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Inform, educate and entertain – the story behind BBC Radio 3

2025 Tinniswood Award judge and RLF Fellow Nicola Baldwin on the battle for Britain’s “National Theatre of the airwaves.”

At the recent BBC Audio Awards, RLF Fellow Edson Burton won the 2025 Tinniswood Award for his play Man Friday, a hugely entertaining take on the Robinson Crusoe story. The most prestigious writing prize in British audio drama, The Tinniswood Award was established by the Society of Authors and Writers’ Guild of Great Britain in memory of writer Peter Tinniswood (1936-2003) to celebrate and encourage high standards in radio drama and to reward the best original audio drama script of the previous year.

The 2025 Tinniswood received a record number of entries, and it was my privilege to be one of the judges alongside fellow writers Chris Douglas, Lucy Gough and Ming Ho. We loved Edson Burton’s Man Friday for its inspired use of a classic tale to reframe assumptions about race and class, its exquisite narration, deep love of language and thorough understanding of structure, and for vividly creating his characters’ island world. As one judge wrote, “I felt truly transported.”

That is the magic of audio drama: its ability to plunge the audience into a world created by the spell of a story. Whether – as in the other Tinniswood-shortlisted plays by Dan Rebellato, Satinder Chohan and Robert Forrest – that means fleeing Nazi Germany on a shape-shifting train, defending your community in 1979 Southall, or taking a mythical journey through memory and dementia, radio dramatists stage their plays inside their listener’s head.

Radio 3, “the National Theatre of the airwaves”

While there were excellent plays on this year’s Tinniswood longlist from Audible, Apple, BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, Buzzsprout, Harborough FM, iTunes, Podbean, Resonance FM, Spotify and individual project podcasts, all of the plays on the 2025 shortlist came from one place: BBC Radio. Celebrating its centenary of radio drama in 2024, the BBC has long been a powerhouse for the best writers, producers and actors. Lately, however, creative relationships have been overshadowed by uncertainty and arguments over drama cuts. In late 2024, the BBC told producers and writers’ organisations that Radio 3 intended to cut all drama, and the 90-minute radio drama slot would disappear. As word spread and slots vanished from 2025 guidelines, the cries of dismay from writers became… audible. Those of us on the Writers Guild of Great Britain (WGGB) Audio Committee found ourselves pitched into a battle for the future of radio drama.

Any freelance writer knows how tough the market is: writers, actors, producers and listeners recognise the enormous financial pressures on the BBC. But the disappearance of Radio 3’s regular Drama on 3 slot threatens the end of free-to-listen ‘high end’ feature-length UK audio drama which the BBC has championed for 100 years. One needs only consider the list of playwrights who have written for Drama on 3 to see its importance: Simon Armitage, Alan Bennett, Lolita Chakrabarti, Caryl Churchill, David Greig, Tanika Gupta, Lee Hall, David Hare, Zinnie Harris, Katie Hims, Jackie Kay, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Tony Marchant, Abi Morgan, Jack Thorne, debbie tucker green, Roy Williams, Winsome Pinnock and Timberlake Wertenbaker, to name a few.

Drama on 3 has also been the home for new writers and for experimentation through bold commissions and themed or compilation shorts. My own first radio – and, indeed, first broadcast – commissions were for Radio 3. By broadcasting drama alongside new and classical music, Radio 3 has allowed fledgling writers to find and tune their own voices and to be discovered by audiences. As campaigning to save Drama on 3 began, radio playwright (and 2025 Tinniswood judge) Lucy Gough coined the phrase that would become our rallying cry, asking us all to help save ‘The National Theatre of the airwaves’.

A history of drama

Yet the battle for BBC drama has arguably been integral to its existence. Sir John Reith, Lord Reith of Stonehaven, was General Manager of the British Broadcasting Company from 1922 until 1927 and the first Director-General of the newly incorporated British Broadcasting Corporation. His ‘Reithian principles’ – which are to inform, educate and entertain – are widely understood as a distillation of the BBC’s mission and, as such, are embedded in the BBC Royal Charter.

