Outlook, which helped to keep Terry Waite sane during his captivity in Beirut, is 40 years old next year, and the BBC is celebrating this by getting rid of it. The World Service is also dropping its one and only show aimed at a female audience, Everywoman, as well as Pick of the World, White Label, In Concert, Top of the Pops and Music Review. Its one and only serial, Westway, ends next week, though fans will be happy to know that it will continue to be repeated on BBC7. Lastly, it is about to announce a cut in the number of its foreign-language services from the present 43.

That is a lot of activity; but, until now, the changes have been kept quiet. Some producers fear that the man responsible for them, Phil Harding, boss of all the English output, wants to turn the World Service into a rolling-news channel. This is denied, but the thrust is clear. “Our research indicates that 8 out of 10 listeners to our English schedule are exclusively or primarily interested in news and information,” said Bush House. “So, we are aiming to give the World Service a clearer role as a news and information provider. This will not be a rolling-news service, a sort of ‘CNN on radio’. It involves a broad range of news, documentaries and analysis, with weekdays concentrating on information and the weekend a more diverse mix, including drama. It’s a change of direction with new priorities.”

Outlook, a 45-minute magazine show every weekday, is being replaced — with no explanation — by a show with a title and presenters yet to be chosen. Terry Waite, chained to a radiator in Beirut for the best part of five years, between 1986 and 1991, one day heard his cousin John Waite presenting an edition: when this was revealed (by John McCarthy, on his release), it was the first evidence that Terry had access to a radio. Outlook responded by putting out a special edition with Terry’s favourite music, Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Terry heard that edition, too, and remembered it: he thanked the World Service from the bottom of his heart for keeping him alive, spiritually and mentally, and made mention again of Bach’s beauty and precision only last month at the Gramophone awards. The decision to scrap Outlook is incomprehensible.

The position with the line-up of 43 language services is different. Here, there were omens. The green paper urged the World Service to review it, and the BBC’s chairman, Michael Grade, in the annual report, dutifully agreed that the portfolio would face “significant change”. Those likely to go are Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian and Slovene (because all those countries are now members of the European Union), as well as Romanian and Bulgarian (likely to join the EU in 2007). The World Service has dropped, and started, foreign-language services before. It continually has to adapt to global politics. Again, however, it is curious that there is no debate.

The BBC says that it hopes to make an autumn announcement about all this. No date has been fixed, so maybe it is not too late. As for Outlook, Bush House said: “We don’t have a name for the replacement yet. It is still in development, a weekday, one-hour programme with a new brief.

It will include human-interest stories, personal testimony and listener-generated content.” Sounds a bit like OK! magazine.

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