What should a 'cultural network' be doing?

[french frank]

Tony Hall didn't come out of it too well, did he? But hugely interesting that the two key areas in terms of PSB were quoted as Radio 3 and the orchestras (not even Radio 4!).

[VodkaDilc]

Tony Hall didn't come out of it too well, did he? But hugely interesting that the two key areas in terms of PSB were quoted as Radio 3 and the orchestras (not even Radio 4!).

I hope that the Proms would be included in that.

R3 and R4 must be the only BBC services which are not duplicated elsewhere. The television channels certainly are. I'm not sure about BBC local radio - it used to have a distinctly different character from commercial radio. I'm assuming that the World Service is in a different category and is still funded from elsewhere (or perhaps that changed when it was discussed some time ago.)

[french frank]

I'm assuming that the World Service is in a different category and is still funded from elsewhere (or perhaps that changed when it was discussed some time ago.)

It will be changing imminently: in the last settlement the government dictated that the BBC should fund it (out of the licence fee), instead of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Which is a bit rich since it's the one service which is not, primarily, aimed at the UK licence fee payer.

Add : The D-G's full speech is here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/speeches/2014/dg-oxford.html

[Gordon]

You may find this of interest about the need for the BBC, OfCom stats included:

http://www.ippr.org/images/media/files/event/2014/02/OMC%20Do%20we%20need%20the%20BBC%20final.pdf

Conference session and speaker details here with some links to powerpoints:

http://www.ippr.org/events/54/11659/oxford-media-convention-2014

[Flosshilde]

There was also extensive discussion of the loophole where internet-only BBC viewers/listeners do not have to pay the licence fee -

No tquite - if you watch on a computer (or phone, etc) live - ie at the time it's broadcast - you should have a TV licence. If you watch it later then you don't need one. However, Hall has said that he wants to extend the licence to cover that. Which is all very well but watching programmes on iPlayer after they are broadcast isn't that much different from watching a recording - so is the licence going to be exgtended to covering that as well?

[mercia]

why should a 'cultural network' (I assume Carpenter was talking about R3 ??) by definition only have a very small audience ?

[french frank]

why should a 'cultural network' (I assume Carpenter was talking about R3 ??) by definition only have a very small audience ?

Well, first you have to define it - and I suppose it means 'when you define it' or 'by defining it'. If it implies that 'popular culture' is excluded (not least because there are so many other outlets - hundreds of them), you're left with a network for minority interests.

[Honoured Guest]

I assume Humphrey Carpenter meant "high culture" or graduate-level programmes which could only be appreciated, and understood, by people already steeped in the particular subject area of each programme. That's the only way I can make sense of this quote from his Preface. It makes sense if referring to the Third Programme, but not in relation to Radio 3 which has since inception been a generic (not just "high") cultural network. For example, Radio 3 broadcasts virtually all the BBC's classical music radio output whereas the Third Programme broadcast only the esoteric, with more popular and familiar classical music regularly broadcast on the Home Service and the Light Programme, and then also on the Music Programme. In the days of the Third Programme, the BBC Proms relays were divided between all these radio networks according to concert repertoire, but latterly they are all broadcast on Radio 3.

[doversoul1]

Level of knowledge of the subject and level of intelligence to be able to understand the subject are not the same thing. Radio3 seems to believe that the two go hand in hand; little knowledge, little intelligence.

A good ‘cultural’ radio programme, I think, is a programme that offers interest to both the knowledgeable and the newcomer. For example, Early Music Show is usually much appreciated by those who know everything about the subject, but I also enjoy it very much although I am relatively new to the subject. Come to that, Early Music Show has a lot to do with my becoming a newcomer to the subject.

[french frank]

Level of knowledge of the subject and level of intelligence to be able to understand the subject are not the same thing. Radio3 seems to believe that the two go hand in hand; little knowledge, little intelligence.

Exactly. The argument is not that Radio 3 seeks to engage new listeners with a low knowledge level, but that it does it in the ways that it does (quizzes, TV celebrities, 'interactivity') which simply come over as childishness posing as 'modernisation'.

The latest issue of Gramophone had a plea that Radio 3's presenters should take a lesson from the Olympic snowboarding presentation:

"Listening to Fuller, Leigh and Warwood getting so excited about Cab Double Corks put me in mind of Andrew MacGregor and friends and their weekly Saturday morning chat about new recordings on CD Review. Now, obviously Gramophone remains the number one destination for guidance on new recordings [! heh, heh]. But CD Review is an example of how, if information is imparted with integrity, passion, and a disregard for ‘coming across intelligent’, it becomes accessible and engaging by default – however obscure and complex the subject matter or intelligent and technical the observations therein."

