New season on Radio 3 to include two new classical music programmes

[cavatina]

Cavatina, you clearly understand the issues but don't care about Radio 3; your mind runs on marketing rather than the intrinsic value of culture.

That's a lie. I've been professionally-trained as an arts policy analyst with experience in orchestral management, the music industry, and the nonprofit sector. If there's one lesson I've seen people learn the hard way over and again, it's that you can't run any kind of arts organization on ideals alone.

Groups that aren't practical-minded-- whether they're record companies, orchestras, or radio stations-- quickly find themselves in the red and eventually out of operation. It's a sad fact that the entire sector is being mismanaged into the ground by high-minded, well-meaning people with nothing but the best intentions. No amount of concern for the "intrinsic value of culture" is going to change the fact that policymaking by people who don't have the slightest conception of what it take for an organization to succeed is a recipe for failure.

I honestly believe that if you took the slightest trouble over the practical concerns you find so distasteful, you'd find yourself in a far better position to make much more of an impact. Even if nobody at the BBC cares what you think, you could be seriously pressuring them by raising all kinds of hell via a shrewd use of the media. If I were you, I'd be re-thinking that whole "playing nice in exchange for crumbs of access" thing.

A leopard and its spots. Or was it a zebra and its stripes? Anyway, this is a concern of Radio3 listeners and not a discussion just for the fun of it.

So you'd prefer that my contribution consisted of:

This wretched new lineup isn't to my taste at all...wouldn't tune in for bit of it. Won't somebody please think of the specialists!? "Essential Classics?"--Good grief, how banal...wonder which record company exec thought of that one. And Petroc Trelawny on Breakfast? BWAHAHAHA! Oh my God, now THAT'S my idea of comedy. And when is Mister Elegant Socks going to leave, anyway? Shouldn't he be off serving teacakes at a cricket match or something?

...As you wish.

[cavatina]

And I may add that, although there was no written rule that members should not have two accounts at the same time, I take a dim view of the way you used what was then your second account earlier in the year, and which I only uncovered by chance a week or so ago. It was sneaky.

Wait, what? I wasn't doing anything "sneaky" at all. For those who've come to know me here and on the BBC boards, "cavatina" is as transparent as if I were posting under my real name. I never tried to fool anyone by changing the content or tone of my posts; a good handful of posters picked up on that and knew it was "me" right away.

For the record, I didn't start posting with this pseudonym until a full week after I stopped posting with the old one: no overlap whatsoever. I had intended to use this new name from the start--but since you said you wanted us to use our old nyms from the BBC board for the sake of continuity, I honored that. I ditched the old nym because of one specific thread where the personal attacks were getting particularly offensive and disruptive. If I hadn't left the board, I would have lost my temper and replied in kind...trust me, considering where the discussion was heading, you should be glad I let it go.

And just to make it perfectly clear that I'm not trying to deceive anyone, the ONLY two other pseudonyms I've posted under here are well-known to anyone who ever bothered to read me carefully.

Let's get back to the issues.

[french frank]

That's a lie. I've been professionally-trained as an arts policy analyst with experience in orchestral management, the music industry, and the nonprofit sector. If there's one lesson I've seen people learn the hard way over and again, it's that you can't run any kind of arts organization on ideals alone.

Groups that aren't practical-minded-- whether they're record companies, orchestras, or radio stations-- quickly find themselves in the red and eventually out of operation.

But you illustrate my point. R3 won't find itself 'in the red'. It's one part of a very large broadcasting corporation. It isn't there to make money. It appears to be BBC policy to reduce its budget as against that of R1 and R2. What kind of commitment is that towards Radio 3?

The main argument I have with 'Essential Classics' is that it's now going to take up 15 hours of the week, following a programme designed to be 'a primary entry point for new listeners' taking up a similar amount of the weekly schedule, and that people who have been listening to R3 fo 20, 30, 40 or more years don't want to be taken by the hand and guided through the 'essential classics' every morning. This is the slot where CD Masters was - and more people listened to that than listened to the rather more basic 'Classical Collection'.

Why should a station which had prided itself on being an intelligent music and arts station ignore the very audience which appreciates music and the arts?

[cavatina]

But you illustrate my point. R3 won't find itself 'in the red'. It's one part of a very large broadcasting corporation. It isn't there to make money.

No nonprofit exists to make money. But if R3 is run inefficiently, provides low "value for money" and is seen by the people who hold the purse strings as ignoring needs of the vast majority of the population, it's going to get chopped. People have been making the argument to get rid of the station on the grounds of elitism and irrelevancy ever since it was the Third Programme.

