Megawhoops!

Just woken up after a light night's sleep to hear World Service give the same time check and edition of World Business Report that I'd heard four hours earlier. So even without looking bleary-eyed at my bedroom clock, I knew jolly well it was 5.20 GMT, not 1.20 as the continuity announcer said! Could it be that all that listens is not live and World Service is not so reliable for up to date reports as it once ws?
In fact, the future of this "slot" is numbered anyway, as BBC Radio 4 controller Mark Damazarr plans to start his station up at 05.20 rather than 05.30 from next month. This means the likely end to the thirty-year old Radio 4 UK Theme which I am listening to as I type.
Damazarr seems to have been wrong-footed on this one however and to have been totally unprepared for the hornet's nest he stirred up when he first mooted his plans to ditch this particular broadcasting tradition. While clearly it's not to everyone's taste- as I discovered at last Saturday's meeting of the Reading International Radio Group after eulogising this clever mix of British folk tunes in the British DX Club journal Communication last month, I shall miss it when it's gone- like thousands of other somnolent listeners.
It's a musical punctuation mark in the Radio day in the age of 24/7 broadcasting, and helps many to wake and start their day. I usually can't resist singing along to Rule Britannia, its rousing finale, either.
Do we really need another dose of pacey news to replace the UK theme - and can we rely on that news being up to the minute anyway? Like the "complex low" described in the shipping forecast which is another traditional highlight of this time of the morning, Radio 4 is slowly "losing it's identity".