大象传媒

The Archers in 70 Objects collection is complete with the announcement of its final item – the total collective time spent listening to The Archers.

The digital collection was launched in celebration of The Archers’ platinum anniversary in 2021 and a call was put out to listeners to suggest what could complete the collection. From these suggestions the team behind The Archers and Director-General of the 大象传媒, Tim Davie, selected the 70th object.

Tim Davie said, “It’s an absolute pleasure to select the 70th item for The Archers in 70 Objects alongside the programme’s team. Inspired by Archers listener Amy Clarke, who offered the time she has spent listening in on Ambridge, the final item is the collective experience of our audience over nearly 20,000 episodes across 70 years. This vast shared experience in which our listeners have united in enjoying this extraordinary chronicle of everyday life in rural England since 1951. It is little short of a legendary feat of broadcasting.”

Time spent in Ambridge doesn鈥檛 have to be long to leave an impression.

While the total amount of time that has been spent listening to The Archers since 1951 is impossible to calculate accurately, you can tot up how long you have spent in Ambridge with the details at the bottom of this page. [NB All numbers in this article relate to Archers listening up to 31 December 2021.]

10 years of listening = 1 month in Ambridge

Listener Amy Clarke, who inspired the final entry into The Archers in 70 Objects has been listening for 10 years. Though she also remembers bits from her family listening in the 1980s. If like Amy you have been listening since 2011, when Henry Archer was a newborn and Kenton and Jolene started dating, you have spent over 700 hours in Ambridge or one continuous month in the Borsetshire countryside.

If you’re relatively new to listening in on Ambridge life, you might be surprised to know you only need to have been listening since 27 July 2021 to have spent your first continuous 24 hours there. And to have spent the equivalent of a week there (just over 10,000 minutes), you need to have been listening from 7 January 2019.

Time spent in Ambridge doesn’t have to be long to leave an impression. Listener Roberta Chapman’s tale of her young child says it all. She said, “I think my love of listening to The Archers was summed up when my then 4 year old brought home a huge cardboard box with loads of bottle tops glued to it and exclaimed, ‘I made you The Archers Listening Box so you can listen whenever you want Mummy’.”

Listener Wendy May would choose every single episode of The Archers as her luxury on Desert Island Discs. She said, “I started listening in the mid-90s. When I lived in the USA for a few years, the omnibus was a wonderful taste of home.” If, like Wendy, you came to Ambridge in 1995 when Kate was a teenage runaway, Usha questioned her future in the village and the Grundys unearthed a WWII German bomber, you have spent over 100,000 minutes listening to The Archers which is the equivalent of two and a half continuous months in Borsetshire’s best-known village.

Mary Pape has been spending time in Ambridge while also being in Germany, Hong Kong and Nepal. “I was able to follow when I was in the Armed Forces thanks to British Forces Broadcasting Service”, she said. If, like Mary you started listening when Jennifer hadn’t yet married Brian, Neil fell for Shula (for the first time) and a pork pie at The Bull cost 25p, you’ve been listening for 45 years which means you’ve spent over 3,000 hours, or four and a half months, in Ambridge.

For many HRH The Duchess of Cornwall’s experience of The Archers rings true. “For as long as I can remember, I have loved this programme. It has been my faithful companion for a large part of my life”, she said at a reception to mark the 70th anniversary of The Archers.

Listener Tony Wright remembers “sitting on my grandfather’s knee on our farm and listening to the very first episode when I was five. We never missed an episode. Now I listen to the omnibus every week.”

70 years of listening = ?

Tony, as well as Barbara Kiss, Marilyn Downs, Helen Lloyd, Simon Langton and Anita Burrough who also all got in touch to say they have been listening for 70 years, and everyone else who has listened from the beginning have spent over 250,000 minutes in Ambridge. That’s more than 4,000 hours!

Listener Di Smith is not far off this total listening time figure her earliest memory is “dancing to the theme music in my cot. I was put to bed for my mum to listen circa 1956.”

The Archers theme music, Barwick Green, has a reputation for moving people (and pets!) in ways they otherwise never do in the rest of their lives. Even the uninitiated in Ambridge life aren’t immune it as it prompts them to reach for the radio dial (how very dare they!). Factoring in omnibus editions and the repeat transmissions of daily episodes, jolly Barwick Green has rung out almost 80,000 times. Imagine the total amount of calories burned across all of those times…

If you’d like to calculate your own total listening time or time spent in Ambridge, here’s what you need to know:

Episode length = 13 minutes
13 x number of episodes per week* = weekly total of time spent in Ambridge
*This has varied over time see table below

Calculate your weekly total of time spent in Ambridge for each time period listed in the table.
Add all of these together for the total amount of minutes you have spent listening to The Archers
Divide this total by 60 to convert this to hours and then divide that number 24 to convert it into days.