BBC Radio 4 listeners have never been noted for their willingness to embrace change. Nor might they be expected to react well to being told that, in order to understand the weather forecast, they will henceforth need to consult a map.

Yet the relaunch this week of the weather bulletin on the PM programme could upend the way weather is presented across the station. The corporation is planning to banish chatty asides from radio forecasts after complaints that its current forecasts are patronising, hard to remember and, perhaps worst of all, more suited to television.

The new-style PM forecast is shorn of all recommendations on what to wear, what to carry and how to feel about the day’s conditions. Gone are the “spits and spots”, “bits and pieces” and other less than meteorological terminology.

In their place is a coolly factual account, modelled on the shipping forecast, of weather conditions around the country in strict, regional order. Listeners are advised to look at a specially devised map to figure out which region they are in.

Peter Gibbs, the Met Office forecaster who has been driving the changes, told The Times: “We had been trying to be more entertaining and perhaps we drifted too far down that road. In some ways it’s going back to basics; the idea is to signpost things very clearly.

“We will specify particular areas then you will get the forecast, so you won’t have to listen out through the whole forecast to catch the bit that is relevant to you.”

The bulletins will be tested on PM for two weeks and, if they are a hit, will be extended elsewhere on Radio 4.

A BBC spokeswoman said: “The weather is very important to our listeners. We’ll take in what they have to say and make adjustments.”

Denis McKeown, a senior lecturer in cognitive psychology at the University of Leeds who advised on the changes, said that a pared-down bulletin made it much easier for the human brain to retain information.

“It provides a regular order and so turns the forecast into chunks that you’ll be able to remember better,” he said. “If you give a lot of items people remember the first few and the last few but they don’t remember the middle.”

He added that forecasters should pause at the end of the bulletins, rather than joking with the presenter, as this allowed the brain to pin down what it had just heard.

On the PM blog the reaction was overwhelmingly positive, with the forecast praised as “clear and concise” and the demise of “meandering waffle” much celebrated.

One commentator even offered the ultimate accolade: “Almost as good as the shipping forecast.”

Editor's choice

• The super cool Vampire Weekend
• Streep and Baldwin get complicated
• Guy Ritchie on Sherlock Holmes