Radio 3 has become so afraid of dealing with subject matter that is 'obscure and complex', 'intelligent and technical', that it barely bothers with it any more (CD Review arguably an exception).

Add: Gramophone again: "The snowboarding controversy has direct relevance to Radio 3, which found itself explaining a decrease in its audience recently to below the 2 million mark. Controller Roger Wright penned a sound defence of his editorial policy in The Telegraph, refuting the allegation that he’s got one eye on Classic FM's listeners. All well and good: the last thing Radio 3 should be doing is chasing Classic FM's listeners (though listening to the village fete quiz questions on Breakfast, you can be forgiven for thinking it’s writ large on the station’s action plan). What Radio 3 can learn from Classic FM, though, is that a radio station needs a sound – an atmosphere – and inconsistency in said atmosphere is a significant turn-off (literally).

[Tevot]

I'm very much liking the sound of the new Gramophone ;-)

[Gordon]

.... For example, Radio 3 broadcasts virtually all the BBC's classical music radio output whereas the Third Programme broadcast only the esoteric, with more popular and familiar classical music regularly broadcast on the Home Service and the Light Programme, and then also on the Music Programme...

Here is an example: the chart summarises BBC output for the year 1959-60. Our era and that of 1960 are in many ways incomparable, for one thing modern R3 was launched back in 1967 as a Music channel, the Threes were more broadly cultural.

The "Serious Music" was distributed as you say but very little on the Light which carried the more popular material; the Third did carry a small amount of "Light Music" and some "Dance Music"! What is surprising is the amount of Talks and Discussions. I am assumimng that "serious" meant that you sat and listened with some attention. Quite at odds with a contemporary pop concert in which one hardly listened to the music but to the screams!!

Back then Pop/Chart music, which was already very rapidly on the move, but had little dedicated air time, was subsumed into "Light Music" - Saturday Club [it would clash with CD Review now!!] and the Top 40 on a Saturday night with David Jacobs were among the few programmes. Now the air waves are awash with it.

Back then there was only the BBC. Back then hours per day were limited as is illustrated here - the Light was 16.8 hours per day. The combined Threes only 5.5 total with 2.5 hours of that "serious music". The Home in fact put out more hours per day [3.5] of Serious Music than the Threes did. This chart doesn't show it [it's a composite of all regions, despite what the legend says, but as today dominated by London's output] but there was a variance between distribution of the hours, and of "Serious Music" among them, on the Home in the Regions. Scotland had more Serious Music than the other regions!! So if we believe Maria Miller and Alex Salmond maybe the new Scottish Broadcasting Service will reflect that!!

[Gordon]

Level of knowledge of the subject and level of intelligence to be able to understand the subject are not the same thing. Radio3 seems to believe that the two go hand in hand; little knowledge, little intelligence.

A good ‘cultural’ radio programme, I think, is a programme that offers interest to both the knowledgeable and the newcomer...

Quite so DS. Culture is much more than just Music though.

[aeolium]

Quite so DS. Culture is much more than just Music though.

Yes, indeed, and I think the BBC's TV and radio stations ostensibly devoted to culture, BBC4 and R3, ought to reflect that. The old idea of culture on the Third Programme and early-R3 was far more Eurocentric (or at least Western) than would be acceptable today, other cultures being considered really only suitable for anthropology or ethnomusicology. There is a token nod on the R3 to "world music" though there ought to be far more serious and extensive coverage of the music of non-Western cultures, as well as the other arts and indeed programmes which explore the nature of those cultures in their wider sense, so that we understand them better: in their customs, in the way they think. R3 - and R4 - has intermittently attempted to do this but in recent years the attempt seems to have been abandoned (perhaps too expensive or thought to be too esoteric).

[Gordon]

Reith's idea of broadcasting was that "culture" should not be confined to one place but spread among the channels, given that you have more than one. Dividing people up into ghettos caused them to be become self absorbed and not open to new ideas. The inherent assumption was that everyone has the capacity to be engaged by all sorts of programmes - the essence of his "Education, Information and Entertainment" model was that all services should do all 3 and do so broadly.

It is arguable that the huge proliferaton of the media has allowed more "culture" to reach the public but it has also led to ghetto-isation, expecially of broadcasting, that has divided society thereby setting up culture barriers and an "us" and "them". One the face of it setting up dedicated services for particular commmunities seems a good thing but it has its price.

The commercialisation of the media, which is inevitable and unavoidable, distorts matters by causing concentration on the overtly popular [it's easier to do, more profitable] which is all well and good up to a point but it leads to distortion of media capacity too eg domination of the radio spectrum by popular music. That's what regulators and public service are for. Commercially based cultural broadcasting is possible but will not be a mass market any more than a public service but it may be a more profitable one per listener/viewer.