"What news on the Rialto?" (it's a pun on Radio & Culture, you see?)

Well, not a great deal. This, from the Society of Authors website, is the latest official info on the campaign: "In response to our second letter to Mark Thompson, a meeting has been arranged with Tim Davie, Director of Audio & Music and Gwyneth Williams on 20 December at Broadcasting House. We will update members on the outcome of this meeting."

Meanwhile, the BBC TRUST is running an online public consultation about their plans for Delivering Quality First - there are six sections, but you don't have to complete them all. If you've been longing to indicate your support for original writing & performance on the BBC, or to complain about the volume of news or 'reality' programmes, here's your chance to be heard.

The Save The Short Story petition is still live, and is crawling back up to the 9,000 figure previously mentioned (duplicate signatures have been and will continue to be deleted) so if you care about the future of literature on the BBC's flagship spoken word radio network, please sign & encourage others to do so.

Finally - historical-crime author Michael Jecks wrote a very good swashbuckling blog post about Radio 4's 'story slashing'