The Eternal Breakfast Debate in a New Place

[antongould]

I can take a certain amount of chat, not much mind. What I object to is single movements of symphonies or concertos, which leave an unsatisfactory gap as one continues the work in one's head. Also the sheer rep itition of some works; just switched off 'Rhapsody in Blue' with a short remark about where it can go.
Worst of all, the thing I thought Iwould never hear on R3 - talking over snippits of the work in a 'trailer'.

Good morning dear lady - yes indeed we have R in B and Your Call to come! Worse still on looking at the playlist guess who is pictured beside the Engelbert Humperdinck entry. I have to admit R3 doesn't always triumph.......

[mercia]

guess who is pictured beside the Engelbert Humperdinck entry

tee-hee, good old Arnold Dorsey again
I really can't get worked up about that mistake. perhaps they don't have the correct picture on file

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Humperdinck_Postcard-1910.jpg

[antongould]

neither can I but others............................................ .....

[salymap]

"Who is Arnold Dorsey?" said the Judge.

[Panjandrum]

tee-hee, good old Arnold Dorsey again
I really can't get worked up about that mistake. perhaps they don't have the correct picture on file
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hu...tcard-1910.jpg

You're happy with crass mistakes on Radio 3? What does that say about the standards we have come to expect from it?

Actually, as one of their producers "explained" on Facebook it is due to the software they use which automatically generates a picture of the composer in question. For some reason, this seems a satisfactory answer to them.

[mercia]

we're lucky to have any photos at all. lucky to have playlists. lucky to have a dedicated Radio 3 website. these things didn't exist 20 years ago.

[kernelbogey]

I find that Weekend Breakfast with Martin Handley is about the only version of the show that I can tolerate. It is the touch of a musician, I think, that enables him to blend introductions and back announcements from personal experience and choice with appropriate historical anecdote and contextual information. The absence of emails, tweets, newspaper reading and all the other Monday to Friday impedimenta makes a huge difference - and Martin even does the ghastly Your Call better than others. I assume there's a different production team at the weekends. The weekday producers should take several leaves out of the latter's book.

[french frank]

Interestingly, to me at least, the average age of the callers to the much hated Your Call would seem, from the date of the experience they describe or their age when volunteered, to be well over 58! I'm sure the media analysts hereabouts will understand why this is.

Obvious. The average age is, say 58 (could be 57), people going off to work haven't got time to bother with phone-ins, leaving the older people at home to phone up. And with only 7 people needed a week out of maybe 700,000 listening to the programme the producer has to pick from those who ring in. My guess is that fewer than 100 (I mean a lot fewer than 100 - I'm being ultra generous), 'a tiny, tiny minority', ring in anyway. Let's say 0.01% of the Breakfast audience.

If the 'average age' is 58, then a fair number of those who ring in are likely to be in the upper age range. No?

all I am saying is that in any year, sadly, more of your representative million of R3 listeners will make the obits than will your million representative R2 listeners and will therefore need replacing, or not, depending on your point of view.

So their preferences can be ignored, can they? The BBC doesn't need to cater for listeners who may not be around for much longer?

What I would say is this: Radio 3 has always been a minority appeal station. It will probably replenish its audience gradually with people nearer 45 than 25. The whole idea of trailing the station ("Step into our world") on BBC One, BBC Two, Radio 2, Radio 4 with a message that 'Radio 3 is for everyone' means that they have to change the entire ethos of the station in order to cater for these (hopefully) new arrivals. This isn't about modernising, moving with the times &c: it's about making everything easier so that a popular audience isn't put off. And, of course, the 'popular audience' prefers that; and, of course, the popular audience outnumbers the minority.

If the BBC throws out the idea of a high-class, quality arts station, and aims no higher intellectually than the Radio 4 middlebrow, it comes perilously close to forfeiting any right to its privileged funding arrangement which allows it to swallow up £3.5bn of public money to devote 99% of its airtime to entertainment which the commercial sector could provide equally well.

