Opinion: ‘The Shipping Forecast’ reminds us of the power of the human voice

“The Shipping Forecast,” presented twice on weekdays on the BBC and thrice on weekends, is 100-years-old this week.

It broadcasts weather forecasts for the seas that surround the British Isles.

You may wonder: why don’t sailors and citizens on the North and Irish Seas, and along the English Channel, just look at their iPhones for the weather? They probably do.

But the two-minute program is heard by 6.5 million people. That is more than the nightly audience for Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Jimmy Fallon combined.

“The Shipping Forecast” is a fixture of British life. It has been featured in songs from Radiohead, Arctic Monkeys, and Chumbawamba, and satirized by British comics and on TikTok. Seamus Heaney saluted the show in his poem “The Shipping Forecast,” in which he wrote, “… Green, swift upsurges, North Atlantic flux, Conjured by that strong gale-warning voice …”

The edition of “The Shipping Forecast” that runs at 48 minutes after midnight on BBC 4 has been especially hailed for what I’ll just call its restful qualities. There is something reassuring in the roll of old, Oliver Twist-ian names you hear: Humber, Biscay, Dogger, Fisher, Fair Isle, FitzRoy, Lundy, Malin, Rockall, Utsire, Mull of Galloway. Are your eyelids growing heavy?

But the persistence of “The Shipping Forecast” may remind us of how the human voice, even crackling through static, can fire up images, memories, and feelings.

Most of the millions of people who tune into “The Shipping Forecast” are probably closer to nursing a hot tea in a recliner than braving cold winds in a trawler. But that doesn’t mean they won’t welcome a chance to hear about waves, rains, gusts, and gales, or calm waters and clear skies. 

So much of today’s information and misinformation seems aimed to rile the divides between people, by age, class, culture and beliefs. The 100-year-old “The Shipping Forecast,” for two minutes, may remind us how time, and the elements, affect us all.