Happy 60th birthday, Woman's Hour. Time to break out the bunting, or should the Radio 4 fixture be given a one-way bus pass to broadcasting oblivion?
When it launched in 1946, early items included "cooking with whalemeat", "I married a lion tamer" and "how to hang your husband's suit".
Unusually for a show called Woman's Hour, it was also presented by a man - Alan Ivieson. Still, that's the 40s for you.
As one of its presenters, Martha Kearney, asks on the BBC website, "is it right that Woman's Hour should still be broadcast on BBC radio? Is it relevant to the 21st century?" "I think it's fair to assume that no programme of that title would be commissioned today," says Kearney, "yet Woman's Hour remains a successful part of the Radio 4 schedule and 40% of its audience are men.
"Its enduring success is because so many 'wimmin's' issues have become mainstream issues for all of us - work/life balance, childcare, body image, fashion and cookery are things which interest women and men. And my husband is still waiting for me to learn how to hang his suit."
But if women's issues have become mainstream, why attempt to shoehorn discussion of such issues into a one-hour weekly slot?
Attempts to do a male version of the show, "Man's Hour", proved short-lived. The one-off show, hosted by Jon Snow, barely lasted 60 minutes, let alone 60 years. So it's clearly doing something right.
Times have changed. Back in 1946 there was uproar when the word "vagina" was used in an item about women's health. Fast forward to 2006, and Jenni Murray chairs a heated debate on the joys - or otherwise - of the thong, and asks "Is there too much pressure to be hot in bed?"
But if times have changed, the should Woman's Hour? The show was rumoured to be foremost in controller Mark Damazer's thoughts when he declared in February he wanted to "encourage programme-makers to feel there's enough room for change, fresh approaches, originality, new voices".
Bad idea said former presenter Sue MacGregor, after the short-lived "Man's Hour" experiment last year.
"The mandarins at Broadcasting House were always a bit uneasy about Woman's Hour," she wrote in the Guardian last year. "It was too soft, too tough, too PC, too humourless, too raucous, or just too bloody female... The thing about old and trusted formats on the radio is that it's best not to muck about with them."
2.7 million listeners a week can't be wrong. Or can they?
