Saturday Drama: Four Quartets, R4, 14.30- 15.45hrs, Sat, 18 Jan 2014

[Honoured Guest]

I don't buy your conspiracy theory that Radio 3 is "stealthily offloading" speech/drama. I don't think you've provided the evidence. It's indisputable that the quantity of new speech and drama is reduced, along with the quantity of specialist music programming, including jazz, world and new music. That's because of publicly announced budget cuts and associated reductions in minimum quantity requirements by the BBC Trust. When Radio 3 has "offloaded" anything in the past, it's been publicly stated at the time. I can only recall science, poetry, political analysis features and children's programming.

It's fair enough to express an argued analysis of why a particular Drama isn't to your personal taste, as did the Oresteia poster who clearly strongly prefers an "authentic" approach. But how does the continuing origination of Drama on 3 productions fit your "stealthy offloading" theory? Please tell us if you have other evidence!

[DublinJimbo]

Ibsen's play is perfectly "accessible" without such imaginative baggage and it is the listener who should be encouraged to use his/her imagination to draw out the play's relevance to other contexts.

Off-topic, I know, but may I just draw out this statement's relevance to Regietheater and its sometimes monstrous 'reinterpretations' of opera.

[Stanley Stewart]

I've listened to a minidisc recording of the Four Quartets with Paul Scofield, and note that it was broadcast on R3, 17.30 hrs, 12 Nov, 2000, under the Sounding the Century heading. (The original broadcast was on 16 Nov 1997). On the same day, the R3, Sunday play, Wystan, by Gordon MacDougall, was broadcast at 21.45 hrs.

Pleased to see that Saturday's R4 broadcast of the Four Quartets has been selected under Today's Choices in RT.
Jane Anderson,radio editor, adds that she is a recent convert to the theory that poetry should never be read in silence but always aloud. Perhaps a bit fallacious! Immediate thoughts of Berlioz when he asks whether love or music can lift man to the sublimest heights. "Love" he concluded, cannot give an idea of "music", music can give an idea of of love. But why separate them? They are two wings of one soul".

[french frank]

I don't buy your conspiracy theory that Radio 3 is "stealthily offloading" speech/drama. I don't think you've provided the evidence. It's indisputable that the quantity of new speech and drama is reduced, along with the quantity of specialist music programming, including jazz, world and new music. That's because of publicly announced budget cuts and associated reductions in minimum quantity requirements by the BBC Trust.

Classic FM "didn't buy" the explanation that these particular cuts were dictated by budget cuts. Neither do I. The difference is that you believe the narrative (evidence?); we don't.

When Radio 3 has "offloaded" anything in the past, it's been publicly stated at the time. I can only recall science, poetry, political analysis features and children's programming.

I missed the announcement that Radio 3 had 'offloaded' poetry. You have to go back to 1967 when it was announced that with the arrival of Radio 3 and Radio 4, ONLY politics and current affairs would be absent from (the new) Radio 3, to be covered by Radio 4. The rest of the speech programming, about which people like Peter Maxwell Davies and Edward Greenfield were expressing concern, would be preserved on Radio 3. As for the children's programming on Radio 3, my memory is that it became apparent that it had been dropped when it ceased to appear in the schedule.

But how does the continuing origination of Drama on 3 productions fit your "stealthy offloading" theory? Please tell us if you have other evidence!

Well, first, as you allude to, minimum quantity requirements have been reduced. If you think such reductions were the initiative of the BBC Trust, then read the relative roles of management and Trust. And, if not the Trust, who do you think made the suggestions?

I have some research to do, but I note Stanley's information that the R3 Four Quartets (commissioned under the previous controller) were broadcast in 2000 on the same day as another play in the evening. The main concern is not to demonstrate to anyone that the phasing out of non-classical programming IS happening, but to ensure that it doesn't.

'Saving money' seems conveniently to result in long tracts of presenter-led classical CD sequences (or BBC recordings) - and these progressively moving downmarket, especially at the more popular radio listening times. You may find the later Sunday evening very convenient for you to listen to a play, but it appears that the majority do not: only 8.3% listen between 9pm and midnight, so the later slot for drama will inevitably result in lower audiences.

[Honoured Guest]

From memory, the R3 Four Quartets were broadcast in 2000 in a Features slot, and not a Drama slot.

There are occasional complaints from Radio 4 drama devotees that their Drama slots now regularly include poetry (e.g. The Four Quartets) and features, and so less drama.

