The Shocking Forecast

Well, the controversial new Radio 4 "start up" indeed started at 5.20 this morning, sans theme. Instead, a brief burst of continuity announcer and a trailer for a later programme, was followed by BBC weather presenter Jay Wynne reading the whole of the shipping report.
Whatever's wrong with continuity announcers doing the shipping forecast now, then? Sorry, Jay, it all ended up as very wishy-Washy for me, even with the extended sixteen inshore forecast areas.
Mr Wynne and his colleagues may be excellent meteorologists, and there's nothing wrong with the delivery of their 3 minute general forecasts in the usual slots just before the hour. But first and foremost these are Met Office forecasters, not radio presenters. A 10 minute forecast is simply not the right thing for the Met team to be reading, whereas the voices of the continuity announcers do it so well.
I hope someone sees the error of their ways pretty soon and gets the Radio 4 bods back where they belong. Goodness me, Jay Wynne couldn't even pronounce the names of the sea areas correctly: North Oot-seer indeed: it's Oot-seera, man!

Then came the much-trailed "pacier" News Briefing at 5.30. If the aim of this is to get people in the mood for news and the Today programme, well for me it had just the opposite effect. Once I'd had fifteen minutes of this up tempo agenda, I decided enough was enough and foresook most of Today altogether. It might be a politically correct idea to feature the regional press alongside the internationals in the press review, but I much prefer a more in-depth look at what the nationals are saying, as used to happen in this slot. And why bother with the business news at this early hour when 5-Live is already doing it with Wake up to Money?

Sorry, Mark Damazer, but you've got it seriously wrong for this listener. It just doesn't work. It's almost enough to drive me back to Shortwave, or at the very least the soothing tones of Classic FM.