About Radio 4
Welcome to ±«Óătv Radio 4, the home of intelligent speech audio. We commission over 13,000 programmes each year and are always looking for ideas that will inform, challenge, surprise and delight our existing listeners and attract new ones to us. We’re looking for programmes and podcasts that will sparkle in our live schedule and also on ±«Óătv Sounds. Nearly ten million listeners tune in to our live output every week, and there are around 26 million downloads of Radio 4 content each month, 15 million of them within the UK. We look forward to receiving your ideas.
Commissioning Process
We commission all through the year through a number of different “rounds” and tender opportunities:
Spring and Autumn Rounds
We buy most of our programmes through our main Spring Commissioning Round. There’s a smaller, top-up round for some genres in the autumn. We publish the timetables for these a month in advance on this website and all approved suppliers will also be notified via email.
At the start of a commissioning round we publish detailed briefs outlining the type of ideas we are looking for. At the start of the Spring Round there are launch events where the commissioners talk about the strategy of Radio 4 and the commissioning briefs. Suppliers then have a timetable for submitting a short synopsis of their idea (the short proposal stage) and, if the commissioning editor likes the idea, a timetable to progress onto the full proposal stage.
Tenders
We put larger pieces of returning work up for tender. This happens throughout the year with details posted on this website. Approved suppliers will also be notified by email when a new tender opportunity is available.
Open Rounds 
In addition, two commissioning rounds are always open: one for podcast ideas and another for ideas in any genre.
Current Opportunities
You can find details of current opportunities in Speech commissioning and timetables for upcoming tenders and rounds on the current opportunities section of the site.
