Radio 4 is losing one of its most important programmes – why Crossing Continents' axing matters

On 17 June, the BBC announced the end of Crossing Continents as part of its wider cost-cutting plans to save £500 million. The final episode airs this week – although it’s not facing the axe alone. Radio 4 will also say goodbye to The World Tonight, The Law Show and Money Box Live. The reasoning behind this decision is to “shift focus towards growing digital audiences and sustain output with high impact under tight financial constraint”.

How many people reading this care about “growing digital audiences”? This is corporate-speak for an internal panic about the number of younger viewers and listeners abandoning the BBC in favour of YouTube, Instagram and other social media outlets – even if, ironically, some of the content they consume there is from the BBC.

The real cost of losing Crossing Continents is an end to in-depth, on-the-ground, long-form reportage; fewer programmes that open up the world, about stories that never make the main news agenda. However, a BBC spokesperson says that Assignment, its sister show on the BBC World Service, will be broadcast on Radio 4 from April 2027, and as it runs throughout the year (as opposed to Crossing Continents’ 26 episodes per year), it will in effect double the network’s global coverage. We can only hope that, despite a smaller budget, it will permit (ie fund) local reporters to get out of their studios.

Tim Whewell, a long-standing presenter/producer, has fond memories of working on Crossing Continents and the immersive experience it offers listeners. “I’ve made programmes completely remotely since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia about towns in Siberia where you hear from ordinary people. That’s something that, in the current situation, TV almost certainly could never do.

“In another programme about domestic maids in Oman, they’ve taken me on tours with their mobile phones, of palaces in deserts where they are, effectively, imprisoned.”

Crossing Continents launched in 1998 and, with the exception of a few South Pacific islands, has been to every country in the world, including those that would never come up on any typical news agenda. The programme has always held the core value of finding the humanity and complexity of every story, regardless of its country of origin.

And from such “small” stories, real change sometimes happens. One of Whewell’s most acclaimed editions covered the disproportionate targeting of immigrant families in Norway by the country’s child welfare agency. At this year’s Cannes Festival, the Palme d’Or was won by Fjord, a film about the very same subject matter highlighted by Crossing Continents 10 years ago.

Similar recognition has been given to fellow presenter/producer Lucy Ash. In 2004, she received an Amnesty International Media Award for her work on dowry-related crimes in India. She recalls her horror at the number of women involved in so-called “stove deaths” – the targeted murder of wives, often disguised as an accident. Sitting in the corridor of a burns unit in a Bangalore hospital, she found herself crying in frustration over not being able to open a pack of batteries – until she realised she was in genuine shock over what she had just witnessed.

Want to see this content?

This page contains content provided by Google reCAPTCHA. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as Google reCAPTCHA may use cookies and other technologies. To view this content, choose 'Accept and continue' to allow Google reCAPTCHA and its required purposes.

The story that will never leave her, however, is that of Natalia Estemirova, a human rights activist in Chechnya, who led her to a field and showed her a ditch where the bodies of murdered “prostitutes” had been dumped – in reality, girls who had been forced into sex slavery. Three weeks later, while on a family holiday, Ash took the call to tell her that Natalia had been found dead, in a ditch, murdered.

Ash left the BBC in 2022 to write a book but continues to work as a freelance correspondent. She feels sad about the end of Crossing Continents. “Maybe in its new guise I’ll do something for Assignment, but it feels like it’s going to be very pared down. I wish that the listeners who really enjoyed Crossing Continents would tell the BBC how they feel. It would be good if people let their feelings be known. I doubt very much that they’re going to change their minds overnight, but I’d like to see a return to Radio 4 of on-the-ground, in-depth reportage from places that you don’t normally get to hear about.”

No one could put it better. We are unlikely to see a shift in position but, surely, it has to be worth a try? Sadly, there are many more Natalias in this world.

The latest issue of Radio Times is out on Tuesday – subscribe here.

Crossing Continents is available on Tuesday at 9pm on Radio 4.

Check out more of our Audio coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.