The Lemon Fool

Both 'FIRE' and London Capital failure are to be covered today, (12.05pm) if anyone would be interested. Apparently FIRE is a growing phenomenon (not for me unfortunately!)

Not much in it I am sorry to say. I have almost given up on Moneybox because they just do not have the time to deal with anything in depth.

Dod

I agree with Dod, a waste of time IMHO.

Eb

Yes. Trouble is, like much broadcast journalism (that's what it is!) they have a set time and pack too many items in the slot to go anywhere in depth or wonder off a set schedule of questions or points.

Also, unlike say arts programmes - where they will happily refer to say Shakespeare, his plays or characters or even lines of text from his plays while assuming the listeners know what they are talking about - in any sort of 'technical' or financial journalism they would (equivalently) patiently explain that Shakespeare is a 'well known' long dead writer of plays, then helpfully explain what a 'play' is, then what actors are...

Next time around they'd start all over again, patiently explaining that Shakespeare is a 'well known' long dead writer of plays, then helpfully...

I thought the piece was OK. Sensible arguments from the proponent, not po-pooed by the presenter.

Can I recomend listening to the podcasts instead. Not only can you listen when you wish, they sometimes add extra content that the schedual doesn't allow for.

As for the quality of Moneybox, I tend to agree with the critical posts.

I think Paul Lewis is one of the better BBC interviewers, he does occasionally badger interviewees for an answer or nudge them around to making a point.
I guess the problem is that if he makes a 'hostile environment' for interviewees he won't get many takers.

Anyone catch the recent one with the guy from FCA boasting about his powers of enforcement (a stiffly worded letter, followed a bit of tutting) and then immediately retreating when asked repeatedly to use them by the insurers trade association representative?

Kipling

Ever since the days of John Reith, the first Director General, the mandate of the BBC has been to ‘inform, educate and entertain’ in that order. Therefore, the purpose of Radio 4’s Moneybox is to inform and educate by reacting to financial issues as they affect consumers. Now, given the short attention span and accepted lack of financial awareness that exists amongst the populous, the best Moneybox can hope to do during a 30-minute time slot is to alert its audience, in the generalist of terms, of the risks and pitfalls that are out there. Go any deeper, for example by focusing on one or two specific issues, and the chances are the audience, if not vested in the topics, will lose interest and drift away.

Take the case of London-based DAB broadcaster Share Radio, several of whose programmes were similar to those of Moneybox. They struggled to attract a meaningful audience for near 2-and-half years following launch until admitting defeat in 2017. Now far less ambitious, a scaled-back Share Radio can only be heard on the internet.

Personally, I’d like Moneybox extended to an hour, but - given the Radio 4 programming competition over the weekend when the general listenership has more disposable time - that is unlikely to happen. In my view Moneybox, while far from ideal, is better than nothing.

Kipling wrote:I think Paul Lewis is one of the better BBC interviewers, he does occasionally badger interviewees for an answer or nudge them around to making a point.
I guess the problem is that if he makes a 'hostile environment' for interviewees he won't get many takers.

If Paul Lewis feels an interviewee has been schooled in the art of prevarication (as some of his subjects have a tendency to do if left unchecked) then it becomes a question of having to aggressively press in view of programming time constraints.

forrado wrote:Ever since the days of John Reith, the first Director General, the mandate of the BBC has been to ‘inform, educate and entertain’ in that order. Therefore, the purpose of Radio 4’s Moneybox is to inform and educate by reacting to financial issues as they affect consumers. Now, given the short attention span and accepted lack of financial awareness that exists amongst the populous, the best Moneybox can hope to do during a 30-minute time slot is to alert its audience, in the generalist of terms, of the risks and pitfalls that are out there. Go any deeper, for example by focusing on one or two specific issues, and the chances are the audience, if not vested in the topics, will lose interest and drift away.

A few years ago, whilst the regular Moneybox presenter was on holiday, they used to have a replacement which was led by individual Moneybox listeners who had a particular financial issue or question that they wanted to follow up on. The entire programme was dedicated to a different listener and topic each week. They did this by the listener concerned interviewing people in the finance industry, backed up by help from Moneybox staff researchers.

I found these programmes very interesting. But I don't think this format lasted for very long.

I think the show broadly fulfills a function similar to Which? Magazine with it addressing similar topics.

I thought the episode on Wills was certainly informative and very entertaining - anyone hearing the old dears calling in with their 'dowager duchess' aspirations and finding out that Inheritance tax just wasn't going to be an issue for them couldn't have not been entertained.