As you well know, many of these incremental R3 changes have been driven by increasing accessibility, and others by budget cuts. Those are the two main (and distinct) motors of change, aren't they? A third might be a fairer broadening of the range of music broadcast (more regular world music, although still pitifully little, and less of the prejudice which is acknowledged to have run riot in the William Glock era). A fourth might be summed up as moving with general cultural changes, so that the station continues to broadcast to people alive today, and not to their imagined equivalents of sixty years ago.

I think your argument about a direct relationship between time of broadcast and audience size and appreciation is fallacious. The argument applies to casual listeners - hence, the aim to make daytime broadcasting generally accessible. But committed audiences seek out specialist programmes in the schedules. and late evening is a less busy time for many people when they can more easily settle down to attentively listen to a programme.

[aeolium]

A fourth might be summed up as moving with general cultural changes, so that the station continues to broadcast to people alive today, and not to their imagined equivalents of sixty years ago.

Well, I am alive today and so are plenty of others who have expressed their dissatisfaction here with the changing style and content of R3. The question is not merely whether the BBC in general, and R3 in particular, reflect cultural changes but whether they are also in a position as a result of their public service character and obligations to effect cultural change - as the Third Programme unquestionably did. It does not at all mean that R3 now should replicate what the Third Programme did but that it can and should showcase the best of non-visual art: principally that of classical and serious contemporary music, but also of jazz, world music and the spoken arts. And that it should do so to the highest possible standards.

[french frank]

A fourth might be summed up as moving with general cultural changes, so that the station continues to broadcast to people alive today, and not to their imagined equivalents of sixty years ago.

I'm not sure I even understand what point you are making. No one is suggesting that Radio 3 should remain entirely unchanged from how it was 60 years ago in order to cater for that audience. But what has changed is that, compared with 1967, the BBC has a number of extra services, catering for the differing 'tastes'. As each new service comes, catering for people 'alive today', Radio 3 should not need to cater for those same audiences. Either its remit is valid, or it's not. Either there is a place for Beethoven, Ibsen and discussions about Kierkegaard or there isn't. People used to be able to cope with ideas from other places and other times; why, suddenly, does everything have to be fitted into Here or Now before people can 'access' them?

I'd rather like to hear a thoughtful definition of what 'accessible' means. Exactly.

I think your argument about a direct relationship between time of broadcast and audience size and appreciation is fallacious. The argument applies to casual listeners

No, it doesn't. It applies to general radio listening trends. And more people will listen to a Radio 3 play at 8pm on a Sunday than will listen at 10pm. So why move it?

[DracoM]

In many ways, R3 educated me and many in my generation by challenging, explaining, contextualising.

If you become a station that is effectively for long periods of the broadcasting day sequences of 'tracks' linked by DJs, and in which of necessity context, explanation, analysis, leading simply do not take place, then the station becomes wallpaper. Very nice wallpaper, but nevertheless, wallpaper. The 'Discovering Music' series of proper length, not snippety bits in concert intervals, has gone. Why? Is that not helping to grow audiences? Or maybe, more worryingly, the R3 management junked the series because it thought such talks are DIMINISHING the R3 audience because the explanations are too 'elitist', too difficult to follow? IN another arts field, R3's ambitions and aspirations for poetry are contained in the jokey cabaret show 'The Verb' - and that's it.

Moving Four Quartets to R4 matters insofar as it suggests that R3 has lost confidence in its remit. Certainly, I can still tune in to R4 if I wish to listen to it. But LISTENING for a new listener is not contextualising. 4Qs are baffling, subtle, interwoven, highly allusive. Is R4 about to conduct a series of analyses / discussions on this most complex of 20th cent poems to contextualise, help educate, lead listeners on to explore further, or help them cope with the avalanche they have just been in the path of? ? Not according to the R4 schedules.

Where / how does the next generation get its intro to the culture that is its by right and should be handed on to it if the publicly funded and mighty broadcasting organisation in nation does not facilitate that critical handover? Cultural disenfranchisement. And I am not talking of the older generation here, but the young. School curricula are being steadily impoverished in brutal and arbitrary ways. The role of the media in filling in the widening gaps and leading this increasingly impoverished generation on to other things is absolutely critical. R3 is steadily retreating from that role. At a time when the UK seems more fragmenting and ignorant than at any point in my lifetime, handing on the treasures from the past, presenting the excellencies of the present and challenging the future are surely what any responsible cultural remit should contain. R3 is again retreating from that responsibility.

Transmitting the culture is about identity on many, many different levels, and R3 used to be an animator of values / resources, and an initiator of series that challenged, and informed. Is it now the case that R3 believes that function is being better handled elsewhere and thus allows it to turn R3 into a cheapiish DJ led-experience?

