The Eternal Breakfast Debate in a New Place

[hmvman]

I will miss Petroc's week-long perambulations programmes in the summer (assuming he won't be doing them anymore). I wonder if Tom will be sent out with the hydrophone...

[french frank]

Tom McKinney has an article in today’s I Paper - again on the ‘not dumbing down’ theme but I think he is knowledgeable and affable and will fill the Breafast role very well on 2020s R3.

I see he's also grown a beard, now that he's taken over from PT. By the way, the i headline says: 'If Radio 3 really was dumbing down we'd be at rock bottom by now' ... It's a matter of opinion, of course, but some/many would say most of R3 has indeed been at rock bottom for quite a while. Breakfast is still a mish-mash of short pieces. The first mvt of Beethoven's Op 9 No 2 segues into the 32nd variation of the Diabelli vars. We are told it was a fugue 'near the end' of the Diabelli variations, and who played it. To be clear, I don't think this is Tom McKinney 'dumbing down': it's R3 dumbing down.

In the i piece, the journalist evokes the 's' word but neither he nor TMcK has anything specific, any anecdote, any evidence to explain who are the snobs. It might be implied that people who say R3 is dumbing down are snobs but it certainly isn't said. What is actually said is interesting:

"McKinney’s upbringing, in Stoke-on-Trent, was such that the snobbery around classical music is quite alien to him. For the Radio 3-urging grandfather – a trade unionist who worked as a forklift truck driver – classical music was simply what he loved." It's the job that's beneath Tom McKinney, but if it pays the mortgage ...

https://inews.co.uk/culture/radio/tom-mckinney-radio-3-dumbing-down-rock-bottom-3621567

[LMcD]

]I will miss Petroc's week-long perambulations programmes in the summer ([/B]assuming he won't be doing them anymore). I wonder if Tom will be sent out with the hydrophone...

As will I - it looks as though I shan't be able to persuade him or his producer to take us round the Norfolk and Suffolk coasts.

[french frank]

Some years ago Roger Wright asserted that, unlike Classic FM (and most pop music stations), Radio 3 'does not have a playlist'. That was then: now, allegedly, it does have a playlist - probably bigger than CFM's, but still a limited list from which Walking the Dog, l'Isle joyeuse and Libertango can be regularly plucked, while other composers are totally ignored. Suffolkcoastal could probably reconstruct the entire list from his own indefatigable research.

While searching for the quote in which Wright denied the existence of a playlist, I found this from 2014, which I quite enjoyed:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jul/07/roger-wright-approach-wrong-radio-three

[muzzer]

I’ll be listening to PT’s Breakfast shows on Sounds until they’re taken off. No presenter can affect the format but for me he’s developed over the years a really simpatico style. I was a big fan of SM-P and also CB-H. I would gladly listen to them first thing in the morning forever tbh. I’ve sampled T Mc at the weekend and during the day and whilst he is well qualified for the job I cannot - sorry Tom it’s not personal - stand his voice at all. Still eh, surely AI will deliver my fave presenters to me on demand ere long. ( and if you’re yet to watch CB-H’s docu please do so now. Her bravery is for the ages).

[smittims]

Thanks for the link to the McKinney interview, ff. I'm afraid I'm finding these Radio-3-people interviews are getting a bit formulaic and cliche-ridden, with their obligatory denials of dumbing down and references to 'snobbery' . I suspect the journalists don't listen to radio3 and maybe don't even know what it is.

But to take up Tom's metaphor, reaching rock bottom depends on

a. how far down there is to go ( a very long way, considering how good R3 used to be) and

b, the rate of descent, which has been slow and gradual if inexorable.

[LMcD]

Thanks for the link to the McKinney interview, ff. I'm afraid I'm finding these Radio-3-people interviews are getting a bit formulaic and cliche-ridden, with their obligatory denials of dumbing down and references to 'snobbery' . I suspect the journalists don't listen to radio3 and maybe don't even know what it is.

But to take up Tom's metaphor, reaching rock bottom depends on

a. how far down there is to go ( a very long way, considering how good R3 used to be) and

b, the rate of descent, which has been slow and gradual if inexorable.

In other words, the status quo has been replaced by down, down.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I see he's also grown a beard, now that he's taken over from PT. By the way, the i headline says: 'If Radio 3 really was dumbing down we'd be at rock bottom by now' ... It's a matter of opinion, of course, but some/many would say most of R3 has indeed been at rock bottom for quite a while. Breakfast is still a mish-mash of short pieces. The first mvt of Beethoven's Op 9 No 2 segues into the 32nd variation of the Diabelli vars. We are told it was a fugue 'near the end' of the Diabelli variations, and who played it. To be clear, I don't think this is Tom McKinney 'dumbing down': it's R3 dumbing down.

