More from the OpEd ...

... 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. ...

Back in the 80's and early 90's, before the Internet was available, I remember tuning in to the BBC NewsHour on my shortwave radio each day.