Thought for the Day
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Thought for the Day is a daily scripted "reflection from a faith perspective on issues and people in the news",[1] broadcast as part of the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 at around 7.45 each Monday to Saturday morning. Nowadays lasting 2 minutes and 45 seconds, it is a successor to the more substantial five-minute religious sequence Ten to Eight (1965–1970) and, before that, Lift Up Your Hearts, which was first broadcast five mornings a week on the BBC Home Service from December 1939, initially at 7.30, though soon moved to 7.55.
Notable contributors to the slot have included Anne Atkins, Jonathan Bartley, Alan Billings, Lionel Blue, Rhidian Brook, Tom Butler, Brian Draper, Giles Fraser, Richard Harries, Roy Jenkins, James Jones, Clifford Longley, Rob Marshall, Colin Morris, Jonathan Sacks, Mona Siddiqui, Indarjit Singh, Elaine Storkey, Antony Sutch, Angela Tilby, and Rowan Williams.
In 2002, 102 notable people put their name to a letter to the BBC Governors, drawn up by the British Humanist Association, the National Secular Society, and the Rationalist Press Association. This protested that the slot was available only to religious views. As a consequence, Professor Richard Dawkins from Oxford University was given a two-and-a-half minute slot to deliver a reflection from an atheist viewpoint, although this was not broadcast in the Thought for the Day slot itself.[2] The BBC commented that it wanted to keep Thought for the Day a unique offering of a faith perspective within an otherwise entirely secular news programme.
