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The listeners

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Rosemary Edwards | 13:27 UK time, Friday, 17 October 2008

I read the message board religiously, as do my colleagues, and often, when I do, I think of

"The Listeners" - a poem by Walter de la Mare. The relevant lines go as follows:

'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champ'd the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller's head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
'Is there anybody there?' he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Lean'd over and look'd into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplex'd and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men....."

If our viewers are the traveller I realise, with guilt, we must seem like the host of phantom listeners with two deaf ears. So this week I wanted to offer reassurance: - we do listen; we do read; we do celebrate when we get it right; we do worry if we feel we've got it wrong. We're not perfect but we are as passionate as our viewers about the gardening programme we make.
With that in mind we do try to react if we feel the majority of viewers have the same concern. We have upgraded our cameras to high definition to improve the quality of our pictures; we have reduced music on our Berryfields items; we have started to film more detailed close ups after comments that it was sometimes hard to follow what the presenters were doing.
Sometimes in television, production techniques are necessary. Believe me, there are junctions and sequences that are improved by background music; there are times when a moving camera will capture far more than a static; there are people who adore Joe's allotment; there are people who want us to cover vegetable growing. We know everyone is different and we can't please everybody all of the time. But rest assured - however silent we seem, we are listening and we'll keep on doing so because at the end of the day we absolutely appreciate the importance of "that voice from the world of men."

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