[antongould]

Obvious........................My guess is that fewer than 100 (I mean a lot fewer than 100 - I'm being ultra generous), 'a tiny, tiny minority', ring in anyway. Let's say 0.01% of the Breakfast audience.



So their preferences can be ignored, can they? The BBC doesn't need to cater for listeners who may not be around for much longer?

Presumably this is just a pure guess? If so based on what?

I don't think for a moment I, nor have I ever, suggested they should be ignored just replaced (possibly!)

[Norfolk Born]

Why do you persist in broadly dividing the potential radio audience into those who go out to work and those who stay at home and don't work? There are millions of self-employed people and, for that matter, employed people who work at and/or from home. I happen to be one of them. There's nothing to stop me listening to Radio 3 from the moment I wake up and for as long as I like - regardless of what day of the week it is (self-employed people tend not to differentiate between one day and the next) - nothing, that is, except the programme content. (I agree that the weekend editions are less insufferable, being music- , rather than chat-based, especially when Martin Handley is on duty. If my age is relevant to your argument, I'm 68, and used to start every day with Radio 3. Now, it's more likely to be once a week, or twice if the Saturday edition of 'Today' fails to hold my interest).

[Panjandrum]

we're lucky to have any photos at all. lucky to have playlists. lucky to have a dedicated Radio 3 website. these things didn't exist 20 years ago.

And, therefore, we should accept them being half-cocked?

[kernelbogey]

[...]it's about making everything easier so that a popular audience isn't put off. And, of course, the 'popular audience' prefers that; and, of course, the popular audience outnumbers the minority.

But surely the numbers of the 'traditional' audience must outweigh the numbers of 'popular' audience attracted in? (Any evidence available, FF?)

If the BBC throws out the idea of a high-class, quality arts station, and aims no higher intellectually than the Radio 4 middlebrow, it comes perilously close to forfeiting any right to its privileged funding arrangement which allows it to swallow up £3.5bn of public money to devote 99% of its airtime to entertainment which the commercial sector could provide equally well.

Gloomily, I begin to agree with this statement. A tragedy for one of the jewels of British culture.

[french frank]

Presumably this is just a pure guess? If so based on what?

I won't stand by the figure, but it seems unlikely that the requests come flooding in in their thousands. Do you think otherwise, or are you just querying it to weaken the general argument? I will ask Roger when I see him . I hope you were satisfied with my answer to your other question as to why the phoners-in were predominantly older? (I do remember being told by someone in the know that there was a Lebrecht Live programme where no one emailed in at all...)

Norfolk: it's the BBC which insists that a breakfast show is listened to predominantly by people getting ready to go out to work and that the style of the programme should therefore match the 'normal' lifestyle. But you are more typical: as I quoted, only a third of R3 listeners are in full-time work.

Retired: 45.7% (indexed at 187.2, where 100 is the norm); self-employed 9.8% (index 157.9%). And 6% are neither working nor seeking work.

But in any case, I don't think the only division is between those who are in full-time work and those who aren't. The main division is between those who want easy listening and light entertainment; and those who want sterner fare.

[salymap]

Morning ff, your last sentence sums it up for me. I still miss the Third and the old R3. I am, of course, too old to count to the BBC.

[french frank]

But surely the numbers of the 'traditional' audience must outweigh the numbers of 'popular' audience attracted in? (Any evidence available, FF?)

The evidence will begin to show when the next two or three quarters of RAJAR figures are published.

The gamble for R3 is whether they succeed in attracting the new listeners that they've designed the programmes for. If it doesn't seem to be working, expect more BBC-wide trailing (and the BBC paid for the very expensive 'sound spot' trails out of central funds; it didn't come out of R3's budget). And if they attract new listeners, will they lose a significant number of existing listeners? If so, will they be satisfied with pushing down the average age and attracting a less demanding, less critical audience (what a pain listeners are when they spot all the mistakes! Get rid! ) which will then allow them to take on more bravely the Classic FM remit, in the knowledge that they will be getting high approval scores from the new listeners. And so on ...