The Julian Clegg Breakfast Show and the Today programme

Both the Julian Clegg Breakfast Show and the Today programme are breakfast radio shows broadcast by the BBC. 

The JCBS is broadcast on BBC Radio Solent to members of the public across Hampshire, Dorset and the Isle of Wight every weekday from 6.30am until 9.00am. The Today programme is broadcast on BBC Radio Four across the country, Monday to Friday from 6.00am until 9.00am and Saturdays from 7.00am until 9.00am.

The JCBS is a very community based radio programme. It not only focuses on national news issues but also likes to take an active role in social action and community media. Each day listeners are on air expressing their opinions and views whether it be about the current health of Kate Middleton or the developmental plans for the Weymouth Pavilion.

The Today programme is BBC Radio Four's most popular radio show reaching an average of about six million listeners a week. It focuses on hard-hitting national news and issues and has previously been voted the Best Breakfast Show of the Year at the 2010 Sony Radio Academy Awards. Instead of the local public opinions mainly being broadcast, the opinions are often broadcast of important politicians and those currently involved in national, topical issues. It has been said that every morning, the most important person in the country will be interviewed on the programme. Both the Today programme and the JCBS do broadcast balanced opinions from many different sources, however, the JCBS has more local public opinion and the Today programme broadcasts views from more established guests such as politicians and professors.

Both shows have a similar structure with regular news bulletins. When speaking to Lewis Coombes, producer of the JCBS, I learned that on average a listener will only listen to half an hour of any one show. It is for this reason that the breakfast show try to accommodate for this and fit in every half an hour what a listener would want to hear; serious news, travel, sport, weather and then at the end of the section, something light to make the listener smile.

Both radio shows have also turned to social networking sites to boost the ratings of their show and connect to their audience further. Both shows have Facebook pages and Twitter accounts which are updated regularly as well as having pages on the BBC website.

The host for the JCBS is mainly Julian Clegg himself but he is sometimes joined by a member of the production team. Current hosts for the Today programme include John Humphrys, James Naughtie, Sarah Montague, Evan Davis and Justin Webb.

The Today programme is more famous than the JCBS and gets more regular listeners, however, it is a national radio programme and the show's purpose is, mainly, to reach as many national listeners as possible with the most crucial, up-to-date and important news of the day. The show does also cover culture and light-hearted news but this isn't the focus. This differs entirely to the JCBS. Julian Clegg himself came up the motto for the programme, "LARCH; Local, accurate, rigorous, clear and human", which accurately sums up the purpose of the show.