‘Grotesque’ cull of BBC shows axes launchpad for public academics

The BBC’s cancellation of two long-running radio programmes in which university-produced research is discussed has raised concerns over the loss of opportunities for UK academics to build careers as public intellectuals.

The Radio 4 social sciences show Thinking Allowed will disappear from the airwaves in February while the arts and ideas programme Free Thinking will finish in April, it was announced last week, as the corporation seeks to make £500 million in savings.

First broadcast in 1998 and presented by sociologist Laurie Taylor, the weekly Thinking Allowed hosts discussions with social scientists about new research papers and books, while Free Thinking, presented by academic Shahidha Bari alongside broadcaster Matthew Sweet, and journalist Anne McElvoy, invites arts and humanities scholars to talk about arts and culture. It was launched on Radio 3 in 1992 as Night Waves and initially went out four times a week before it was rebranded Free Thinking in 2014. It was moved to Radio 4 in 2024 where the 60-minute show is transmitted once a week.

A third show, The Artificial Human, which looks at the social aspects of technology, presented by academics Kevin Fong and Aleks Krotoski, will also go, while Radio 5 Live will cut back original programming.

The national broadcaster said making fewer programmes will allow it to focus investment and “build a strong future for trusted journalism, distinctive storytelling and programmes that bring people together”. It has promised two new weekly shows exploring ideas shaping the world. 

But the loss of the flagship Radio 4 programmes has caused worry over the BBC’s waning commitment to its founding Reithian principles to “educate, inform and entertain”, with Southport MP Patrick Hurley writing to culture secretary Lisa Nandy to warn that the shows’ impact “cannot simply be measured by audience figures, podcast downloads or engagement metrics”.

Taylor, who penned Times Higher Education’s satirical Poppletonian column for 40 years, said he was especially proud to have championed many younger social scientists whose insights helped redefine what subjects could be investigated.

“When we began the series we tended to book big sociological hitters such as Anthony Giddens and Richard Sennett but, although fine broadcasters, they were predictably going over their published work,” he recalled.

“When we risked a couple of young researchers we were immediately struck by their passion for the subject and in most cases by their readiness to move away from the traditional topics favoured by established social scientists,” he added.

“The programme thereby not only gave my guests a chance to speak on previously neglected topics but also in many cases to demonstrate the sheer multitude of areas that could profitably be researched by social scientists: pocket money, history of the housewife, charity shops, football and gambling, prisoners’ letters, women mountaineers or keeping dogs,” he said.

Islam Issa, professor of public humanities at Birmingham City University, who has appeared on Free Thinking numerous times as a guest and presenter, said the Radio 4 stalwart shows were “cultural pillars and they are hard to replicate or replace once they’re gone”.

Noting how BBC Four’s decision in 2021 “to stop commissioning new TV programmes and become an archive channel preempted this,” Issa said it was vital the BBC continued its “long commitment to specialist programming that was hard to find elsewhere, focusing on valuable subjects like culture, arts, history and the like”.

Issa was selected as one of Radio 3’s New Generation Thinkers in 2017, one of 10 academics chosen as “one of the UK’s most significant new thinkers” that year. Launched in 2011 in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, about 150 academics have participated in the scheme that places early career scholars with Radio 4 shows, with Free Thinking the core partner. Hundreds of academics apply for it every year, although the 2026 cohort of New Thinkers was reduced to five, down from six in 2025.

The AHRC confirmed the initiative “will be paused while the BBC and AHRC consider how the scheme can align with future programming” following “recently announced changes”.

“The AHRC and the BBC value their partnership and are working together to explore how we can continue to support emerging academics and showcase their research and ideas to audiences,” it continued, confirming the current New Generation Thinkers cohort “will continue to work with BBC programmes as planned”.

“The New Generation Thinkers scheme really solidified my career as a broadcaster and made me a better academic and teacher," said Issa.

"It encouraged me to think carefully about the ideas I am communicating and how I’m communicating them. I’ve learnt so much from some of the radio producers I’ve worked with,” he continued, adding it was “hard to imagine the scheme without Free Thinking” even though the new cohort have been split over several Radio 4 shows.

Among the scheme’s alumni is writer, broadcaster and historian Fern Riddell, who was affiliated with King’s College London when she was selected in 2013.

With the backing of Free Thinking, the New Generation Thinkers scheme had not just been a launchpad for her own career as a historian but had been crucial in shifting institutional perceptions of academics keen to assume a more public-facing role, said Riddell.

“Public history was seen at the time as a dirty word – it wasn’t celebrated by my department or seen as something I should be doing,” said Riddell, adding that the BBC-AHRC scheme had been crucial in helping her and others to take “difficult research to a wider public audience”.

“That’s why it’s so devastating to lose somewhere like Free Thinking where academics can go with unusual or challenging research which will connect with listeners,” she continued, adding that the disappearance of the two Radio 4 shows was “terrifying” for British academics as we are “losing access to a BBC audience and, with it, our public role”.

The emergence of popular history podcasts or programming on other platforms would not be enough to compensate for the loss of Thinking Allowed and Free Thinking given the stamp of authority conferred by the BBC, continued Riddell.

“The BBC’s heritage and brand are huge – they’re unlike anything else [in the media]. Its commitment to debating topics, even divisive ones, in an unbiased and managed way has made it a hugely important forum for academics to raise new ideas,” she said.

“When you start cutting programmes like Free Thinking you do worry about the BBC’s commitment to making groundbreaking programmes – it feels dead in the water,” Riddell continued, saying academic-led programmes should be central to the BBC’s mandate to create a “more informed, educated and healthy society” particularly given the “growing threat to knowledge from AI slop”.

“People are craving more informed debate and shows driven by experts who know what they’re talking about. They don’t just want shows fronted by TV personalities, however talented they are at broadcasting. To lose Free Thinking at this time feels grotesque.”

Catherine Fletcher, another New Generation Thinker who is now a history professor at Manchester Metropolitan University, said it was a “great disappointment to see Free Thinking go”.

“As the anchor programme for the New Generation Thinkers scheme, it's been a key route for communication of research to wider publics, and for developing a set of skills that academic researchers don’t acquire in standard training.”

“I hope the New Generation Thinkers scheme will continue but alongside it we need space within public service broadcasting for serious discussion of research. There are some great commercial podcasts but they don’t have the same remit to find and develop new voices or to experiment with riskier topics.”

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com