The Archers is a British radio soap opera currently broadcast on BBC Radio 4, the corporation's main spoken-word station. Broadcast since 1951, it was famously billed as "an everyday story of country folk" and is now promoted as "a contemporary drama in a rural setting". Having aired more than 20,000 episodes, it is the world's longest-running drama, by both number of episodes and duration.
The first of five pilot episodes was aired on Whit Monday, 29 May 1950, on the BBC Midlands Home Service, and the first episode broadcast nationally went out on New Year's Day 1951. A significant show in British popular culture, and with more than five million listeners, it is Radio 4's most listened-to non-news programme, and with more than one million listeners via the internet, the programme holds the record for BBC Radio online listening figures. In February 2019, a panel of 46 broadcasting industry experts, of whom 42 had a professional connection to the BBC, listed The Archers as the second-greatest radio programme of all time. Established partly with the aim of educating farmers following World War II, The Archers soon became a popular source of entertainment for the population at large, attracting nine million listeners by 1953.
