (1965–1970) and, before that, "Lift Up Your Hearts", which was first broadcast five mornings a week on the BBC Home Service from December 1939, initially at 7.30, though soon moved to 7.55.

Notable contributors to the slot have included Anne Atkins, Jonathan Bartley, Alan Billings, Lionel Blue, Rhidian Brook, Tom Butler, Brian Draper, Giles Fraser, Richard Harries, Roy Jenkins, James Jones, Clifford Longley, Rob Marshall, Colin Morris, Jonathan Sacks, Mona Siddiqui, Indarjit Singh, Elaine Storkey, Antony Sutch, Angela Tilby, and Rowan Williams.

Criticism

In 2002, 102 notable people put their name to a letter to the BBC Governors, drawn up by the British Humanist Association, the National Secular Society, and the Rationalist Press Association. This protested that the slot was available only to religious views. As a consequence, Professor Richard Dawkins from Oxford University was given a two-and-a-half minute slot [cite web |url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/reports/archive/features/thought_for_day_dawkins.shtml |title=Richard Dawkins' Alternative Thought for the Day |accessdate=2008-02-29 |date=2002-08-14 |work=BBC Radio 4 |publisher=BBC] to deliver a reflection from an atheist viewpoint, although this was not broadcast in the "Thought for the Day" slot itself. [cite web |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2193321.stm |title=Atheist gives Thought for the Day |accessdate=2008-01-15 |date=2002-08-14 |work=BBC News website |publisher=BBC] The BBC commented that it wanted to keep "Thought for the Day" a unique offering of a faith perspective within an otherwise entirely secular news programme. In response to this decision by the BBC the Humanist_Society_of_Scotland created their own programme 'Thought For The World' [http://www.thoughtfortheworld.org/] to accommodate these non-religious views, while the site Platitude of the Day [http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog] was created to parody and analyse the Thought of the Day thoughts from a non-religious perspective.

Other venues

The Radio 4 Thought for the Day format has been copied onto other BBC channels, notably local radio. An example is BBC Radio Suffolk's morning show that hosts a Thought for the Day at approximately 7:30. Suffolk's programme differs from the national broadcast in that it is only 1 minute and 45 seconds long. Another difference is that it draws from a more diverse religious base, even including a regular pagan speaker, possibly reflecting the strong interfaith movement in the station's home town of Ipswich. (See [http://www.sifre.org.uk/ Suffolk Interfaith Resource] .) BBC Radio Leicester, too, has a daily Thought for the Day slot, broadcast live at 6:45 and repeated at 7:45. There is a "pick of the week" re-broadcast on Sunday morning. Speakers are drawn from a wide spectrum of Christian churches, and there is substantial representation from the Muslim, Hindu, and occasionally, Jain, communities. But here, contributors are restricted to a mere 90 seconds of broadcast time, which many feel is too short.

BBC Radio 2 broadcasts a similar spot on weekday mornings called "Pause for Thought".

References