If you took over from Roger Wright what would you do ?

[Honoured Guest]

If I were to take over from Roger Wright, I would ignore criticism.

[pastoralguy]

If I were to take over from Roger Wright, I would ignore criticism.

Isn't that an ingrained attitude to all BBC personnel?!

[gradus]

Join the pension scheme.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

If I were to take over from Roger Wright, I would ignore criticism.

So, no change there, then.

[vinteuil]

I would concentrate on Stuff Not Readily Available Elsewhere.

New commissions. Performances from venues and festivals from the UK, Europe and beyond.

Serious intellectually-demanding talks.

At least an hour of new comedy each week.

Announcers and presenters being there to announce and present, in as subfusc a way as feasible, and not to be Interesting Personalities.

No inane involvement with the Public - no tweets, phone-ins, competitions, listeners' choices.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I would concentrate on Stuff Not Readily Available Elsewhere.

New commissions. Performances from venues and festivals from the UK, Europe and beyond.

Serious intellectually-demanding talks.

At least an hour of new comedy each week.

Announcers and presenters being there to announce and present, in as subfusc a way as feasible, and not to be Interesting Personalities.

No inane involvement with the Public - no tweets, phone-ins, competitions, listeners' choices.

Not sure about the "comedy" bit (the Beeb's definition of "comedy" being what it is) - I'd replace this with regular broadcasts ("about an hour a week") of non-English literary works in their original languages.

Otherwise, vinty:


(And many thanks to everyone who's given me a "vote of confidence" on this Thread: I'm genuinely touched.)

[french frank]

If I were to take over from Roger Wright, I would ignore criticism.

The very first thing I would do would be to request a discussion with Tony Hall and Helen Boaden. I would outline what I wanted to do and get them to agree. Or they didn't, I'd resign . When they were amenable to the proposals, I'd point out that a quality arts station which had been getting less and less (as a proportion of BBC revenue) compared with other services for years couldn't continue to produce first class content with funding that wouldn't be enough to run Radio 1 (previously the least expensive network station: now Radio 3 is). They could absorb the BBC Proms and the BBC Orchestras costs into the central BBC costs, or stump up the £12m to add on to the R3 budget.

Then I would look at the schedule and presentation. I would try to remove altogether the idea of 'presenter-led' programmes lasting 3 hours or so, and replace them with subject-led programmes (possibly early mornings excepted) that could be anything from, say 45 mins to 90 mins. The exceptions would be the 'live performances', whether concerts or drama where each would take the time they needed. If there was no way to prevent R3's Facebook and Twitter accounts being used by spammers and commercial promoters, I'd scrap them; and in any case listener contributions would form no part of broadcast programmes.

I'm not sure where jazz programmes would be placed, but the idea would be to put them somewhere convenient where they would be unlikely to be affected by unpredictable schedule changes. There is a difficulty when some audiences just tune in for, say, Late Junction, world music or jazz, and have no interest in anything else that R3 does. (You hear people saying e.g. Late Junction is the best thing/only thing worth listening to on Radio 3: the rest is rubbish. If that proved a widely held view, I would decide that it was on the wrong station and they should be listening to it somewhere else. I would try to return some classical music to the later evening from where it has been banished for years).

Presentation would be low key with people engaged because they have a solid knowledge of (classical or whatever) music and a good radio voice and manner. If they were presenting classical music they would have special training (not butting in too soon &c and attention to detail). With a different brief some of the bêtes noires might improve ....

There would be an increase in musical discussion and an overhaul of the speech programming. The brief for world music would be much wider to include more global traditional forms (classical and folk).

It might take 20 years to rebuild the audience for such programming. However, Tony Hall would be bringing related programmes to primetime television to increase the demand!

[Serial_Apologist]

Excellent proposals, french frank, which I would gladly second were they to be proposed as a manfesto first draft.

As regards music coverage (other areas not being my forte) I would only add something to do with breadth of terrain to be covered by the network, recommending the bringing in or commissioning of persons of known expertise/knowledge/appropriate presentation skills (as outlined by you) in such specialist areas (Baroque, Modern etc) as we only seem to have in World Music and Jazz at present.

[edashtav]

I agree, french frank has laid down some fine principles.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

If I were to take over from Roger Wright, I would ignore criticism.

So you are Roger Wright as I suspected all along.

I agree, french frank has laid down some fine principles.

[Paul Sherratt]

Re-introduce a formal dress code for all staff at all times and weed out any announcer who has traces of a regional accent.

[french frank]

Re-introduce a formal dress code for all staff at all times and weed out any announcer who has traces of a regional accent.

Not sure if you feel yourself that such strictures would be appropriate concomitants of introducing intelligent programming and presentation, Paul? 'Traces of a regional accent' would debar no one: who knows? I might wish to apply myself with my traces of Mummerset.

[Jonathan]

Aside from getting rid of twitter references etc. and some of the very good ideas that have been suggested thus far, I would have an hour a week on neglected composers from all eras.

[Roehre]

Aside from getting rid of twitter references etc. and some of the very good ideas that have been suggested thus far, I would have an hour a week on neglected composers from all eras.

An hour only?

[Ariosto]

Who cares! This is all elitist garbage.