Soft Power; The Media Show; Last Orders at the Spinning Disc; Exile of the Stones

The World Service gets to grips with national charm while the future of newspapers is under debate on Radio 4 and Radio 2 weighs in with a couple of really decent documentaries on music, writes Miranda Sawyer

Have you heard of soft power? Me neither and yet the phrase was coined in 1989 by Clinton aide Joseph Nye, to mean a nation's cultural influence, or at least the influence it has that isn't economic or military. In the World Service's documentary of the same name, the first of two half-hours on this interesting topic, soft power was defined as "the power to be loved. Hard power is the power to be feared".

Thus, Beckham, the Beatles and the BBC are all examples of the UK's soft power; Hollywood, Harvard and hip-hop are some of the US's. Philip Dodd took us on a journey to find out if China, acknowledged as the world's burgeoning economic and political force, has any soft power to offer. The results were a strange combination of hilarious and sinister. China has funded language institutions across the world, believing that if people learn Chinese, they will be more inclined to think kindly upon its country of origin. Reasonable enough, but then an enthusiastic Chinese lady tried to persuade us that China is ecologically sound because, in some rural communities, a tree is planted every time someone is born. And then cut down when they die to make their coffin.

The problem with Chinese soft power, as an Indian contributor pointed out, is that it's backed by all that hard power. So when you see Chinese athletes triumph at the Olympics, you assume that their success is partly due to state, um, encouragement. This programme made me think about Jamaica and Ireland, two small islands with relatively little political or economic weight, but with oodles of teeming, culturally explosive soft power that has influenced the world.

On The Media Show, more food for thought: Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger and Sunday Times editor John Witherow stood up for their contrasting positions re the future of newspapers. Rusbridger believes that you can't ask people to pay for online newspaper content; Witherow is about to ask them to. Both stances make sense, though you might err towards Witherow's when you learn that the Guardian/Observer group is losing a staggering £100,000 a day. But then, consider that, in those same short 24 hours, the Times and Sunday Times lose £240,000…

Steve Hewlett chaired this mini-debate admirably, I thought, making a great impromptu joke about Rupert Murdoch's back-stabbing proclivities, as well as ensuring that the discussion included contributions from the audience. I did miss a tabloid perspective, which might have tempered the it's-one-way-or-the-other attitudes, but this was a brisk and topical whizz through all the salient points. And if you want to read any more of my thoughts, you'll have to PayPal me £1.

On Radio 2, docu-mentaries are really picking up. Pete Waterman's two-part series, Last Orders at the Spinning Disc, on the demise of record shops is thoroughly entertaining, if littered with his own music (we opened with a few bars of Bananarama's "Venus") or, at least, music to his own taste (old soul – great; Bros's "I Owe You Nothing – hmm). But he is never dull and I enjoyed his partisan interviews with record shop owners. He got most aerated about the old major label practice of offering discounts to big record chains. "It's part of the whole decline of British music," he trumpeted, correctly.

And Paul Sexton did admirably with Mick, Keef and Charlie in Wednesday night's Exile of the Stones. I know they're everywhere at the moment, promoting the rerelease of Exile on Main St, but what a treat to hear those voices in action! Mick: creaky and plaintive; Keith: slurred and chuckly; Charlie: crunchy and, oddly, Billy Braggesque.

I thought initially that Sexton hadn't done the interviews, so carefully was he edited out of the chat, but the pictures on Radio 2's website show him grinning like a loon as he cuddles each Stone. Though not boring Bill, thoroughly exiled from the rest of the band. "No one would be up until three in the afternoon," mused Charlie, "cos we didn't go to bed until nine that morning, about an hour before Bill arrived. He used to drive me up the wall."