Sir John Reith himself did not particularly care for drama. As Charlotte Higgins wrote in a series of essays for The Guardian, later collected in her 2015 book This New Noise: The Extraordinary Birth and Troubled Life of the BBC: “Reith was conservative and traditionalist in his own taste, but from its earliest days the BBC was a culturally polyglot organisation, a clash of aesthetic tones… Hilda Matheson, the first BBC director of talks in the 1920s, broadcast a James Joyce reading from work-in-progress, noting ‘it would be idle to pretend everybody liked them or understood [the readings]’. Yet it had been important to broadcast them.”

Danger by Richard Hughes, regarded as the BBC’s first-ever radio drama, was broadcast live in January 1924, with the audience invited to listen in the dark for maximum effect. A young couple and an older man find themselves trapped in a lightless, flooding mine, prompting thoughts about life, death and the value of age. Rudimentary sound effects were adjusted by opening or closing the door, separating them from the single microphone in the studio. Audio drama production has come a long way in a hundred years, getting bigger (innovative sound mixing and studio facilities) and then smaller again (digital production and cost-cutting reduction of personnel and departments). But one thing remains true. Full-cast audio is, and always has been, ridiculously cheap to produce in comparison with TV. Because the script does the heavy lifting, you can record a 90-minute play, even on location, in three days. Without sets, costumes, hair and make-up, cameras, extras or mobile dressing rooms. Just a few people, acting out words.

The talent pipeline

Actors love the immediacy of audio and, if available, will jump at the chance to perform in radio dramas. Even new writers can work with wonderful actors such as Simon Russell Beale, Paterson Joseph, Timothy Spall, Maxine Peake, Adjoa Andoh, Tim McInnerny, Sudha Bhuchar, Toby Jones, Peter Capaldi, Martin Freeman, Lorraine Ashbourne, Meera Syal, Richard E. Grant and Samuel West, whose expertise they rarely access at a similar career stage elsewhere. BBC radio has long fuelled the eco-system of British drama, offering entry-level spaces for new talent as well as opportunities for experienced writers, actors and producers to experiment and develop.

However, the ultimate beneficiary of BBC audio drama’s continued excellence is the listener. At the Tinniswood Award ceremony, presenter Paterson Joseph (himself both an actor in and writer of BBC audio dramas) and winner Edson Burton described their experience of listening to BBC radio plays at home as a child. Joseph spoke of the BBC becoming his childhood ‘second language’. Not everyone can afford to buy audio drama. But the unique peculiarity of BBC radio drama is that one can often stumble upon it by accident, while out in the world: driving, commuting, at work, caring for kids or relatives. It’s in the air(waves). The BBC, as a Public Service Broadcaster, has a duty to consider access and quality of programming for older listeners, disabled or visually impaired listeners, sick or housebound listeners, parents and carers, including access to adaptations of recent plays.

In January this year, the WGGB, Society of Authors and Equity launched a joint petition to Save Audio Drama at the BBC, calling on current Director-General Tim Davie to rethink the decision to remove Drama on 3, ending the only free 90-minute radio play in the UK. Writers wrote to the papers, local MPs, and Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy MP posted videos on World Radio Day; articles appeared in The Observer, The Times, The Independent, The Stage and The Guardian. Listeners contacted the BBC, and student radio stations discovered BBC audio drama and campaigned to save it, too.

Listen up

Audio drama is about creating a shared listening experience. And at the BBC Audio Awards, there was an unexpected prize for everyone, as the BBC announced that it had, in fact, been paying attention to what campaigners were saying. In a surprise move, they announced a new 90-minute slot on Radio 4, which will showcase original audio dramas and adaptations of classic stage plays in the way that BBC radio has done so successfully for the past 100 years.

So – onward to the next century…

Images
BBC Audio Awards presenter Paterson Joseph with winner of the 2025 Tinniswood Award, Edson Burton, by Nicola Baldwin.
BBC Broadcasting House by Mike Kemp, Getty Images.

You can listen to Man Friday, and all the shortlisted Tinniswood plays via BBC Sounds.

• Listen here to Edson Burton’s winning play Man Friday.
• Listen here to Satinder Chohan’s Southall Uprising
• Listen here to Robert Forrest’s A Tale of Ossian
• Listen here to Dan Rebellato’s Restless Dreams

Nicola Baldwin’s next BBC play, We The Young Strong, is on Radio 4 on 10 April.

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