Bit of a swerve (sorry!) but when I recently wanted to hear an episode of the Wednesday 'Moneybox Live' programme I had missed, I tried the BBC R4 website. Oh dear! I was confronted with 'BBC Sounds' and eventually gave up (as I gather others have).

So it's listen live, tape(?) it, or miss it from now on. Let's hope something similar isn't unleashed on the BBC TV part of the website any time soon...

XFool wrote:Bit of a swerve (sorry!) but when I recently wanted to hear an episode of the Wednesday 'Moneybox Live' programme I had missed, I tried the BBC R4 website. Oh dear! I was confronted with 'BBC Sounds' and eventually gave up (as I gather others have).

So it's listen live, tape(?) it, or miss it from now on. Let's hope something similar isn't unleashed on the BBC TV part of the website any time soon...

You didn't try very hard. I just opened the BBC Sounds app on my mobile, selected channels and schedules, picked Radio 4 then clicked on the calendar icon to get schedules by day. Swiped left to find the day of original broadcast then scrolled down to find the programme.

Intuitive and simple.

TJH

XFool wrote:Bit of a swerve (sorry!) but when I recently wanted to hear an episode of the Wednesday 'Moneybox Live' programme I had missed, I tried the BBC R4 website. Oh dear! I was confronted with 'BBC Sounds' and eventually gave up (as I gather others have).

So it's listen live, tape(?) it, or miss it from now on. Let's hope something similar isn't unleashed on the BBC TV part of the website any time soon...

I'm unsure what the problem is with BBC Sounds, I just tried it with past Moneybox episodes and it seemed fine to me. Mind you, I use a PC, albeit with Linux and I don't know if other devices are more problematic.

RC

tjh290633 wrote:

XFool wrote:Bit of a swerve (sorry!) but when I recently wanted to hear an episode of the Wednesday 'Moneybox Live' programme I had missed, I tried the BBC R4 website. Oh dear! I was confronted with 'BBC Sounds' and eventually gave up (as I gather others have).

So it's listen live, tape(?) it, or miss it from now on. Let's hope something similar isn't unleashed on the BBC TV part of the website any time soon...

You didn't try very hard. I just opened the BBC Sounds app on my mobile, selected channels and schedules, picked Radio 4 then clicked on the calendar icon to get schedules by day. Swiped left to find the day of original broadcast then scrolled down to find the programme.

Intuitive and simple.

If you say so. Last time I tried I could see NO indexing or dating of the programmes! And I heard exactly the same complaint made on the R4 Feedback programme. I was not using a mobile.

I will give it another go some time.

ReformedCharacter wrote:I'm unsure what the problem is with BBC Sounds, I just tried it with past Moneybox episodes and it seemed fine to me. Mind you, I use a PC, albeit with Linux and I don't know if other devices are more problematic.

I could certainly see "past Moneybox episodes" indexed by date. But these were old archived programmes from several years ago. When I tried, on a PC, current programmes appeared entirely unindexed...

XFool wrote:

ReformedCharacter wrote:I'm unsure what the problem is with BBC Sounds, I just tried it with past Moneybox episodes and it seemed fine to me. Mind you, I use a PC, albeit with Linux and I don't know if other devices are more problematic.

I could certainly see "past Moneybox episodes" indexed by date. But these were old archived programmes from several years ago. When I tried, on a PC, current programmes appeared entirely unindexed...

I see episodes for April 2019 here and they seem to work:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qj ... ts/2019/04

RC

I've just tried on my PC, clicked on Sounds, then Schedules, then Radio 4, selected Wednesday 17th from the bar at the top then scrolled down through the listings to 15:00 and there it is. I did try clicking on Stations instead of Schedules, which is a blind alley.

TJH

ReformedCharacter wrote:I see episodes for April 2019 here and they seem to work:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qj ... ts/2019/04

Yep! I see them too. That's how they always used to look in the past. Didn't look like that last time I looked or, presumably, when that guy quoted on Feedback also looked. So...

Wait a minute. That's Moneybox! I've just tried to look at Moneybox Live - same thing no programme index apart from programmes only shown up to April 2015...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0080g ... des/player

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0080g ... odes/guide

...So Money Box Live, shown as Money Box Live in my listing magazine and broadcast on Wednesdays (as Money Box Live?) is now listed on the BBC R4 website in BBC Sounds as... Money Box.

OK.

Hope I get the memo when Wednesday is redesignated as Saturday.

Sounds App on iPhone is fairly intuitive, use the Search button and type in Moneybox and lots of episodes come up, I’d expect Android phones are very similar.

Sometimes the phone version is the simplest option, they tend to be pared back to the basics