What should a 'cultural network' be doing?

[Bryn]

Perhaps HG is ignorant of the role TtN plays throughout Europe and beyond. It is but part of the Euroclassic Notturno service which originates with BBC Radio 3.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I notice, HG, that you keep the really naff CFM stuff (Breakfast, EC and In Tune).

I also wonder how it is possible to have selected repeats from a programme that would no longer exist.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_United_Kingdom_(historical)

How dare they misspell the word "licence" on Wikipedia.

[Serial_Apologist]

Mon-Fri:
6.00 Breakfast
8.30 Essential Classics
11.00 Through the Night (selected repeat)
12.00 Composer of the Week
1.00 Lunchtime Concert
2.00 Through the Night (selected repeat)
4.00 In Tune
6.00 Composer of the Week
7.00-7.15 The Essay

Mon: 7.15 Opera on 3
Mon: 10.30-12.00 Jazz on 3
Tue-Fri: 7.15 Live in Concert (with 15 min intro: context/music)
Tue-Thu: 10.00 Free Thinking
Tue-Thu: 10.45-12.00 Late Junction
Fri: 10.00-12.00 World on 3

Mon-Fri: 12.00- 6.00 Closedown

Live in Concert (Tue-Sun) would include some of the cut Afternoon on 3, so 12.5 hours of orchestra broadcasts per week would be cut, inc. live concerts and special recordings.

The Verb could become an interval feature, like next week's Commonwealth Stories.

Through the Night could be broadcast on the Asian Network (12.00-6.00) which currently carries 5Live at this time.

Not surprised to see the banishment of Hear and Now, and most of current jazz coverage, in your idealised schedule.

[Honoured Guest]

Not surprised to see the banishment of Hear and Now, and most of current jazz coverage, in your idealised schedule.

Ho ho. These are just my weekday proposals.

Ena, my schedule is a realistic proposal, not a personal wishlist, so Breakfast, Essential Classics and In Tune have to be retained, as integral parts of Radio 3 policy.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Essential Classics and In Tune have to be retained, as integral parts of Radio 3 policy.

Says who?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

what is the point of discussing the menu in the wrong restaurant?

btw The Envy of The World arrived in this mornings post, a second hand copy via the river from Western Isles Libraries where according to the label it was borrowed five time in say fifteen years [now there would be an interesting piece of narrative research] ... i expected a 'pamphlet' but a door stop of serious history has arrived ... i look forward to being a history bore

BBC Radio is in a difficult place; R1 is like the value trap in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance [oh how indispensable that book seemed in 1976] -the monkey grasps the food bait in the coconut shell but the hole is too small to withdraw a clenched monkey fist, now the monkey is lunch .... the BBC as a whole develops such attachments to programmes and services going on long beyond their genuine life span ..... or to activities it should not be funding via the license fee ...

R2 and BBC1 are there for when the bombs drop; there to be nationally popular information and education services and since we all pay for them we can and should demand excellence from them

thereafter we are slicing the smaller slices of the national pie eh ... and R3 et al can only be viewed in this overall context

i think that R1 and R4 are dispensable; like the Sun and The Times [oddly most people i know listen to R4 Extra where all the repeats are] whereas R5 and R6 are brilliant at what they do and no commercial broadcaster seems able or willing to offer such services 4Extra 5 and 6 are run for enthusiasts/aficionados and are not wallpaper [witness the reaction to the proposed closure of R6]

R3 is for the arts enthusiasts and those who wish or might become such - music and the spoken word being radio's forte the arts which it should embrace are pretty obvious ... it can not be wallpaper; the form and style of its output must reflect the serious nature of its content and the passions of its audience

but R3 now seems to most earnestly desire to be wallpaper in form content and style; hence it undersells how good it still is in many respects, and endangers its future by not being indispensable to a passionate audience

now we could also perhaps agree that much excellent artistic work in music and the spoken word, as well as philosophy and science is presently ignored altogether by the BBC and would make most suitable content for the radio; and that this deplorable state of affairs is many times greater if we add dramatic and visual arts and include the TV Channels

it seems to me at least that Aunt started flashing her undies when Birt took over, at least he created a better than world class digital presence, but his strategic legacy and thinking has been rather a disaster and the crumbling attempts to define Aunt since have been quite scandalous .... Salaries Saville Hutton all craven errors which disqualify the present generation of top executives from opening their mouths .... Birt may have understood [need to check Georgina Born's excellent book again that audience numbers are of limited use in strategic guidance but he would seem to be alone in this [if Dyke did he was sacked] .... it is to my mind the quality of the relationships that the BBC has with its audiences that matters, not their sizes, or transactional analyses that slice the demographics by the money or quaintly worry about class elitism or hermetic seals