[french frank]

Radio 3's 'flexibility' should mean that it could take an entire evening (that's what the 'special events' often were), a series of programmes built around a topic - like Eliot's poetry. And, ideally, it should be presented for a Radio 3 audience by Eliot experts without the mediation of a presenter asking easy questions.

I looked up when there was last a programme about Kierkegaard on R3. Actually, last September in a Sunday Feature. But it had the presenter, described as a 'philosophy populariser' strolling through Copenhagen ... that might have been an informative, enjoyable programme for a general audience. But why can't programmes for 'general audiences' be on the mass audience stations (in that case, Radio 4)? and leave Radio 3 to deal with more specialised topics and treatment? As it is, the BBC cops out of doing anything that 'some audiences' may not find interesting enough.

[Honoured Guest]

Yes, I suppose that the ideal Radio 3 programme would have an audience of two - the presenter and the producer. It would have failed if anyone else took an interest.

[DracoM]

Petulant response and unworthy of you, HG. Undermines the seriousness of your previous postings.

[Honoured Guest]

Okay, taking the Kierkegaard example, I think it's right to say that any R3 programme now would take pains to be comprehensible to any intelligent and alert listener. That means including explanations of basic concepts, which might irritate learned listeners. That seems to me to be preferable to broadcasting which many such listeners aren't equiped to make proper sense of. I think Free Thinking (nee Night Waves) treads this tightrope very well - explanatory introduction before expert discussion, presented and produced so as to remain comprehensible throughout. Some of these items are about specific ideas or theories.

In the days of the Third Programme, more people had some background familiarity with classical music. For most people now, that's not so. I'm in my fifties and had virtually no general music education at school. The Light Programme and the Home Service both used to broadcast more popular classical music, and much "light music" had some relationship to classical music, in form and instrumentation. Today, classical music is utterly alien to most people and BBC national radio confines it almost entirely to Radio 3. So it makes perfect sense to me that so much of the daytime output seeks to present music to anyone who wants to listen with no knowledge. It surprises me that classical music still receives such a high proportion of Radio 3 airtime when there is so much other music worthy of serious listening. I hope that this historical anomaly will be corrected over time so that BBC Radio serves the whole range of music more equitably. I suspect that part of the reason for Radios 1 and 2's budgets increasing more than Radio 3's has been to partially correct this imbalance, by improving the quality of their offpeak specialist programmes, to more properly cover their musics as Radio 3 has always been funded to do with classical music.

[Richard Tarleton]

Okay, taking the Kierkegaard example, I think it's right to say that any R3 programme now would take pains to be comprehensible to any intelligent and alert listener. That means including explanations of basic concepts, which might irritate learned listeners. That seems to me to be preferable to broadcasting which many such listeners aren't equiped to make proper sense of.

Are they less so now than they used to be, HG? I haven't always been a grumpy 65 year old, I was in my late teens (OK, well educated) when I became a regular Third Programme listener. What R3 has done, in the last very few years (RW's tenure, in fact) is quite deliberately (in that it knows exactly what it's doing) to set about alienating and shedding an audience which has evolved with it over decades. By all means try to engage with new audiences, but not at the expense of p***ing off the existing one, it's just not necessary.

In the days of the Third Programme, more people had some background familiarity with classical music. For most people now, that's not so. I'm in my fifties and had virtually no general music education at school. The Light Programme and the Home Service both used to broadcast more popular classical music, and much "light music" had some relationship to classical music, in form and instrumentation. Today, classical music is utterly alien to most people

Really? What an extraordinary assertion. The consumption of live classical music at the range of venues I attend suggests this is not the case.

and BBC national radio confines it almost entirely to Radio 3. So it makes perfect sense to me that so much of the daytime output seeks to present music to anyone who wants to listen with no knowledge. It surprises me that classical music still receives such a high proportion of Radio 3 airtime when there is so much other music worthy of serious listening. I hope that this historical anomaly will be corrected over time so that BBC Radio serves the whole range of music more equitably. I suspect that part of the reason for Radios 1 and 2's budgets increasing more than Radio 3's has been to partially correct this imbalance, by improving the quality of their offpeak specialist programmes, to more properly cover their musics as Radio 3 has always been funded to do with classical music.

So, to sum up, R3 is there to do the job the Light Programme and Home Service used to do, and classical music should shrink to vanishing point, with nothing to do the job R3 used to do (pre-Wright)? I think a number of us are gradually getting used to this idea.

[Stephen Whitaker]

Richard you are a member of a minority and so are the other people at the range of venues you attend.
Try asking a random selection of people in your local pub , club or supermarket to find out how utterly alien classical music is to most people.

To continue to nit-pick and nay-say about Radio 3 ignores the real threat to what we have now,
the fact that 70% of the electorate would abolish the licence fee and make Radio 3 a subscription service along the lines of PBS in the USA.

