End in sight for Classical Collection?

[Word]

I would really be extremely interested to know what your criticism is of the FoR3 view.

I couldn't have hung around the old boards as much as I thought because I don't recall FLT/Nigerian Sam/Kagemushka Taiku.

It's not that I necessarily disagree with the 'FoR3 view' (though I frequently do ). For me, and I'm sure I'm being grossly unfair, the negative association arises from the the opinions that the FoR3 view apparently represents being expressed in an extremely caustic and corrosive fashion. (At best this will sound trite but... I'd favour seeking to improve Radio 3 through support and encouragement rather than constant criticism and a barrage of brickbats.)

[Mark Sealey]

I'll let FF respond to these criticisms substantively.

I confess, though, that they do sting a little: since its inception eight years ago, FoR3 has gone out of its way, bent over backwards, turned itself inside out or done whatever contortion conveys both the incessant effort engaged in to accentuate the positive and to give credit where it's due.

Don't take my word for it: look at the news items and reviews, comment and tone of our website.

Even this very board - which espouses almost as many views of R3 as exist, surely - was revived to allow all opinions to flourish and be expressed.

FoR3 is partisan in that it reflects a broad spectrum of opinions not all of them complimentary to R3. But it's never been petty or negative.

[Eudaimonia]

the negative association arises from the the opinions that the FoR3 view apparently represents being expressed in an extremely caustic and corrosive fashion. (At best this will sound trite but... I'd favour seeking to improve Radio 3 through support and encouragement rather than constant criticism and a barrage of brickbats.)

I couldn't agree more. But then, that would require having moderately-developed social skills...not something valued very highly around these parts. "Social skills are for stupid people and marketers", or something like that.

[Guest]

I'm still reeling from the shock of the changes to the evening schedules - a live concert from Germany tonight. Plenty of variety in repertoire in the two weeks so far, not just a diet of the feared orchestral warhorses. This is EXACTLY what many of us have been wanting for ages, so credit where credit's due.

Yes, and without giving too much away, that is PRECISELY what For3 lobbied the BBC Trust passionately for many months ago in face to face discussions.

[Paul Sherratt]

>>since its inception eight years ago


seems a lot longer

[barber olly]

Here's my pitch for the new 9-12 slot.

It will be called Legato to show we are serious about music. It will be broadly divided into three sections each day. One third will be devoted to vintage/historic recordings, another third to recent CDs, and sandwiched in between for maximum contrast will be an weekly Artist Focus along the lines suggested by aeolium earlier in the thread. The durations of these sections will be not be fixed, and the first and third sections may be swapped around. All types of classical music will be included, from early to contemporary. Items will be scheduled sufficiently in advance for online and magazines to print proper listings and approximate timings. Occasionally, i.e. at least fortnightly, the schedule will be collapsed to allow for the playing of a complete opera recording, historic or modern, with Artist Focus continuing during the intervals.

This will not be a Through The Night-style CD jukebox, and will fulfil the station's remit to educate. Therefore, the presenter will take care to research informative introductions to each item.

Spot on Pilamenon, as Ian Dury once sang 'Reasons to be cheerful parts 1, 2 and 3'

[Guest]

Agreed, BUT if R3 goes on pursuing the targets explcit and implicit in the new brief for 9.00-12 noon slot, an even greater chunk of what R3 used to stand for is steadily eroded. This makes it tricky to find basic truths / virtues one wants to endorse and encourage.

Or are you suggesting that we assiduously search out the crumbs of comfort in that brief, big them up, and say 'well done' for merely giving us a tiny, tiny fraction of reputable quality and diminishing acknowledgement that the R3 audience is by and large intelligent, decently read, intellectually hungry?

As many have asked who exactly does the BBC think is the 'new' audience of R3? There is lots of talk about what they would LIKE to think of as the new audience, but unless they decide who that audience is, how do they know this strategy will work? Feels like a very nervous hit and hope in the dark to me. They are Johnny come lately in a field already much inhabited, so who is going to notice and / or care?

