Breakfast with a Red Nose

[Simon]

I can understand some of the frustration, but please let's be realistic.

It's still the best programme for classical music we have, and on the occasions that we don't like it, there are alternatives. R4 has some gems, and the other day when Stravinsky came on and assaulted my ears witrh discords, I turned to Cfm for a very pleasant hour - and indeed heard a new choral work that I'm very glad to have caught.

R3 can't please everyone all the time and I'm sure is doing its best. Shall we live and let live?

[Cellini]

Who says they have got to know anything about music

They won't have to look around for comedians, as they can just use RW and he qualifies in the not knowing much about musak role too ...

[3rd Viennese School]

No, I’ve made that mistake from turning my radio over to classic FM. Once it worked but the second time I did it I was assaulted by all these all awful adverts. And they played pop music in them! Really loud with someone shouting “Come to the Elvis concert!!!”
Ugh!!!!!!!
I hate Elvis even more than 10,000 years of German song let’s do Schumann today, for a change.
So I turned it over to Radio 2 and it was Friday night is music night. Conducted by Sir Reginald Biggles from the Royal Airforce………

3VS

[Cellini]

R4 has some gems, and the other day when Stravinsky came on and assaulted my ears witrh discords, I turned to Cfm for a very pleasant hour - and indeed heard a new choral work that I'm very glad to have caught.

And there I was thinking you loved Stravinsky! So - it's not only modern and contemporary music that you hate?

What about the discords in Mozart? Before you ask me where - here's an example, in the opening few bars of the "Dissonance" String Quartet K465 C major. (I bet you are going to tell me that you've never heard it* ... It's the one where Leopold Mozart, Wolfgang's old man, criticised him for carelessly writing wrong notes, and suggested he changed them).



*But I suppose it wasn't on the syllabus at Nutwood?

[french frank]

I can understand some of the frustration, but please let's be realistic.

It;s still the best programme for classical music we have, and on the occasions that we don't like it, there are alternatives. R4 has some gems, and the other day when Stravinsky came on and assaulted my ears witrh discords, I turned to Cfm for a very pleasant hour - and indeed heard a new choral work that I'm very glad to have caught.

R3 can't please everyone all the time and I'm sure is doing its best. Shal we live and let live?

Let's not. Stravinsky is absolutely central to what R3 does, whether you like his music or not. Comedy isn't. Nor is celebrity culture, whether presenters or guests.

It makes one even more aware of the difference between funny and laughable.

And to all the people who've ever said, 'Actually, I quite like Breakfast, but for the odd little irritations', wait a while: it'll eventually get too much even for you

[Norfolk Born]

Radio 3 is in danger of turning into one big joke, the management seems to be thrashing around from one daft idea to another, the station is becoming a total mess. The trouble is that there appears to be no way of changing them or diverting them from their current path, no way of forcing RW and his team out.

I'd really like to challenge your view, if only for the sake of a little intellectual stimulation.
But I can't.
There was a REALLY interesting programme, the first of 2, on Radio 4 a couple of days ago about Kraft's takeover and subsequent partial dismemberment of Cadbury. The less I listen to Radio 3, the more non-musical gems like this I discover. And then there are all those CDs I haven't played lately.
Rather than 'live and let live' as somebody suggested, perhaps it will be a case, for some of us, of 'Live and Let Die'. I hope the process isn't too slow and painful.

[Anna]

I don't know the listening figures for Breakfast (and I confess I don't listen to it as I prefer silence or John Humphrys in the morning) and whether those figures have risen or fallen since the 'interactivity' element has been part of the programme. No doubt frenchie will enlighten us.

However, on the assumption that the BBC has done extensive market research, is light-hearted banter what people want in the mornings? Who exactly are Breakfast's listeners at 9.00am? Obviously those who work are already in work, which leaves the retired, the housebound, Mums or Dads clearing away the breakfast table, and people immobilised in hospital. Is this the audience they are trying to reach? Bearing in mind it was reported this week that the Queen Mum wouldn't go downstairs without her daily fix of Wogan! Also, if a chatty, jokey, approach from 9 to 10am puts established listeners off they are not going to abandon R3 for the rest of the day are they?

[Norfolk Born]

What we need is some really serious, heavy-hearted, doom-laden banter. Oh, and don't forget those of us who work at home and could therefore listen to Radio 3 as they do so (but rarely do).

[Eudaimonia]

Radio 3 is in danger of turning into one big joke, the management seems to be thrashing around from one daft idea to another, the station is becoming a total mess.

Surely you're not unhappy with the new commitment to live music, are you? The drama strikes me as being very high-quality as well. With such a sizable chunk of the schedule being put to good use, I'm sure "total mess" is a little overstated.

Also, if a chatty, jokey, approach from 9 to 10am puts established listeners off they are not going to abandon R3 for the rest of the day are they?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if the average listener only switches on for six hours a week, this is a bit of a non-issue. How would you deal with the huge pressures from the Trust to be "welcoming and accessible at breakfast and drivetime"? It's a real problem with no easy answers: rocks and hard places at every turn.

They won't have to look around for comedians, as they can just use RW and he qualifies in the not knowing much about musak role too

Oh bah humbug, you slandering old rattlesnake!! (er, am I doing the curmudgeon thing right? I could use a few tips from the pro. )

Gee, let's see--who is it around here who has a music degree and edited books on contemporary music for Oxford University Press? Oh that's right...NOBODY. I suppose I must have been thinking of RW.