i note from Carpenter that Haley was well aware of the mathematical power laws governing audience sizes and was correct imv in regarding them as an inevitable pyramid of mass middle and small tip ... my one concern would be the unthinking use of the vertical axis .... if we instead take a Bucky Fuller meatphor of OUT then we can have a large core of entirely mass popular broadcasting that we learned in the 20th Cent that we absolutely needed as a nation, at war and after; with radii of decreasing popularity extending OUT from the core [science, politics, arts. thought, sport ethnic eg, historical and repeats] this conveniently looks like a compass and is what we pay the licence fee for .... no commercial enterprise would consider it in its entirety i suspect [Google might?] nor could be trusted todo so since the power and influence would be too large for a commercial entity even though George and Dave's Cousins want to make a bob or two trying ....if you wish to see a commercially dominated public sector broadcasting system try the USA and watch Fox News

what also seems to me to be the case is that thinking of the radii in terms of networks and stations is also in the past tense .... The Third Programme as an Arts Culture &c strand across both broadcast and digital platforms with a cornucopia of archive and new material could be mind blowing and very successful as a global export .. as well as publishing what the mainstream and avant garde artists are producing in our country ...

the small minded, back foot defensive and imitative tactics of the present management are unfit for the present and future of public service arts broadcasting, and unworthy of their heritage ... it seems pointless to me to expect them to come up with much worthwhile, and leaves me wondering if what was born with my generation in 1946 will die with it shortly

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Calum, your post deserves to be framed.

[aeolium]

i think that R1 and R4 are dispensable;

Interesting post, calum, but I completely disagree about R4 which seems to be honourably in the tradition of the Home Service. Yes, it has plenty of wallpaper, padding - what radio station does not? More to the point it is the only radio station on which there is serious in-depth coverage of news and current affairs (R5 is a joke for that) as well as serious programmes on science, history, the law (Unreliable Evidence is one of the best discussion programmes I know), the media, the economy etc. It's true that it has not properly filled the gap left by the loss of the high-quality talks and poetry programmes on the Third and later from R3, but I think there would be a serious hole in broadcasting if R4 disappeared. Periodically it does run series examining the culture and history of other countries, like those on Iran and Germany recently, and I'd like a lot more of that (tied in with comparable arts coverage on R3 and one of the TV channels). But it does some things very well and just because it is not to your taste is no reason to dump it.

And the shipping forecast is a cultural artefact in itself.

[french frank]

I agree with calum (and many others) that the scandal is as much what the BBC does NOT cover now. At all. Serious cultural nourishment in so many fields.

Radio 4 is one of the BBC's blue-eyed boys, budgets protected and 'universally' admired as the epitome of public service broadcasting; but to compare it with the old Home Service doesn't do it too many favours, in my view. Leave aside the fact that Radio 3 was to take over (but increasingly doesn't) a wedge of what the Home Service used to do - it seems to have replaced that with a lighter diet, rather than seeking out more substantial new areas to cover routinely [ah, aeolium does seem to agree on this point, now I reread his post], to me makes it a station that is rather overpraised. That isn't to write off what it does, but to say it could be a lot better. And if much of its lighter stuff - like comedy - were redirected to Radio 2, that would diffuse some of the criticisms of the commercial sector who see it (R2) as a pop music station which is like a number of commercial stations.

Coincidence that calum mentions The Sun and The Times. I was making that analogy, mentally, this morning. We accept that the vast majority of the British public would choose The Sun over The Times. So we have to accept that a similar majority will choose Radio 2 over Radio 3. But what would be the equivalent changes to The Times, if it were to follow the example of Radio 3 in seeking a broader readership?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

And the shipping forecast is a cultural artefact in itself.

But too many now skimp over it. It used to be delivered like a poem.

[Serial_Apologist]

But too many now skimp over it. It used to be delivered like a poem.

Should be re-named the Feather Warcast then.

[aeolium]

Leave aside the fact that Radio 3 was to take over (but increasingly doesn't) a wedge of what the Home Service used to do - it seems to have replaced that with a lighter diet, rather than seeking out more substantial new areas to cover routinely [ah, aeolium does seem to agree on this point, now I reread his post], to me makes it a station that is rather overpraised. That isn't to write off what it does, but to say it could be a lot better

Do you mean Radio 4 here? I think the problem is that an unreasonable expectation is placed on R4's shoulders to be a cross between a factual information station (plus magazine/more popular drama & serial/a bit of poetry) and a spoken arts station - the offcuts from R3. I recall the first decades of R3 at least until the end of Drummond's Controllership when there were still plenty of talks and serious drama. The failure is rather R3's (or bigwigs in the BBC) to abandon that and turn the station into one virtually devoid of serious drama and arts coverage (Night Waves is hardly different from R4's Front Row imo). If anywhere should have retained the serious spoken arts coverage it should have been R3.

Yes, R4 could be a lot better. But I still think it does what its remit requires far better than R3 now does.

[Frances_iom]

But too many now skimp over it. It used to be delivered like a poem.

but for some it's rather important - do we need stockup on bog-roll first thing tomorrow or wait until the end of the week .

[Don Petter]

We accept that the vast majority of the British public would choose The Sun over The Times. So we have to accept that a similar majority will choose Radio 2 over Radio 3. But what would be the equivalent changes to The Times, if it were to follow the example of Radio 3 in seeking a broader readership?

Obviously, for breakfast readers, a regular attractive young lady on page three.