Radio 4Extra has taken up the vacated mid-evening Drama on 3 slot with a series of National Theatre at 50 rebroadcasts of Drama on 3 plays over the next three Sundays - Elmina's Kitchen tonight, Amadeus next week, Pravda the week after, with also The History Boys in addition on Saturday.
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I'm listening much more to 4extra - cf re great speaking voices. (Also weekly dose of 'Round the Horne' !)
PS Welcome, Honoured Guest !"...the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices..."
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When it comes to the Sunday evening radio drama slot, it's dog eat dog in the crazy world of the BBC...
RussComment
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Weird: why on earth pitch the two in direct opposition?Comment
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It's a traditional BBC feature: never mind what's available from other providers, just make sure that whatever's on byggars up the schedules of a "rival" BBC channel.Originally posted by DracoM View Post[FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]Comment
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Exhibit A:Originally posted by DracoM View Post
"And Radio 3 which could quite recently, when we were looking at how do we save the money that we need to save in the coming years, we could quite easily have looked and said, well, should we do all that amount of speech, should we be having full length plays on Radio 3, should we be commissioning all the new work that we commission, should we be having jazz, should we be having world music, it would have been very easy to narrow the range and just say well let’s just be a classical music station …" Damazer-Wright interview.
What's certainly the case is that a full-length play that begins at 10pm isn't going to get as big an audience as one which starts at 8pm.
My sense is that RW is seeking plaudits for increasing the amount of 'live' classical music on Radio 3 - but something else has to go. I note that the Radio 3 review said that 20% of the R3 budget went on the Performing groups, but broadcasts only took up 7% of output. Tellingly, the World Routes slot is now filled by music by the Performing Groups. And drama is being cut. And world music. And the Saturday feature ...It isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world.Comment
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Whilst R4X is to be applauded for putting its dibs on the vacated early evening Do3 slot for some serious longform drama, albeit repeats, I do wonder whether it was a case of sheer opportunism or something planned in conjunction with R3? Do3s and adult ex-R4 Friday Plays are not usual R4X 'territory'.
RussComment
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I think it's the BBC as a whole marking the NT 50th birthday celebrations:Originally posted by Russ View Post
I enjoyed hearing Elmina's Kitchen again (I think first broadcast on R3) and might tune in to Pravda. I'll give Amadeus and The History Boys a miss. Incidentally, most Do3 productions seem to be repeats these days, so R4X is not alone in that - R4X's are just older.Comment
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Those of us who follow The Archers
have ample wounds and blood to show why we are deeply and irretrievably even terminally cynical about the desperation at the BBC about the total mess that R4X has become, about the glacial speed of take up of digital radios, the massive discrepancies in signal strength nationwide, such that no strategy by the BBC to get people onto a digital station would be greeted by us otherwise than with raspberries.
IMHO, there is no earthly reason why the National Theatre's birthday should not be celebrated on R3 with these repeats where they belong. It is part of an increasingly hysterical scramble by both BBC and Govt to persuade us to buy digital radios, to try to re-ignite the manufacturers' interest which has notably slackened of late, and get the BBC out of the miserable hole they are in in being responsible for the digital revolution and prepare us for the 'swtich-off/over' that has been threatened and postponed time and time again.Comment
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