Radio 3 Adverts and Previews

[Paulie55]

The latest advert for scary music, with Tom Service gabbling away as usual and a ridiculously forced sss..llll...oooo...wwwwww commentary
by an unknown lady announcer takes the biscuit. Dumbing down at its very worst!

[DracoM]

Is anybody doing a count on this? I reckon the BBC on R3 is doing what all the commercial TV and radio platforms do and has an ad / trail etc every fifteen minutes or thereabouts. Either a trail or the presenter telling us this is Radio 3 and what their name is and where we can get downloads / contact details. I think this means that no programme on radio runs anything like the number of minutes RT says it is scheduled to last - 25 mins max of a 30 min slot. e.g. The Archers is scheduled to be 15 mins - it is actually 12.5 mins actual gabble time.

The premise is presumably that the audience needs owning/ grappling / branding every fifteen minutes otherwise they will forget who they are, who they are listening to, what day of the week it is, and what time it is, as if we were fish to be netted and packaged in little tins marked Radio 3 Listener or whatever.

Big exceptions are concerts and full length plays.

[oddoneout]

Excessive trailer broadcast is counterproductive to this listener, in the same way as it is for TV. In both cases it acts as pretty effective aversion therapy - removing any original wish to hear/see the programme, by constant bludgeoning/'bigging-up'/showing the best bits(so no need to watch the whole thing.....)

[DracoM]

[french frank]

My suspicion is that these are BBC diktats. They got the go-ahead from the government ten years ago (previous Charter review) by claiming that in spite of complaints from the public they had a "duty" as a public service to publicise to the public what they were offering. Result? Between the Green Paper and the White Paper the government changed its tune from taking the public's side to taking the BBC's side. Why I don't know as even Roger Wright said that the ads didn't increase audiences. [He also said that as far as the Radio 3 audience in general was concerned, trails were 'not an issue'.]

I do know that when Radio 3 puts out programmes to tender, they specify the timings for programme trails.

[Nick Armstrong]

The latest advert for scary music, with Tom Service gabbling away as usual and a ridiculously forced sss..llll...oooo...wwwwww commentary
by an unknown lady announcer takes the biscuit. Dumbing down at its very worst!

So agree! Made the mistake of leaving the radio on after the lunchtime concert today - then had to hurtle across the room to hit the off switch to silence bloody Service (with a pair of oaths, I confess, not suitable for a family Forum)

[oddoneout]

So agree! Made the mistake of leaving the radio on after the lunchtime concert today - then had to hurtle across the room to hit the off switch to silence bloody Service (with a pair of oaths, I confess, not suitable for a family Forum)

The need to have a remote control I can keep to hand to deal with such intrusions looks set to be a bigger driving force to replace my aged and less than satisfactory sound system than the more obvious one of sound quality....

[Nick Armstrong]

The need to have a remote control I can keep to hand to deal with such intrusions looks set to be a bigger driving force to replace my aged and less than satisfactory sound system than the more obvious one of sound quality....

I couldn't immediately find the remote, hence heading Superman-style towards the off button!!

[oddoneout]

Why I don't know as even Roger Wright said that the ads didn't increase audiences. [He also said that as far as the Radio 3 audience in general was concerned, trails were 'not an issue'.]

Which rather neatly encapsulates the combination of stupidity/pigheadedness and ignorance that causes so many of the problems besetting R3 as far as I can see. If the 'ads' don't achieve anything why continue with them, and 'feelings' are not the basis on which decisions or judgements should be made.

[LMcD]

Excessive trailer broadcast is counterproductive to this listener, in the same way as it is for TV. In both cases it acts as pretty effective aversion therapy - removing any original wish to hear/see the programme, by constant bludgeoning/'bigging-up'/showing the best bits(so no need to watch the whole thing.....)

[Frances_iom]

I raised the annoyance (for me a turn off) of these excessive adverts several times on this board but I gathered from lack of any response that I was in a minority of one in finding them a literal turn off - I've reached the point now when I seldom listen to R3 (selective choice of some concerts) and would no longer defend it to any one - apart from the utility (tho not usually the impartiality of BBC news tho this lack may arise from their need to dumb down) I'd be happy to see the whole corporation collapse in its own cesspit.

[MrBear]

So agree! Made the mistake of leaving the radio on after the lunchtime concert today - then had to hurtle across the room to hit the off switch to silence bloody Service (with a pair of oaths, I confess, not suitable for a family Forum)

Sometimes these days I feel just listening to the Radio is the mistake ?
Wish there wash a filter bit of kit that would filter out all talk on
R3 and just let us hear the music
This morning due to the time saving clock changes i heard the start of breakfast
i have heard this before why is it such BS start the day as it is going to carry on?
in my bedroom I just have a FM tuner so have to be wary of what might offend my ears
or anybobys with a brain ?

[DracoM]

And it is precisely this which is driving R3 listeners to seek other satisfactions.

I personally now listen to a Finnish Radio Classical channel - no adverts, just intros and acres of music. No trails, no ad breaks. Their website has playlists in English, they take much from Proms in season. The music is broadcast in carefully organised sequences and includes often excitingly unusual sequences / works / composers, and I am far more likely to listen to them for most of the day than much of the R3 output, which at the moment is plainly is based on the structure of the R2 model, and utterly, utterly alien to classical music.

They just have not sussed that the Classic FM / R2 tenpalate is NOT what R3 should be / ought to be about.

And until they introduce serious / fun programmes for the young eg Pied Piper etcetc, R3 audience will simply wither and die with their ageing population of listeners, partic given what is happening / not happening to classical music in schools. Does the BBC care?

Whistling while Rome burns, or something....?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The latest advert for scary music, with Tom Service gabbling away as usual and a ridiculously forced sss..llll...oooo...wwwwww commentary
by an unknown lady announcer takes the biscuit. Dumbing down at its very worst!

That man should be made to sit down and listen to every surviving recording of Antony Hopkins' Talking About Music.

Just so he can find out where he's going so very wrong.

[oddoneout]

That man should be made to sit down and listen to every surviving recording of Antony Hopkins' Talking About Music.

Just so he can find out where he's going so very wrong.

Wouldn't make any difference - that was then, "listener expectations were very different"( for which choose elitist, limited, snobbish etc to taste). "Modern audiences want a fresh lively approach"....
Now could someone kindly pass a cushion for me to scream into/punch the living daylights out of - I am fed up of this patronising "We are in control and know what you really want" attitude by those who clearly haven't a clue.