What went wrong with The Archers?

I was once a fan of The Archers, to the extent that the Guardian quoted me in 2007 outlining how ‘an unlikely combination of support from the Queen and Julie Burchill led to the transformation of Britain’s ‘everyday story of country folk’ from a dull and tired format to its present cult status.’ Apparently I wrote that ‘No longer are the women of Ambridge stuck with ‘the gallons of greengage jam that the old-guard male scriptwriters kept them occupied with for over 20 years.’

The BBC seems determined to educate listeners whom they think are ignorant

Look, I know I was taking a lot of drugs back then and my judgement wasn’t the best; witness the pair of jokers I’d been married to already! But of all the wacky attitudes I’ve held during my long, loony life (Tom Robinson was the best thing to come put of punk, I once crazily opined in print way back in the 1970s – again, I’m blaming the drugs), the idea of The Archers as some kind of feminist vanguard vehicle has to be one of the wackiest.