BBC 4 announces classical music season

[french frank]

Sounds wonderful! The dress question would depend on whether the rehearsals or to a public performance or not - continue in "casuals" if not; pretty frocks if a genuine gi ... err ... concert performance.

The thing is, we've seen how BBC received broadcast wisdom doesn't work for Radio 3: automated playlists that can't be produced until the music has been played, or that mistake Ethel Smith for Dame Ethel Smyth and Gerry Dorsey for Engelbert Humperdinck, tweeting and party games, celebrities and chatty presenters. The whole idea should be to produce the programme in a different way. Okay, fly-on-the-wall has been done - so why not use that technique instead of a presenter muscling in where not needed? I predict that it would rapidly become a weekly appointment not to be missed

[oddoneout]

A regular classical music slot on BBC4 would seem to be a better use of the licence fee than raking up TOTP programmes from 30 or more years ago.

Using the slots created by the fact that about one third of the TOTP recordings cannot now be broadcast?

[greenilex]

I can’t see that anyone has the right to object if they wear onesies so long as they give us the music...and yes, brilliant idea, I would certainly watch regularly.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I can’t see that anyone has the right to object if they wear onesies so long as they give us the music...and yes, brilliant idea, I would certainly watch regularly.

I suspect (going on past experience of BBC TV Music documentaries) that "the Music" will receive the least amount of attention, even if such a programme ever were to be made, greeni. Instead, there'd be endless footage of the performers doing "ordinary" things - chatting, texting, at the gym, cooking - to emphasize just how "ordinary" they are. Nothing so boring as working to put a performance together.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I can’t see that anyone has the right to object if they wear onesies so long as they give us the music...and yes, brilliant idea, I would certainly watch regularly.

If it doesn't matter, why have it on television at all? Radio would be better if the visual is irrelevant.

[french frank]

If it doesn't matter, why have it on television at all? Radio would be better if the visual is irrelevant.

Television gets bigger audiences - and TV audiences are less 'channel-focused' than radio listeners

I suspect (going on past experience of BBC TV Music documentaries) that "the Music" will receive the least amount of attention, even if such a programme ever were to be made, greeni. Instead, there'd be endless footage of the performers doing "ordinary" things - chatting, texting, at the gym, cooking - to emphasize just how "ordinary" they are. Nothing so boring as working to put a performance together.

I agree. The whole concept of the classical concert 'uniform' is/was that it doesn't/didn't distract from the music being played. I think that the 'camera in the corner' would discourage, or rather not encourage, pushy showing off, which seems to be television lifeblood these days .