Andrew Thorman

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Andrew Thorman (born 20 March 1950) is a British journalist and television executive; as Head of Rural Broadcasting at the BBC, he moved Countryfile in April 2009 to 7pm on Sunday evenings where it went from 1.5 million to 7 million viewers.

<i>Countryfile</i> television series

Countryfile is a British television programme which airs weekly on BBC One and reports on rural, agricultural, and environmental issues in the United Kingdom.

Contents

Early life

He attended the independent Clayesmore School in Dorset. At North Devon College he studied for A levels in Law and Economics.

Clayesmore School

Clayesmore School is an independent school for boys and girls of the English public school tradition in the village of Iwerne Minster, Dorset, England. It is a member of The Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC).

Dorset County of England

Dorset is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the unitary authority areas of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole and Dorset. Covering an area of 2,653 square kilometres (1,024 sq mi), Dorset borders Devon to the west, Somerset to the north-west, Wiltshire to the north-east, and Hampshire to the east. The county town is Dorchester which is in the south. After the reorganisation of local government in 1974 the county's border was extended eastward to incorporate the Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch. Around half of the population lives in the South East Dorset conurbation, while the rest of the county is largely rural with a low population density.

North Devon College

North Devon College was a further education college in Barnstaple, North Devon. It is now part of Petroc.

Career

He joined the Western Morning News as a trainee. He moved to Australia to work on newspapers there.

The Western Morning News is a daily regional newspaper founded in 1860, and covering the West Country including Devon, Cornwall, Isles of Scilly and parts of Somerset and Dorset in the South West of England.

BBC

Countryfile, since moving to Sunday evening, is Britain's most-watched television factual programme Countryfile.png
Countryfile, since moving to Sunday evening, is Britain's most-watched television factual programme

He started at BBC Radio Oxford in 1976. He was involved with the creation of BBC Radio 5 Live in 1994. In 2001 he won a Gold Award at the Radio Academy Awards.

BBC Radio Oxford is the BBC Local Radio station for Oxfordshire, UK.

BBC Radio 5 Live British national radio station

BBC Radio 5 Live is the BBC's national radio service that broadcasts mainly news, sport, discussion, interviews and phone-ins. It is the principal radio station covering sport in the United Kingdom, broadcasting virtually all major sports events staged in the UK or involving British competitors.

Radio Academy Awards

The Radio Academy Awards, started in 1983, were the most prestigious awards in the British radio industry. For most of their existence, they were run by ZAFER Associates, but in latter years were brought under the control of The Radio Academy.

As Head of Rural Affairs at the BBC [1] [2] , he was responsible for programmes such as Farming Today and Costing the Earth ; under his leadership, listeners of Farming Today went from 500,000 to 1 million; in the late 1990s Farming Today was to be possibly ended. He left the BBC in 2012, having worked at the BBC for over 35 years. Rural affairs at the BBC had been headquartered at BBC Birmingham until 2012.

Farming Today is a radio programme about food, farming, and the countryside broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in the United Kingdom.

Costing the Earth is a programme on BBC Radio 4 about the environment. According to the programme´s website, it looks at man's effect on the environment and how the environment reacts, questioning accepted truths, challenging those in charge and reporting on progress towards improving the world.

BBC Birmingham Regional Arm of the British Broadcasting Corporation

BBC Birmingham is one of the oldest regional arms of the BBC, located in Birmingham. It was the first region outside London to start broadcasting both the corporation's radio and television transmissions, the latter from the Sutton Coldfield television transmitter.

In April 2009 he moved Countryfile to early Sunday evenings, where it became the most-watched programme on BBC One on Sundays, and became Britain's most-watched television factual programme.

BBC One is the first and principal television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom, Isle of Man and Channel Islands. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution. It was renamed BBC TV in 1960, using this name until the launch of the second BBC channel BBC2 in 1964, whereupon the BBC TV channel became known as BBC1, with the current spelling adopted in 1997.

Personal life

He lives in Hereford.

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James Wong is an ethnobotanist, television presenter and garden designer in the United Kingdom, best known for presenting the award-winning television series Grow Your Own Drugs, being a panellist on the long-running Radio 4 series Gardeners' Question Time, and reporting on the popular BBC rural affairs series, Countryfile.

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Thomas John Gillespie "Tom" Heap is the Rural Affairs Correspondent of BBC News, and a United Kingdom television and radio reporter and presenter best known for his contributions to the BBC One programme Countryfile, the same channel's Panorama programme, and the BBC Radio 4 programme Costing the Earth. Since February 2012, he has also been Director and media presenter of the media company Checked Shirt TV Limited.

John Raymond Craven, is an English journalist and television presenter, best known for presenting the BBC programmes Newsround, Countryfile and Beat the Brain.

References

Media offices
Preceded by
Head of Rural Affairs at the BBC
1995 - 2012
Succeeded by
Defunct organisation
Preceded by
Editor of Countryfile
1998 -
Succeeded by