End in sight for Classical Collection?

[Eudaimonia]

No, because you're about to enjoy honest-to-goodness REAL LIVE MUSIC EVERY NIGHT. It's even better than it used to be-- what good does holding a grudge do? Cheer up, have a pint. Go poison some pigeons in the park or whatever it is you like to do when you're feeling good. Celebrate!

Oh okay, maybe not.

[Suffolkcoastal]

They might as well officially call the new programme 'Extended Breakfast' when it begins. If you havwe the entire weekday morning full of 'same old' repetoire, then you need a balance later in the day. The afternoon slot needs to have a greater emphasis on widening the audience's listening experience by including as wide range of composers and works as possible. The live evening concerts, finally back after another drammatic u-turn by RW (is he trying to out do David Cameron?), will need to be as varied as possible. I know this will be limited by concert programmers who often seem to have rather limited knowledge, but there at least needs to be a reasonable spread (not the ever present Tchaikovsky 5 & Beethoven Eroica) of works and composers, or the evening concert wil turn into a sort of live concert version of Extended Breakfast. As I've pointed out several times TTN is now being invaded by the standard repetoire more frequently than it used to and now seems to contain the same work(s) that have either been played on the previous day or will be played later the same day.
Again as I've pointed out before you can't keep continually catering for beginners, if there is a very limited opportunity for them to 'progress' on the station, the new listeners could become bored after a time and leave and meanwhile by not keeping your core listeners engaged you could equally lose them too!
My survey figures so far for this year are already making alarming reading even before the new programme is put in place, with an even greater emphasis on core composers and repetoire than ever before, it looks like we could easily pass 100 Slavonic Dances and 30 La Mer's and Eroicas by the end of the year for example.

[french frank]

Euda - Your many overnight responses are much appreciated (did you stay in with a good bottle of wine over in NYC?). The main problem is: you don't understand the politics and you appear not to be a particularly avid listener to R3 (at least, you have very little to say about it).

Speaking here for FoR3, not the forum, we are a campaigning group whose members resent Radio 3's classical music (in particular) content being set at the same level as Classic FM's. It isn't a personal grudge against anyone, it isn't a matter. It's just an insistence that Radio 3 should have higher intellectual ambitions and presentation standards which don't allow gaffes likes failing to notice the difference between a well-known Schumann piece and some early Beethoven, an apparent inability to script an item in the absence of the relevant CD liner notes, a programme of musical analysis which opens with 3 minutes reading (unattributed) from a Wikipedia article, and sundry plunderings of copyright material (also unattributed), failing to spot a glaring error in a programme note and therefore discussing the wrong piece of music... Not to mention (as the saying is) the laughable errors strewn over the website. The only difference as far as all this goes between a knowledgeable audience and the new listeners that R3 is targeting is that the latter aren't aware of the duff material they're being plied with. Not good enough.

[Don Petter]

Whoever heard of such a limp programme brief as a presenter-led CD-based information light music sequence with a guest dropping in for a chat and invitations to listeners to send in their emails and text messages?

Perhaps they do take notice of this forum, but our comments have backfired, and seeded a thought?

We have been saying, of CC, 'it's as if Breakfast is lasting all the way to noon' and now they say 'What a good idea!'

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

**

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

If you have the entire weekday morning full of 'same old' repetoire, then you need a balance later in the day. The afternoon slot needs to have a greater emphasis on widening the audience's listening experience by including as wide range of composers and works as possible.

Although I agree with the substance of this argument, I think it's a bad idea in practice, for it further pigeonholes/ghettoises listening habits. There needs to be a balance throughout the day to broaden people's listening experience. If the afternoon is so highbrow that listening figures drop further, RW will use it as an excuse to introduce "all-day Breakfast".

[french frank]

Perhaps they do take notice of this forum, but our comments have backfired, and seeded a thought?

We have been saying, of CC, 'it's as if Breakfast is lasting all the way to noon' and now they say 'What a good idea!'

