The station that runs on brain power

It's not easy to separate commercial radio from its reputation for prattling DJs, banal phone-ins, shouty sport and adverts for exhaust centres. But hidden away in the terra incognita of digital radio exists a national, commercial station broadcasting 18 hours a day of pure, undiluted culture, almost entirely speech, and interrupted only by the occasional, discreet announcement, mostly from book publishers.

It sounds almost like a private Radio 4. Welcome to Oneword Radio, broadcasting from tiny studios on Charing Cross Road. Each day it puts out seven hours of its own, original, first-run programming, including plays starring actors such as Michael Caine, David Jason and Jenny Agutter, comedy sketches; imaginative children's programmes, and daily interviews with authors such as JK Rowling and Ian Rankin.

How, then, does a station compute commercially when it cheerfully admits that its listenership is beneath statistically significant measure, thanks to it being available only to the 52,000 owners of digital radios, plus Sky Digital TV viewers content to listen to radio on their tellies?

The year-old station may not have much - its 10 staff are crammed into an office probably not much bigger than Greg Dyke's - but it can call on extraordinary resources of goodwill, which culminated last year in it getting a Sony award for digital station of the year before almost anybody had heard of it.

Oneword writers are all first-timers and bare their soul for nothing, happy to go away with a broadcast credit and a professional recording of their work to hawk around: an early Oneword play is already being auctioned in Hollywood. Actors perform for Equity minima, the MD answers the phone and everyone makes the tea.

Consequently, the station's running costs, underwritten by shareholders such as The Guardian and one sponsor, Bloomsbury Publishing, are kept down to £100,000 a month.

But perhaps they're not being that indulgent. Oneword sees digital radio as the sleeping giant of broadcasting. A vast consignment of Goodman digital sets, built to sell for less than £100, is currently steaming towards Britain. Eventually, as radios get cheaper, everyone will be able to listen to Oneword.

There is also a remarkable willingness among digital TV subscribers to listen to radio through the TV. New figures from Rajar suggest that one in eight people who listen to radio now do so via TV, where more than 50 stations are available.

The core of Oneword's output are book readings. Then there are plays, quirky comedy fillers, Shakespeare serialisations, a weekly topical debate, vintage American comedy and the occasional documentary.

The voice of Oneword is an extraordinary bibliophile called Paul Blezard, in his first radio job fresh from running a helicopter company. Blezard, who has also in his 39 years been a stockbroker, a Bulgarian pop star and an aid worker in Rwanda, hunches bleary-eyed in a corner ploughing through a book a day to conduct his 30-minute interview with the author. He models menswear for Paul Smith to supplement his income.

Ben Budworth, the managing director, contends that Oneword is not simply a speech version of Classic FM. "The crucial thing is the original programming; they don't commission new symphonies, but we, in effect, do just that."

Budworth and programme director Paul Kent, who came to Oneword from Radio 4, also take pains to avoid aping the beards and earnestness of American public radio. Oneword can appear almost perversely highbrow, but somehow carries it off with real humour and a mission to entertain as well as inform.

? Oneword can be heard on Sky Digital channel 877, the Digital One network and on www.oneword.co.uk