Honestly I'd have to improve my spoken English a lot. It's not even comparable to my written skills. It feels like I have to learn the language all over again with my ears.
They'd include some of the programmes broadcast on BBC Radio Four, including panel games such as "Just a minute". They'd include some of the science and medical documentary that Radio 4 would broadcast. They'd also have their own programming - some soap operas, some news, some great documentaries.
All of this meant that English was being used in a variety of ways. There was informal, conversational English. There was English humour and word play. And there was more formal English.
But now the World Service has lost most of that. It is just a rolling news service now. There are some arts and science programmes, but those aren't great. The variety of spoken English is much reduced, and the variety of programming is much less. And everything is repeated every few hours, with some tweaks for different time zones.
Speaking English must be very hard!
(There was a time, as well, when the CBC and Radio Canada International used/enforced a standard pronunciation across the board. There was something quaint about it for every regional Canadian English dialect -- and our dialects, apart from Newfanese and the Nova Scotia Lunenburg dialect, tend to be pretty subtle -- but everyone could understand it. With the trend toward a vox populi approach, a rural Saskatchewan listener may find the various immigrant Englishes of major population centres like Toronto baffling at first. It's nice that communities can hear themselves on the radio -- it makes them feel more like first class citizens -- but it can impede communication between groups, and that friction can foster the very problems that the policies are trying to correct.)