I don't think it's that . They applied to the Trust for permission to continue to 'widen the audience' and the Trust said they could, dismissing all the objections. This must have been set in motion back when the Trust gave them the go-ahead.

[DracoM]

With the advent of huge online choice, the BBC has lost vision of exactly who its audience now is. CFM is in the happier position of deciding and going for narrow focus, mainly hoofs, tails and occasional whole bodies of warhorses, light classics, Karl and/or Katherine Jenkins, Andre Rieu etc. The CFM audience wants/gets wallpaper, nice tunes, jolly up beat links, and is an audience inured to ads by TV, is comfortable with its superficial knowledge, is not all that hungry for the new, nay likes the familiar. So far so easy.

The BBC has historically aimed very differently, but since CFM's arrival, Beeb planners have been very slow to catch on to the impact on audiences that have shifted under it, have found the huge online community, such that the BBC is now in a confused and somewhat headlong rush to imitate so as to get back in the game and compete. BUT, and only IMO a huge mistake, for the same audience as CFM. Ratings / numbers etc are now the name of the game for the BBC, even R3. The rather more eclectic R3 of a decade or so ago was not notably driven by numbers but more by quality and innovation. That age is past. It shouldn't be, but for the BBC it is. All the time you are the same as everybody else, there is no compelling reason at all why any of the punters should automatically choose you. And if you make your package indistinguishable, it is much, much harder to jostle market. The BBC no longer has any God-given right to an audience. That is shocking for the BBC, and for R3 in particular. The R1/R2 planners have realised it a long time ago.

AFAICS, the brief for the new 9 a.m. show is driven by a deep underlying fear, coupled with abject loss of any sense of R3’s cultural identity, a total loss of self-belief. It begins to look as if they have decided to try to take on and crush CFM. It is a doomed strategy. As suffolkcoastal and others have wisely said, a headlong dash for determinedly middle brow mediocrity is cheaper, requires less thought, keeps planners and audiences in an automatic comfort zone, is a very low-risk strategy. EXCEPT of course, in its wake comes forfeit of intellectual credibility, loss of serious intellectual challenge [ much of the best speech debate is now on R4], loss of any young audience hungry for the new in the classical field, largely reneges on the long-time BBC remit to encourage new composers and arts innovation. That age is over, and in its place is CFM plus – presenter driven, pop classics driven, listener interaction driven, formulaic scheduling, and what feels like a tacit assumption that it no longer cares about its core [ageing ] audience’s needs / wishes in a rush to colonise CFM’s territory. Fundamentally, it marks a shabby sell-out, and will do irreparable damage to the music community in UK.

For me, the only way this ‘limp’ and terror-induced strategy can be made to work is to integrate nuggets of musical analysis - by experts and not CD liners, genuine attempts to contextualise – by musical / recorded music history experts, and a whole works strategy. In another posting, I tried to outline the kinds of voices / expertises they might exploit. How the current staff of R3 are greeting this immensely depressing brief and its impact and arrival on the schedules is anyone’s guess.

The whole thing reminds me horribly of the Ancient Mariner, in an act of bravado and folly, shooting an albatross and then as punishment, dying of thirst, haunted by those he has betrayed, while being precipitated into a terrible madness.

Except that I don’t see any shriving hermit on the horizon.

[salymap]

With the quality of posts on this thread, we/you should be running R3. Marvellous arguments, well put. Thanks.

[Don Petter]

Very well put, Draco. Thanks.

