Mark Damazer admits to Radio 4 errors

Outgoing BBC Radio 4 controller Mark Damazer has admitted that the station has endured a "very poor period" following a series of on-air technical problems.

Damazer, who is quitting the BBC to become head of St. Peter's College at Oxford University, accepted that the station has "fallen below our very high standards".

Radio 4 has recently been beset by technical errors, including a transmission clash with digital station 6 Music, playing the wrong shipping forecast and repeating comedy programme The Now Show.

An episode of Jonathan Dimbleby's phone-in programme Any Answers also had to be abandoned on April 24 due to a "breakdown in the system".

Speaking on Radio 4's Feedback programme, Damazer said: "I grant you it's been a very poor period for the professional way in which we normally play out Radio 4.

"We have fallen below our very high standards. I have looked into all of them and they are all strangely independent from one another. They have been very frustrating."

Damazer said that some of the problems were due to technical issues, but others were down to "human error".

He added: "It can happen. There hasn't been a single case yet where anybody who has been responsible for a mistake, or even when a desk has not worked properly, that people think it is to do with maintenance or budget cuts."

Damazer, who leaves his post in October, also stood by the controversial decision to axe the early morning UK theme in favour of a news bulletin. However, he added that he did not expect to see such a backlash from some listeners.

"I don't regret it. I just felt we were losing ground, that 35 years since it had come in, people's expectations of when they would get the news... had changed," he said.

"If we didn't start the day with what seemed intuitively to me as the more natural beginning [a news bulletin] people would go to other places at 5.30am and wouldn't hang around for six minutes listening to Fritz Spiegl's rather lovely melody.

"I don't regret it but I think I underestimated the fact that I was causing some people considerable pain."

In a recent BBC Blog posting, the corporation's head of audio and music Tim Davie confirmed that the search is now on to find Damazer's successor.

Speaking about requirements for the role, Davie said: "It is crucial that the next controller of Radio 4 continues to make brave decisions and adopts an innovative approach to programming."