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

[french frank]

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?

My view is that it's not Rob Cowan that's the problem (though six mornings a week may prove overkill); it's his brief. Having a good presenter is better than having a bad presenter, but what matters is what music is going to be played - and why.

What's wrong with the programme is that 'Why?': it starts off with all sorts of questions about what the BBC wants the programme to achieve (be welcoming to new listeners, stay in the mainstream with nothing intimidating, keep Breakfast listeners listening, attract the 9am R4 listeners over and, presumably like most other BBC programmes, act as an advertising space for other BBC 'products').

None of that is putting the music first. IOW, the music is subservient to its intended audience. And many of us aren't its intended audience.

Edit: Afterthought: I wonder how big an audience there is for a 'Beginners' Classics' programme. CD Masters had a very healthy audience: I wouldn't have thought this programme would pull in so many (Classical Collection seemed to be slightly below CDM's audience). We won't know until they take it off because it didn't work.

[salymap]

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?

Yes if he is allowed to be his knowledgeable self.

[barber olly]

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

What a swell party!!!

[barber olly]

Yes if he is allowed to be his knowledgeable self.

Rob's essential classics are probably and hopefully very wide and even if he plays well known works he will source interesting interpretations!

[Richard Tarleton]

I'm still not clear whether EMS has made the cut?

[french frank]

I'm still not clear whether EMS has made the cut?

They always leave the controversial news until just before launch - so they tend not to say what's being dropped because some people won't like it. One infers that Classical Collection is going because the new programme is on at the same time and in many respects is the same anyway.

Something is going to be dropped, but it isn't looking like EMS (though it will lose its late-night repeat slot which it use to share with Jazz Library: JL will be a fixture there now it's been moved to midnight)

[Richard Tarleton]

Thanks ff. Fingers crossed.

[doversoul1]

Yes, let’s hope EMS will be safe. I have noticed that there have been rather a lot of repeats but again, it might have looked that way because I am being overanxious.

[french frank]

The optimists might also hope that 'Essential Classics' will be the main focus for attracting new listeners and that Breakfast might improve as a result . But I think it is still supposed to be one of the 'primary entry points for new listeners', so perhaps, after all, new listeners are to be given the run of the station from 6.30am until 12pm. I think the strategy won't work because I flatly don't believe there are enough people who would want to change their listening habits to come to Radio 3 to swell the audience when other listeners stop listening. I predict another U-turn in three or four years' time

One point to make to the people who like the Breakfast programme: it's not relevant to the discussion whether you like the programme as it is. The relevant point is: do you remember what the content of Morning on 3 (and On Air) was like? Do you like Breakfast more? If so, why?

[antongould]

One point to make to the people who like the Breakfast programme: it's not relevant to the discussion whether you like the programme as it is. The relevant point is: do you remember what the content of Morning on 3 (and On Air) was like? Do you like Breakfast more? If so, why?

Sorry whilst I like Breakfast ff - I cannot help you there - as a "new boy" won over by Breakfast I don't remember what went before.

[french frank]

Sorry whilst I like Breakfast ff - I cannot help you there - as a "new boy" won over by Breakfast I don't remember what went before.

What was your breakfast time listening before, and what attracted you to R3?

If the very things that you like are the very things that other people hate, it's a case of never the twain. But I suspect that you would have found earlier incarnations of Breakfast equally enjoyable.

[antongould]

oh dear ff do we really want to go round this again? But as you ask I listened to Wogan but through I suppose DID and then PP I came nervously to Radio 3 via Breakfast. I think you or someone else recently posted a Radio Times playlist from one of the shows you mention - and while it may appeal to me now I doubt it would have as a new boy then. I feel that things like the old chestnuts and even the movie themes do serve as a "bridge" and that texts and emails are, possibly sadly, the way the world is going - but enough we have been here before and made the Breakfast debate Eternal but not probably Essential!

[DracoM]

For me it is very simple. Morning on 3 was more or less my staple breakfast fare. Breakfast I find simply unlistenable to and if it is on it is usually as the result of an accident of inattention. The snatches I listen to strike me as restless, inchoate, apparently random and unstructured, and punctuated by endless sub-trails for BBC programmes, humiliatingly banal emails, silly tweets all astonishingly taken seriously by broadcasters I once respected. It is not even wallpaper - it keeps on trying to poke and [provoke me into responding, intruding into my world, my preparations, instead of minding its own business and just doing what R3 foes best at that time - play music.

[Frances_iom]

R3 evenings over the last 10 years have now seen a complete U-turn re the live concert and start time - effectively the muliplexing of the evening between the 'classical music' and LJ which needed the fixed demarkation time has been abandoned.
Breakfast as you pointed out was extended thru to 10am almost certainly in an attempt to game the ratings - I cannot see much drive time audience in the 9-10am slot as the work + school run are probably over. CFm would appear to target the audience cast adrift by R2 moving to attract a younger pop-oriented listener - following CFm means becoming a tweedledum to their tweedledee with only the dj as the basis of the choice. Post 9am what is the audience? - presumeably house bound - which I guess are bed-bound/invalid , women with young children, home workers and retirees tho I suspect the latter form the majority audience for R3 - not all of these have the time to listen seriously for 2 or 3 hours so some form of format in which the audience can dip into or out of is essential if audience numbers are important so moving RC back to this slot might work quite well but if restricted to some form of playlist then again looks as though merely apeing CFm. In earlier, pre-radio days this morning period would have seen light chamber music whilst enjoying a coffee etc or as background to upmarket shops etc - maybe R3 can introduce such a 1hr slot around 10am with a live chamber group building on their mission to present live music which is likely to remain a distinctive and key feature of R3 - a CD masters slot either side can be filled by Rob + friends quite well.

I'm no fan of the Breakfast show - the alarm comes on at 7.25 - by the end of the news it is generally switched off tho a bit of Bach might delay this by a few minutes - the texting etc is not my thing and seems totally pointless - tho usually I listen to R4 from 9am for 45min for the 3 intelligent discussion programmes.

[french frank]

In earlier, pre-radio days this morning period would have seen light chamber music whilst enjoying a coffee etc or as background to upmarket shops etc - maybe R3 can introduce such a 1hr slot around 10am with a live chamber group building on their mission to present live music which is likely to remain a distinctive and key feature of R3 - a CD masters slot either side can be filled by Rob + friends quite well.

I was thinking earlier about the number of 'new' programmes that have been introduced since RW took over. Indeed, my favourite for the post breakfast slot was Morning Performance which replaced the Kenyon programmes. That was replaced by CD Masters, and that by Classical Collection, and that (will be) by Essential Classics.

When you speak of 'dipping in and out': I'm slightly surprised that people seem to accept that this is standard accepted/acceptable scheduling, whereas even Kenyon still had the notion of shorter, crafted programmes. It was Radio 1, Radio 2 and Classic FM that had the 2-3 hours blocks in which a DJ played a sequence of unconnected pieces, followed by another 2-3 hour block in which another DJ played a sequence of unconnected pieces. No need for detailed playlists because people just switched on and listened to whatever was being played for as long as they felt like listening and then switched off.

People may say that's the way listening has changed, but I'm not convinced that it hasn't changed because that's the kind of programming that people were offered. They didn't have any option, really. That sort of schedule makes life easy for managers - and they're also very cheap as far as R3 is concerned because they don't have big name presenters.

antongould

oh dear ff do we really want to go round this again?

Sorry - I was interested in knowing a bit more about how you were attracted to R3 when you weren't a listener. I didn't remember it being discussed before

I don't remember exactly how or when I found R3, but I became an exclusively R3 listener because I went off R4 (the World Service).