[Cellini]

Gee, let's see--who is it around here who has a music degree and edited books on contemporary music for Oxford University Press? Oh that's right...NOBODY. I suppose I must have been thinking of RW.

Bl**dy acedemics!! No good for Musak.

[Frances_iom]

..., but if the average listener only switches on for six hours a week, this is a bit of a non-issue. :

it is the variance of that listernership that interests me - say 1 in 5 listen for 20 hours a week the other four need 2.5hrs of listening - eg the 30min drive - the distribution might be even more skewed (+ please no statistical jokes) with the majority of listeners spending very little time with the station yet the 'heavier' listeners need suffer the attractions redolent of a fairground busker and which will probably have no effect on the mass of non-listeners.

[Black Swan]

It'll be "Fantasy Concert" next - "text in your dream concert of who you would have liked to see conducting/playing what" - I am pretty sure we are not far away from that and more.....

I agree it is only a matter of time. At least such causes me to get out of bed quickly. I heard R3 promo for RC as a mountaineering bloke with his trusty rucksack. What next? Sara MP as Tosca? I don't know I have really given up on R3 for Breakfast.

J

[french frank]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if the average listener only switches on for six hours a week

There's no such thing as 'the average listener'. If you add up all the hours and divide that by the number of listeners you get 'the average number of hours per listener per week'. But since in any given week individual listeners can listen anything from five minutes (within a 15-minute slot) to 70+ hours the average per listener is meaningless.

It's like saying the average person in the UK is 39 years old.

the huge pressures from the Trust to be "welcoming and accessible at breakfast and drivetime"

Well, the pressures don't exactly come from the Trust - they were merely endorsing the strategy proposed by management.

Gee, let's see--who is it around here who has a music degree and edited books on contemporary music for Oxford University Press? Oh that's right...NOBODY. I suppose I must have been thinking of RW.

Well, there are certainly plenty of music degrees around this forum, and published academics. Could you clarify what the books are that RW has edited? He did edit New Music, with Michael Finnissy (Happy 65th birthday today to him, btw), though Amazon describes it as Michael Finnissy with Roger Wright .

[Eudaimonia]

There's no such thing as 'the average listener'. If you add up all the hours and divide that by the number of listeners you get 'the average number of hours per listener per week'. But since in any given week individual listeners can listen anything from five minutes (within a 15-minute slot) to 70+ hours the average per listener is meaningless. It's like saying the average person in the UK is 39 years old.

Fair enough; I must have mistaken it for some sort of median. RAJAR tracks "average hours per head" and "average hours per listener", so they must be useful metrics in some respect:

RAJAR QUARTERLY LISTENING FIGURES

http://www.rajar.co.uk/listening/quarterly_listening.php

As you can see, R3's hours-per-listener rating this quarter (5.5) is significantly less than R4 and R2, which both ring in around 12. Why do you think this is--a bigger proportion of the R4 and R2 audiences tune in all day at work? Has R3's h/L figure ever been significantly higher? Has this figure gone down in the Wright era? Have you noticed any trends in h/L over time, or correlations with policy changes? Interesting stuff.

I'd also be interested to see a breakdown of R3's audience in terms of hours-listened-per-week organized by demographics. First of all, what constitutes "heavy listening"? Does it make sense to try to define a "core R3 audience" with a threshold of "over x hours listened per week", or does it matter? Should the opinion of someone who listens at least five hours a day have more weight than those who only tune in on their way to work? In what sense?

Surely a radio station can't be all things to everyone-- in which case, I think it's perfectly sensible to view programming and scheduling at a more granular level.

the huge pressures from the Trust to be "welcoming and accessible at breakfast and drivetime" Well, the pressures don't exactly come from the Trust - they were merely endorsing the strategy proposed by management.

Really? The wording in the Trust report struck me as being more than a little critical. Of course, there's always the much larger threat of being cut off entirely if they can't prove they're "relevant"...I suppose it makes sense to count your PR victories where you can.

Gee, let's see--who is it around here who has a music degree and edited books on
contemporary music for Oxford University Press? Oh that's right...NOBODY. I suppose I must have been thinking of RW.


Well, there are certainly plenty of music degrees around this forum, and published academics. Could you clarify what the books are that RW has edited? He did edit New Music, with Michael Finnissy (Happy 65th birthday today to him, btw), though Amazon describes it as Michael Finnissy with Roger Wright.

I know; it just seems completely ridiculous that so many people keep saying someone with a BMus from Royal Holloway doesn't know anything about music. And I'm certain nobody ever got his name on the cover of a book put out by Oxford University Press by being smooth-talking eye candy. Besides, it wasn't one book, it was three:

New Music 87:

http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/SearchResults?an=Michael+Finnissy&kn=wright

New Music 88:

http://www.ecampus.com/new-music-88-michael-finnissy-malcolm/bk/9780193119314

New Music 89:

http://www.amazon.com/New-Music-89-Michael-Finnissy/dp/0193119331

You should also remember that as an executive producer at Deutsche Grammophon, he produced some truly outstanding recordings:

http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&xhr=t&q=%22executive+producer+roger+wright%22&cp=32&pf=p&sclient=psy&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=%22executive+producer+roger+wright%22&pbx=1&fp=7675aab604669f98

And finally, if that's not enough, here he is playing the piano. Rather well, I'd say.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg6utMlT2LA

[salymap]

Red Nose Day, they are going to play 'Consequences' Ian McMillan starts the game CONSEQUENCEI switch off.