In other words, what are you going to have to do to make the case for the existence of Radio 3 to people who are completely incapable of appreciating the "intrinsic value of culture" argument? You don't have to give up your vision to realise that communicating to these people in a language they can understand is the only way forward. Is it more of a sin to grit your teeth and compromise your principles to get most of what you want, or take the noble route and have your entire project completely go down in flames? Neither choice is ideal, but given the current climate and everything I've seen and experienced while working in the nonprofit sector, I'd have to take the Faustian bargain and choose the former.

The main argument I have with 'Essential Classics' is that it's now going to take up 15 hours of the week, following a programme designed to be 'a primary entry point for new listeners' taking up a similar amount of the weekly schedule, and that people who have been listening to R3 fo 20, 30, 40 or more years don't want to be taken by the hand and guided through the 'essential classics' every morning. This is the slot where CD Masters was - and more people listened to that than listened to the rather more basic 'Classical Collection'.

If only you had access to RAJAR, we might be in more of a position to understand their reasoning behind this. Undoubtedly, there's a whole host of factors and considerations in play here, most of which we as laypeople aren't in a position to evaluate with any degree of precision and relevancy. Do you really see RW as nothing more than being akin to a big old alley tomcat, strutting around shaking up the schedule and p***ing all over everything just to leave his mark?

Why should a station which had prided itself on being an intelligent music and arts station ignore the very audience which appreciates music and the arts?

Of course they shouldn't. But then, I'm sure that's not remotely related to anything they think they're doing.

Much more to say, but I've got a queue to catch.

[DracoM]

The conundrum seems to be: if R3 takes its educative / analytic / cultural remit seriously, then how does it do it? Lot of 'ifs' in that.

You can offer people big horizons to aim at, or you can merely shine a torch for their next step. The suspicion seems to be that 'Essential Classics' [ such a truly, truly appalling name - I mean, WHY...? ] is going to be tiny, cautious, don't frighten the horses baby steps. For 15 hrs a week. 'Music while you work'? A goodly number of us grew up on the serious challenge of an earlier R3 where you had basic assumptions shaken and stirred by offering sometimes radical new paths and horizons.

What seems to have happened is that sometime somewhere in the BBC someone has decided - and it feels very Burt - that every station should not now LEAD so much as gently nudge or follow - hence the mania for interaction indicating major loss of confidence in what it is already doing : the threatened abandonment of 6Music, the dilution of R2, the CFMisation of well over half the R3 day seem to be a slowly evolving response to the maximise audience diktat, assume nothing about the audience's existent knowledge, abandon 'education' and substitute 'relaxation' plus a little bit of light new stuff to titillate, as if that in itself was the justification for running the BBC's very own CFM. i.e. all manner of earlier parameters for R3 seem to have been serially jettisoned, and we are increasingly led into comfort radio and away from bracing walks on the high hills.

What I seriously do not get is that the 45-50 plus demographic is arguably the BBC's biggest RADIO audience. For those younger than that, radio per se has almost no relevance - music does, but not via radio - and it begins to scare me that in the next 20 years or so or much less judging by the pace of change at R3 now, that radio-illiterate generation will start to assume responsibility more and more of the cultural programming of the BBC / R3 of the future. Their own background / threshold in the fields they are apparently working to build is likely to be far less even than the current 35-50 age group, hence they will be working R3 towards satisfying a seriously under-nourished generation of incomers with seriously conservative and under-nourished fare for a demographic who, much like themselves, know not a lot more than cultural pot noodles. While the frantic war on buying habits waged by the pop / rock industry values mega-hyped ephemera, and the punters seem totally at ease with that inherent planned obsolescence - it's the landscape they have all grown up with - of its nature the content of a R3 type platform is predicated on the assumption of long, complex traditions, the riches, often deeply challenging, of the past and the very serious present. I fear that the packaging of that tradition is increasingly - as at CFM - is about to be / already is being handled by those culturally disconnected from the past, and in an organisation whose imperatives simply seem not now to even recognise that there is a past to be trawled.

The recent survey the new R3 website is running asks about the kinds of programme you'd like to see archived. The time frames they offer stretch from last week to 5 yrs ago. so if you want to hear famous Proms of 1986, or Shakespeare play productions from 1966 or whatever, tough, because R3 now thinks 5 years ago is 'archive' material. Says it all really.

[amateur51]

Are there no moggies in distress to distract you, cavatina, no skips to rummage in?

