''Americana'' was a British radio programme broadcast on

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...

from spring 2009 to autumn 2011. It offered a "mix of discussion, interviews and features, with a focus on the voices of ordinary Americans" and was touted as the "successor to the late

Alistair Cooke Alistair Cooke (born Alfred Cooke; 20 November 1908 – 30 March 2004) was a British-American writer whose work as a journalist, television personality and radio broadcaster was done primarily in the United States.Letter from America ''Letter from America'' was a weekly fifteen-minute speech radio series broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and its predecessor, the Home Service, and around the world through the BBC World Service. From its first edition to its last, it was presented by A ...

''."BBC finds replacement for Letter from America
, an 18 April 2009 article from ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was fo ...

'' ''Americana'' was broadcast for the first time on 31 May 2009 with

Matt Frei Matthias "Matt" Frei (born 26 November 1963) is a British-German television news journalist and writer, formerly the Washington, D.C. correspondent for ''Channel 4 News''. He is now the channel's Europe editor and presenter of the evening news. ...

as presenter; According to Frei, he expected listeners to ''Americana'' would hear "what America is talking, arguing, fretting, laughing and, yes, dreaming about. We hope to surprise, entertain and inform. And by letting America itself do most of the talking we promise never to be dull." After Frei left the BBC in May 2011,

Jonny Dymond Jonathan 'Jonny' David Dymond (born 15 February 1970 in Merton, London) is a British journalist. He is currently a Royal Correspondent for BBC News, having previously been the BBC's Washington Correspondent, Europe Correspondent (based in Bruss ...

took over as presenter. In July 2011, BBC Radio 4 revealed that Radio 4 controller

Gwyneth Williams Gwyneth Williams (born 14 July 1953) is a former controller of BBC Radio 4. She grew up in South Africa and attended St Hugh's College, Oxford. Earlier career Williams joined the BBC World Service in 1976 as a trainee, having briefly worked as r ...

, "interest din wider internationalism and less emphasis on the US", decided to cancel ''Americana'', effective in autumn. The show's final episode was broadcast on 11 September 2011; the topic was the tenth anniversary of the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...

References

External links

* {{podcast platform links BBC Radio 4 programmes British documentary radio programmes Audio podcasts 2009 radio programme debuts 2009 establishments in the United Kingdom 2011 disestablishments in the United Kingdom 2011 podcast endings 2009 podcast debuts