[Suffolkcoastal]

Excellently put Draco. There is so much knowledge/ability amongst the MB's I'm quite sure the best thing R3 could do is employ us! Is there anything we can both as licence payers and as core listeners to question & if necessary obstruct the R3/BBC policy of CFM imitation.?
I'm having nightmares about the future of R3 I can see it soon ending up something along the lines of:
6-9am Breakfast (bite size bits from well known classics), 9-12 Extended Breakfast (complete recordings of well known classics), 12-1pm Well known COTW (now limited to well known composers only with regular repeats), 1-2pm lunchtime concert (well known chamber/lieder/instrumental works) 2-4.30pm Afternoon Extended Breakfast (more of your favourite well known repetoire), 4.30-6.30pm Evening Breakfast/The Drive Time Show (more bite size bits from the well known classics with extra chat), 6.30-7.30 Well Known COTW repeat. 7.30-9.30 Live Evening Concert (live concerts of core repetoire only), 1am- 6am 'Highlights' from the previous day's Breakfast and Extended Breakfast shows in case you missed them during the day!

[french frank]

The point is that there are two divergent directions:

1. either you follow the traditional direction of Radio 3 as broadcasting the widest range of (so-called) 'classical music' and educating/informing its dedicated audience with well researched background and explicatory material

or

2. you go for the audience which likes familar and undemanding 'classical' music but is positively turned off by any sort of technical explanations or critical opinions or overlong, concentrated listening.

A possible compromise would be to divide the output between these two very different audiences. In which case, I challenge the apologists of the current regime to say which parts of the current schedule are now devoted to the more knowledgeable audiences rather than the lovers of nice classical background music.

Is there anything we can both as licence payers and as core listeners to question & if necessary obstruct the R3/BBC policy of CFM imitation.?

Well, I'm currently preparing a follow-up letter to the Trust who declared that there was 'no compelling evidence' that R3 was trying to compete with CFM.

Anyone who supports that could sign up as a supporter of FoR3

[vinteuil]

I am grateful to French Frank for having alerted us all to this. I have nothing useful to say, but feel sad and weary at what seems an ineluctable dilution of serious and demanding broadcasting. I am selfishly happy that I have a good supply of books and CDs, but that's hardly the point...

[aeolium]

In which case, I challenge the apologists of the current regime to say which parts of the current schedule are now devoted to the more knowledgeable audiences rather than the lovers of nice classical background music.

No apologist I, but thinking about the schedule these are the programmes I think still admit the possible existence of a knowledgeable audience:

Lunchtime concert (I take sc's point that there are often well-known lieder or chamber works, but there are also quite often less familiar works such as the Poulenc songs this lunchtime - and in general these concerts could not simply be described as 'nice classical background music')
CotW - yes, there are well-known composers featured but there are also out-of-the-way series on e.g. composers of the French court, and even when familiar composers are featured, there are often unfamiliar works broadcast - and the presenter has done his research
Po3 - again, the inevitable risk of familiar repertoire but that comes with the territory of broadcasting live concerts, since this is the kind of repertoire that is commonly featured in concert halls across the country; R3 does try to vary it with chamber, recital and operatic broadcasts as well as orchestral (see e.g. last week and this)
Discovering Music - one of the few educational programmes attempted by R3
CD Review - which is directed consciously at a knowledgeable audience, and even seems to expect that BaL will be heard not by those seeking a first version of the work featured but by those who probably already have at least a dozen versions
Hear and Now - no-one could describe that as 'nice classical background' I don't always listen but I did enjoy the Eötvös programme last Saturday.

I can't comment on the jazz or WM programmes and have only considered the classical music provision, not the other speech programmes.

[french frank]

these are the programmes I think still admit the possible existence of a knowledgeable audience

True, but I did ask which programmes were devoted to that audience, not which ones 'still admit the possible existence of a knowledgeable audience' . Surely, very few of those programmes would 'exclude' our new listeners, whereas much of the scheduling is an immediate turn-off for more knowledgeable listeners? CD Review and Hear & Now might be contenders. Discovering Music was recently included among the BBC arts programmes for children (on the grounds, admittedly, that it was targeted at school students studying music). It seems to be much less demanding than it used to be, especially with the live audience 'workshop' format. The Lunchtime Concert and Po3 are normally bread-and-butter in terms of repertoire, asking no more of listeners than that they listen ...

Overall, the balance seems to have tipped well over towards our Classic FM listener.