And if it does not work, then here's the nub: what next? How far do they need to edit out / strip out / re-package what they already do to find a formula to establish that 'new audience'? How far are they prepared to go? Some would call that brief evidence of a drift into compromise too far, even a betrayal of the R3 remit - unless of course the Trust allows them to quietly re-write it to suit the new order?

There is no need for suspicion and/or desperate conspiracy theories now: we have it in black and white. The new dispensation is now unequivocally enshrined in that 'Essential Classics' brief FF searched out for us. That will now in a small way force on each of us a choice: do we accept the new order, see its merits - let's hear them, please - and applaud the move? Or do we accept that the R3 we love, respect, have learned from and been challenged by is gone and we must make our own way? And if it is the latter, do we simply abandon the struggle to remind R3 of their identity and reponsibility in the cultural mix, and shrug as they scrabble with the others in a search for the populist holy grail of easy schedules and high ratings?

"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."

[Word]

Mark,

I should apologise as I was fairly sure that wasn't a fair reflection on FoR3 as a whole. I have only briefly visited the website, and then not for some time, so my exposure to FoR3 has been through the old BBC message boards and this message board that (to FoR3's credit) is open to all people and all opinions, some of which may have clouded my view.

[antongould]

That will now in a small way force on each of us a choice: do we accept the new order, see its merits - let's hear them, please - and applaud the move? Or do we accept that the R3 we love, respect, have learned from and been challenged by is gone and we must make our own way?

"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."

To try to avoid answering a question with a question I would say at the outset yes, in my view and sadly, the R3 we love.......is gone never to return just like the great dictum of Lord Reith has gone. Thus R3 has to survive and mix the best of the old and the new - but to survive it has to attract new listeners or is that not seen as necessary?
If it is seen as necessary then I return to a question I admit I have asked before how are they to be attracted if not by what we could call the "Breakfast on 3" methodology? Are you to wake up one morning and find a few hundred thousand of us under a gooseberry bush?
The posters hereabouts seem to suggest the provision of "proper" musical education in schools is declining and about to decline still further. So I guess that means more of your target population become like me - no classical music at home or at primary or secondary school or at polytechnic or universities as I believe they are now called! I came slowly to this place through pop, folk, jazz, serious pop and the little snippets of classical music to Private Passions and horror of horrors Breakfast on 3!!
So where should I go until I learn the trade? The advert strewn mush that is Classic FM or to an hour of Alexander Armstrong's Classical Pops each Sunday Night on R2 and only come across when I've grown to be a man?
Any submission by FoR3 to whoever on Classical Collection or R3 content in general must surely address how new listeners are to be brought in.

[Mark Sealey]

Word,

Thanks; no need to apologise :-)

…I should apologise as I was fairly sure that wasn't a fair reflection on FoR3 as a whole.…

[Eudaimonia]

"This is EXACTLY what many of us have been wanting for ages, so credit where credit's due."
Yes, and without giving too much away, that is PRECISELY what For3 lobbied the BBC Trust passionately for many months ago in face to face discussions.

What's there to give away? Do you honestly mean to say you're taking credit for this?

FoR3 is partisan in that it reflects a broad spectrum of opinions not all of them complimentary to R3. But it's never been petty or negative.

Really? Whatever tone you might take on your website is completely undercut by the contemptuous and callow manner in which many of your supporters refer to R3 management on the messageboards. I don't know about you, but if a group of amateurs eternally mocked me for being some kind of glib, incompetent, "visionless", bureaucratically bumbling arse-clown, I don't think I'd care too terribly much what they said about anything, much less want to work with them. Would you? The idea that people with zero experience in radio or the music industry could possibly know more about what constitutes sound policy for running a radio station than professionals who've spent their entire career in the business is itself alienating and offensive.

In other words, your supporters have a massive image management problem, and I'm not sure what you can do to fix it. Leaving off personality-bashing and whinging over trivialities while concentrating on substance might be a good start.