In the i piece, the journalist evokes the 's' word but neither he nor TMcK has anything specific, any anecdote, any evidence to explain who are the snobs. It might be implied that people who say R3 is dumbing down are snobs but it certainly isn't said. What is actually said is interesting:

"McKinney’s upbringing, in Stoke-on-Trent, was such that the snobbery around classical music is quite alien to him. For the Radio 3-urging grandfather – a trade unionist who worked as a forklift truck driver – classical music was simply what he loved." It's the job that's beneath Tom McKinney, but if it pays the mortgage ...

https://inews.co.uk/culture/radio/tom-mckinney-radio-3-dumbing-down-rock-bottom-3621567

This alleged “snobbery “ around classical music is a complete straw man. I’ve never met a classical music snob - the odd person who thinks Berlioz is better than Beethoven - but a snob - never. Virtually all the classical music enthusiasts I know like and know a huge amount about other genres e,g Jazz , musicals, heavy metal, world music

The only genre which suffers from a kind of inverted snobbery is Opera - perceived to be elitist when , in fact many of the great operas from Figaro through Fidelio to the Ring are both musically and dramatically revolutionary . All the three I mention are profoundly anti elite !

TMcK doesn’t link “snobbery” with accusations of dumbing down but it’s sort of implicit. Radio 3 has without question dumbed down quite a lot in my lifetime. I have hugely eclectic musical tastes - I can play from memory and noodle around on the piano something like 50 songs from the Great American Songbook, musicals , Beatles etc . I love this stuff but it doesn’t really have a place on Radio 3 except in specialist programmes. And then there’s the chopping up of masterpieces - The recent playing of the Adagio only from Beethoven Op 135 was a new low.

Just as I’m typing up pops the Ellington Peer Gynt suite . All great stuff but it’s not what R3 is about.

That said TM sounds a most interesting and committed fellow. Broadcaster , virtuoso guitarist and university teacher in one life - a tremendous achievement. I completely endorse what he says of the importance of music education. He is one to watch - a future controller I reckon.

Bang on cue Georgia plays Karl Jenkins Adiemus .Is it snobbery to say it’s terrible ?
That synthetic kid’s choir screeching. It’s like a torture.,..
If this isn’t dumbing -down what is ?

[french frank]

TMcK doesn’t link “snobbery” with accusations of dumbing down but it’s sort of implicit.

Yes, implicit - though not, I feel, implied by him. And this is the point I would stress: I think R3 is exploitative of its presenters, and they should realise they are being used. I discovered that TMcK's new Breakfast role and PT's on In Tune were flagged by R3 as "Gold" top priority items to be plugged; and lo! TMcK gets a publicity slot in the i (which first implies, then sort of denies snobbery). But if the word snobbery means anything at all it's a looking-down on by one person/people on others. So when another Breakfast presenter got a similar publicity slot and denounced the "gatekeepers of high culture" [sic] (critics of R3), the snobbery was that of the presenter, not the critics. Not inverted snobbery, but snobbery pure and simple. "You're just snobs" is a dead giveaway!

This is why the i article reeks of Radio 3 marketing. To TMcK's credit, he doesn't (apparently) take the bait. But he could still play a single Diabelli variation which is a negation of the genre of variations: it was just another short/edited piece of music. That is what I would call dumbing down, but 'they' never even acknowledge what people are referring to when they use the phrase: they can't do so without acknowledging that it's "What We Do''.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Yes, implicit - though not, I feel, implied by him. And this is the point I would stress: I think R3 is exploitative of its presenters, and they should realise they are being used. I discovered that TMcK's new Breakfast role and PT's on In Tune were flagged by R3 as "Gold" top priority items to be plugged; and lo! TMcK gets a publicity slot in the i (which first implies, then sort of denies snobbery). But if the word snobbery means anything at all it's a looking-down on by one person/people on others. So when another Breakfast presenter got a similar publicity slot and denounced the "gatekeepers of high culture" [sic] (critics of R3), the snobbery was that of the presenter, not the critics. Not inverted snobbery, but snobbery pure and simple. "You're just snobs" is a dead giveaway!

This is why the i article reeks of Radio 3 marketing. To TMcK's credit, he doesn't (apparently) take the bait. But he could still play a single Diabelli variation which is a negation of the genre of variations: it was just another short/edited piece of music. That is what I would call dumbing down, but 'they' never even acknowledge what people are referring to when they use the phrase: they can't do so without acknowledging that it's "What We Do''.

To be fair it was probably the producer who decided to play the single variation . A decision that literally sucks the meaning out of the work of course. Interesting that in the interview he neatly deflects the dumbing down accusation onto the controllers. Quite rightly of course - though with diplomatic skills like that as I say he’ll go far.Who knows the Classic FM -ification of R3 might just be reversed and nailing your colours to that mast of that wonky vessel might not be good policy.