Sir, In this age of spin, Nigel Chapman’s readiness to advertise that the Russian service audience has almost halved (from 1.3 million to 750,000) during the past three years of his management is an example of honesty and openness that we should all cherish (letter, Nov 10). Nevertheless, it would be more heartening if he showed some awareness of the possibility that the decline of his audience might result from a decline in the quality of the service’s output. The wish to make programmes acceptable on Russian FM stations may have backfired.

It is also possible that this loss of audience is partly due to the short- waves cut of 2003 and the loss of the repeats that were the only way of enabling programmes to reach an audience spread across 11 time zones. His apparent lack of awareness of Russian geographical reality (not to mention political reality) is astounding. There is no way of delivering “stronger journalism . . . at times and in ways when it has most audience impact” except through the “repeats” he speaks of so dismissively. He seems to regard the whole of Russia east of the Urals as an irrelevant appendage to Moscow and St Petersburg.

There is an urgent need for a public inquiry into all aspects of the World Service. The problems are not confined to the Russian service. In an attempt “to bring producers closer to their audiences”, more and more language services are being moved from London to cities in the country concerned.

The Urdu service, for example, has been relocated recently to Pakistan, where it will be all-but impossible for it to retain its editorial independence. The BBC had already, in 2007, agreed to obtain prior clearance from Pakistan’s media regulatory authority for programmes intended for broadcast on a local FM radio station.

There are similar stories with regard to other countries. In India there have been cases of the BBC’s FM partners stopping broadcasts of BBC sports news because of government pressure. And the Nepalese Government has closed down radio stations rebroadcasting BBC news.

Robert Chandler

London W14

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