Believe it or not, I think Draco's earlier message is spot on-- but how can you present the case for why it should move from theory to practice? Sitting around feeling smug and patting each other on the back about how clever we are isn't going to get anywhere. Was I pleased with the "Essential Classics" brief? No. Does it sound likely to produce a show I'd be remotely interested in hearing? Absolutely not. But it is what it is. Unless FoR3 can find a way to translate their criticisms into constructive, actionable suggestions for improvement, you might as well save your breath.

[rauschwerk]

Unless FoR3 can find a way to translate their criticisms into constructive, actionable suggestions for improvement, you might as well save your breath.

I'm afraid that is true. I'm going to save my breath. Just as this thread started, I realised quite suddenly that R3 has become so soft-centred that I can hardly be bothered to listen any more. This morning I turned on, recognised Wedding Day at Troldhaugen almost at once, and turned off again. I looked at the Breakfast playlist and concluded that there was virtually nothing worth turning back on for. Yesterday we had Steve Punt's choice of music (and will have it again during the rest of this week). What kind of music does he like? Why, the same as about 10 million other people. What's interesting about that?

COtW remains a good programme, but when did we last have any music that really made one sit up and listen? I think it was early last year, when we had bebop and Schnittke. I have the impression that guests on Private Passions used to be encouraged to choose at least one contemporary piece, but that seems to have ceased - the recent playlists are depressingly ordinary.

To me, R3 is like an old friend whose personality has changed so much over the years that I hardly bother to keep in touch any longer, and I am more or less resigned to the change.

[Bax-of-Delights]

What's there to give away? Do you honestly mean to say you're taking credit for this?

Really? Whatever tone you might take on your website is completely undercut by the contemptuous and callow manner in which many of your supporters refer to R3 management on the messageboards. I don't know about you, but if a group of amateurs eternally mocked me for being some kind of glib, incompetent, "visionless", bureaucratically bumbling arse-clown, I don't think I'd care too terribly much what they said about anything, much less want to work with them. Would you? The idea that people with zero experience in radio or the music industry could possibly know more about what constitutes sound policy for running a radio station than professionals who've spent their entire career in the business is itself alienating and offensive.

In other words, your supporters have a massive image management problem, and I'm not sure what you can do to fix it. Leaving off personality-bashing and whinging over trivialities while concentrating on substance might be a good start.

Having ben involved in committtees, for my sins, in various capacities over the years it would appear to me that these boards - and the R3 boards before this - accurately reflect the kind of discussion that rolls round the tables. There are always those who will either not address the real issues or throw in quite unnecessary asides which leave one exasperated. It is the nature of the beast, pure and simple.
I would have thought, however, that there have been enough quite sensible and well-thought out suggestions on these boards to neutralise the accusations that we are just a bunch of whingeing, elitist fuddy-duddies who are trying to tell auntie how to suck eggs. From what I've read here from others I can detect a fair amount of professional expertise in the media industry in general. I don't think many of us are simply "disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" correspondents with green tipped pens scribbling away and firing off glib missives. The days of highly paid execs in public companies who think that they are answerable to no-one are over and if RW gets a poke in the ribs from us from time to time - well, that's all to the good

[Suffolkcoastal]

Very true BoD. With the knowledge gaps and continual gaffes R3 makes these days it would appear that they have become the 'amateurs'.

[doversoul1]

antongould

I came slowly to this place through pop, folk, jazz, serious pop and the little snippets of classical music to Private Passions and horror of horrors Breakfast on 3!!
So where should I go until I learn the trade?

So did I more or less. The important thing is, we came to it. Radio 3 didn’t come to us saying ‘I see you enjoy The Beach Boys and Andy Williams. How about trying a bit of classical music? It’s really no difference. No need to take it too seriously. Just relax and listen while you are tidying up your drawers’. No. We found Radio3 because we wanted something different. The next step, if you like. As for how to go about learning the trade, you can only learn by doing the job: by listening to the REAL thing set at the highest standard. And that’s what Radio3 is for. Or should be for where the new audience is concerned.