[mercia]

No nonprofit exists to make money.

I've often wondered what nonprofit meant........ now I know

[french frank]

But if R3 is run inefficiently, provides low "value for money" and is seen by the people who hold the purse strings as ignoring needs of the vast majority of the population

Groo! That begs so many questions. Like what is 'value for money' and whether it really means (as the Trust, admittedly, implies) 'reaching all licence fee payers'. Whaaat!!! Does BBC Three (('Snog, marry, avoid', 'Two pints of lager and a packet of crisps') reach all licence fee payers? Do Radio 1 and 1Xtra reach all licence fee payers? They have narrower target audiences and their programming is tailored for that audience.

People have been making the argument to get rid of the station on the grounds of elitism and irrelevancy ever since it was the Third Programme.

In the way that people have been making the argument that the earth is flat ...It's not on the agenda for various reasons. Punkt.

In other words, what are you going to have to do to make the case for the existence of Radio 3 to people who are completely incapable of appreciating the "intrinsic value of culture" argument? You don't have to give up your vision to realise that communicating to these people in a language they can understand is the only way forward. Is it more of a sin to grit your teeth and compromise your principles to get most of what you want, or take the noble route and have your entire project completely go down in flames?

I suspect you listen to very little of what Radio 3 now offers. Compromising principles doesn't work. It just means more and more programming that is, in artistic and intellectual terms, substandard. They either do cater for a knowledgeable audience with appropriate standards of presentation or they don't. Just as the BBC has now (belatedly) recognised that there is a knowledgeable audience for popular music and that a station like 6 Music should cater for that audience rather introduce personalities, no matter how little they know, in order to attract female listeners (who were 'under represented) - no matter that they have no particular interest in the music.

If only you had access to RAJAR, we might be in more of a position to understand their reasoning behind this. Undoubtedly, there's a whole host of factors and considerations in play here, most of which we as laypeople aren't in a position to evaluate with any degree of precision and relevancy.

We know enough, from various sources.

Do you really see RW as nothing more than being akin to a big old alley tomcat, strutting around shaking up the schedule and p***ing all over everything just to leave his mark?

Has it never occurred to you that I make very little reference to Roger Wright, and certainly not as some sort of supremo who is ruining Radio 3? To this particular discussion, he is irrelevant.

[doversoul1]

DracoM (#35)

Cultural pot noodle

But seriously, is there no going back? I see Breakfast is now almost officially called Drive time, as the prom quiz indicates. Does this mean that BBC’s focus is on listeners and not on music?

[morebritishmusicplease]

Presenters, celebrities, gimmick after gimmick, chat, chat, chat - when will it all end and Radio 3 return to what it always did so well - just introducing quality music and letting us listen to it, without the intrusion of bloody 'personalities' all the time?
Does any of this mean we will finally get rid of Sean Rafferty, the most irritating man on Radio 3, at long, long last??

[Norfolk Born]

Presenters, celebrities, gimmick after gimmick, chat, chat, chat - when will it all end and Radio 3 return to what it always did so well - just introducing quality music and letting us listen to it, without the intrusion of bloody 'personalities' all the time?
Does any of this mean we will finally get rid of Sean Rafferty, the most irritating man on Radio 3, at long, long last??

I have it on good authority that it will return to its former policy in two stages, the first on September 31st next and the second on the following February 30th.

[Roehre]

I have it on good authority that it will return to its former policy in two stages, the first on September 31st next and the second on the following February 30th.

Yes, as Easter coincides with Whitsun, I have reliably been informed.

[french frank]

Several posts have been removed to the 'Diversions' thread. This thread is for the discussion of Radio 3's new season schedule changes. Please remember the House Rules: don't make personal attacks on other members just because you don't like what they're saying or it annoys you. If it merits a reasoned reply, make it; if it doesn't, ignore it.

[antongould]

To get back to the discussion and putting aside the "noise" is the common view that Essential .....will be worse than Classical Collection? Does not the introduction of RC, once held in very high esteem hereabouts and beforeabouts not give our readers hope?

[DracoM]

Well. I am far from sure. I was exceptionally surprised that he took on the 'presenter' / DJ role in the essentially ephemeral 'Breakfast' having heard his expertise on CDR etc and in the late and hugely lamented CDM. I felt that was somewhat sad, demeaning and unworthy of his raison d'etre, but everyone has a table to lay, and I just shrugged.

Must have gladdened the BBC to have RC and the ex-Editor of 'Gramophone' fronting such very superficial programmes, but what it does for those people's credibility is another issue.