"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, "… Gre

See Full Page