An everyday download of country folk

Popular BBC radio soap The Archers is about to join the 21st century as a daily podcast on the Radio 4 website.

The offering will be part of more than 120 titles which the BBC will be making available to download.

The Archers podcast contains the latest episode in full, and was made available on 14 October.

The programme already has a sizeable online following and regularly receives a million 'listen again' requests a month on the BBC Radio Player.

The addition of a podcast will allow fans to transfer The Archers onto an MP3 player and listen to it on the move, the BBC said.

The download joins more than 120 titles in the BBC's podcasting service, which offers a range of audio content from BBC Radio including Jonathan Ross, 5 Live Football Daily, Huw Stephens Introducing and the NewsPod.

Silver Street, the BBC Asian Network's daily soap, will also be available as a 10-minute daily podcast from 15 October.

Mark Friend, controller of Multiplatform & Interactive at BBC Audio & Music, said: "Podcasting gives listeners more control over where and when they listen to our programmes.

"Our podcasting trial has been extremely popular and I am delighted that we can now begin to offer our audiences a much wider range of content to download. "

The BBC was the first UK broadcaster to release podcasts when it offered Radio 4's In Our Time in November 2004.