The Spectator thinks.....

"All told, the BBC is the most glaring example of anti-competitive practice in the British economy, yet one which none of the government’s
competition quangos has ever seen fit to investigate.

Why does the BBC expand? Because this is what bureaucracies do. Like old imperial armies, they conquer because they feel the only alternative is defeat.
The result is a sprawling portfolio of interests, which are very far removed from Lord Reith’s values.

A reckoning is long overdue. The BBC may not know the value of money, but those prosecuted for not paying its fines certainly do.
Many of them struggle to make ends meet and would not dream of paying £145.50 for BBC services that they could happily go without.

Sky now produces some of the best arts coverage in Britain.
The market for drama is now global, and British living rooms are filled with American (and even Danish) DVD box sets.

The BBC can easily compete in such a market, its programmes have a global appeal. It could easily find people willing to pay to watch or listen.
But if it wants to be tax-funded, it should restrict itself to a public service remit and focus on reducing the license fee — and the fancy salaries must go for good.
There is no possible excuse for paying the head of the state broadcasting service more than the Prime Minister.

The pointless BBC Trust should be abolished, but this will not guarantee the corporation a stable future. On current trends, the BBC’s enforcers will soon end up prosecuting more people than read the Guardian. This is simply not sustainable. An organisation of such quality and global reputation has the potential to become a great, truly independent British institution — and one that does not need to rely on magistrates’ courts for funding. It is odd in many ways that in 30 years of privatisations, many of them very successful, the BBC has hardly been mentioned as a candidate. It is high time this option was properly discussed."

A privatised Radio 3 will never survive in any way remotely like the post-Wright service, never mind the Third Programme.

The Friends of Radio 3 are complaining about the repertoire and presentation style of the Titanic's band as the ship goes down.

[french frank]

SPEECH

Okay, taking the Kierkegaard example, I think it's right to say that any R3 programme now would take pains to be comprehensible to any intelligent and alert listener. That means including explanations of basic concepts, which might irritate learned listeners.

So, given that the BBC has an educational/learning obligation to serve audiences at all levels, where are the 'learned listeners' being catered for at their level? I thought I'd covered that point: the Kierkegaard programme seemed in its approach and style to be for the 'intelliegent and alert listener' that Radio 4 caters for. But that is a debating point only: I would imagine the programme was on the edge of R3/R4.

You possibly have a higher opinion of 'Free Thinking' than many people who considered it became too general and the items were too short to get anywhere (bit of a hotch-potch tonight, for example, and the Oscars tomorrow) - and of course, there is one fewer in the new schedule.

MUSIC

In the days of the Third Programme, more people had some background familiarity with classical music. For most people now, that's not so. I'm in my fifties and had virtually no general music education at school. The Light Programme and the Home Service both used to broadcast more popular classical music, and much "light music" had some relationship to classical music, in form and instrumentation. Today, classical music is utterly alien to most people and BBC national radio confines it almost entirely to Radio 3. So it makes perfect sense to me that so much of the daytime output seeks to present music to anyone who wants to listen with no knowledge.

So where do they cater for the audience which does have knowledge? There's hardly anything which COULDN'T be appreciated by people with no knowledge, precious little for those who have more 'advanced' tastes. Again, if Radio 3 doesn't cater for that audience, which BBC service will?

It surprises me that classical music still receives such a high proportion of Radio 3 airtime when there is so much other music worthy of serious listening. I hope that this historical anomaly will be corrected over time so that BBC Radio serves the whole range of music more equitably.

But you again fail to acknowledge the explosion of new music stations from the start of Radio 3: not only Radio 2, but Radio 1; followed by Radio 1Xtra and Radio 6 Music; and the Asian Network.With Radio 2 (and Radio 4 compared with the Home Service) having largely cut out all classical music, you want Radio 3 to divide its airtime more equitably by cutting down classical music there too! Presumably because your own interest doesn't lie with classical music (unless, as you said elsewhwere, it's introduced by a celebrity presenter who doesn't necessarily expect to tell the audience anything about the music).

I suspect that part of the reason for Radios 1 and 2's budgets increasing more than Radio 3's has been to partially correct this imbalance, by improving the quality of their offpeak specialist programmes, to more properly cover their musics as Radio 3 has always been funded to do with classical music.

Ah, yes, the budgets. Your 'suspicions', if I may say so, seem based on very little. Looking at the Radio 1 and Radio 2 weekly timetables doesn't seem to show much for their budget increases that might be considered improved quality. The majority is still presenter-led sequences, with or without guests. I suppose bigger budgets will pay higher salaries for the celebs.