Skelly leaving Essential Classics

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  • french frank
    Administrator/Moderator
    • Feb 2007
    • 30292

    Originally posted by DracoM View Post
    Truly resent the implication in [3] above!! Am I alone in that?
    That was what I was querying. I can't think what the answer would be. If someone had parents who were classical music/culture/arts enthusiasts and I'd been brought up to appreciate them, that would have made me 'privileged'. Or if a superior, expensive schooling had encouraged me to listen and appreciate them, that would have also made me privileged. But I didn't have either. I just started picking up bits here and there until I'd heard enough to make me want to find out more. Radio 3 took over my education.
    It isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world.

    Comment

    • DracoM
      Host
      • Mar 2007
      • 12972

      Spot on for me as well - hence my bridling!!

      Comment

      • Serial_Apologist
        Full Member
        • Dec 2010
        • 37687

        Originally posted by french frank View Post
        That was what I was querying. I can't think what the answer would be. If someone had parents who were classical music/culture/arts enthusiasts and I'd been brought up to appreciate them, that would have made me 'privileged'. Or if a superior, expensive schooling had encouraged me to listen and appreciate them, that would have also made me privileged. But I didn't have either. I just started picking up bits here and there until I'd heard enough to make me want to find out more. Radio 3 took over my education.
        How the word "privileged" is used there is derogatory, inverted snobbery, in my view.

        Comment

        • oddoneout
          Full Member
          • Nov 2015
          • 9204

          Originally posted by french frank View Post
          Explanations were given, but they seemed questionable to me:

          1. " Essential Classics is a programme that is important but you could argue that Afternoons are more important as they have more serious musical content and unique value." But IS will only be one of four presenters. Essential Classics has a higher profile and a much larger audience.

          2. " … in no sense are we downgrading Ian by moving him to help develop that slot." I'm afraid the idea of 'developing the slot' seems very ominous. It is one of the few programmes which has little presenter input. Why should a programme with 'more serious musical content' need to be 'developed' by a presenter?

          3. On broadening the audience, he asks: "Is classical music, culture and ideas only for a privileged few?" which seems to make assumptions about Radio 3 listeners. In what way, relative to 'classical music, culture and ideas', am I 'privileged'? I may be a different kind of person with different interests, but how does that become 'privilege'?
          It's too late for me to be tackling this really but my immediate reaction to that was "No of course not - so why isn't it offered in greater quantity across more of the Beeb platforms to reach more people? Watching some of the old programmes that have been repeated on BBC4 just brings home how deficient the music offering in particular is these days. Heck, they don't even bother to televise the competitions properly anymore. Tinkering with the R3 schedules annoys and loses existing listeners and does nothing to make classical music reach a wider audience.

          Comment

          • french frank
            Administrator/Moderator
            • Feb 2007
            • 30292

            3. On broadening the audience, he asks: "Is classical music, culture and ideas only for a privileged few?"
            Originally posted by oddoneout View Post
            "No of course not - so why isn't it offered in greater quantity across more of the Beeb platforms to reach more people? Watching some of the old programmes that have been repeated on BBC4 just brings home how deficient the music offering in particular is these days. Heck, they don't even bother to televise the competitions properly anymore. Tinkering with the R3 schedules annoys and loses existing listeners and does nothing to make classical music reach a wider audience.
            An excellent point (made over and over again to BBC managers). It's the BBC that creates the impression - and makes it a reality - by limiting "programmes with more serious musical content" [defined here as the afternoon concerts as against Essential Classics] almost entirely to Radio 3 which few people listen to. And the BBC's solution? Limit it on Radio 3 too!

            Broadening R3's audience isn't to offer 'classical music, culture and ideas' to a notionally 'less privileged' many. It's to increase ratings. FULL STOP.
            It isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world.

            Comment

            • antongould
              Full Member
              • Nov 2010
              • 8785

              Originally posted by french frank View Post
              An excellent point (made over and over again to BBC managers). It's the BBC that creates the impression - and makes it a reality - by limiting "programmes with more serious musical content" [defined here as the afternoon concerts as against Essential Classics] almost entirely to Radio 3 which few people listen to. And the BBC's solution? Limit it on Radio 3 too!

              Broadening R3's audience isn't to offer 'classical music, culture and ideas' to a notionally 'less privileged' many. It's to increase ratings. FULL STOP.
              The response you detail in #195 is IMVVHO just complete tosh dashed off with the requisite number of buzzwords in a matter of minutes ...... I cannot for the life of me see how sacking Skellers broadens R3’s audience ...... as has been said before it is just tinkering with something that is far from broken by managers “who have their reasons” - being, probably, to justify their very existence and inflated salaries .....

              Comment

              • eighthobstruction
                Full Member
                • Nov 2010
                • 6439

                Originally posted by antongould View Post
                The response you detail in #195 is IMVVHO just complete tosh dashed off with the requisite number of buzzwords in a matter of minutes ...... I cannot for the life of me see how sacking Skellers broadens R3’s audience ...... as has been said before it is just tinkering with something that is far from broken by managers “who have their reasons” - being, probably, to justify their very existence and inflated salaries .....
                bong ching

                Comment

                • cloughie
                  Full Member
                  • Dec 2011
                  • 22125

                  Originally posted by antongould View Post
                  The response you detail in #195 is IMVVHO just complete tosh dashed off with the requisite number of buzzwords in a matter of minutes ...... I cannot for the life of me see how sacking Skellers broadens R3’s audience ...... as has been said before it is just tinkering with something that is far from broken by managers “who have their reasons” - being, probably, to justify their very existence and inflated salaries .....

                  BBC’s epitaph will be ‘Never apologised, never wrong’

                  Comment

                  • kernelbogey
                    Full Member
                    • Nov 2010
                    • 5746

                    Originally posted by Padraig View Post
                    I listened, anton, to the last farewell. He went out like a gentleman, appreciating his friends.
                    I managed to listen to this, though driving, and he was very generous towards his listeners. 'It's been a blast,' he said.

                    Comment

                    • Bax-of-Delights
                      Full Member
                      • Nov 2010
                      • 745

                      Originally posted by kernelbogey View Post
                      I managed to listen to this, though driving, and he was very generous towards his listeners. 'It's been a blast,' he said.
                      And I got a name check from Skellers for trying, for one last time, to get Jack Moeran’s “Stalham River” into the programme. “Well, done. You never give up do you?”
                      O Wort, du Wort, das mir Fehlt!

                      Comment

                      • kernelbogey
                        Full Member
                        • Nov 2010
                        • 5746

                        Originally posted by Bax-of-Delights View Post
                        And I got a name check from Skellers for trying, for one last time, to get Jack Moeran’s “Stalham River” into the programme. “Well, done. You never give up do you?”
                        Perhaps the most human of R3 presenters.

                        Comment

                        • french frank
                          Administrator/Moderator
                          • Feb 2007
                          • 30292

                          Originally posted by kernelbogey View Post
                          Perhaps the most human of R3 presenters.
                          Biased I may be, but based on experience: there's something about BBC people that exudes the self-satisfaction of having 'arrived' at the gates and been allowed in, accepted into the group. Not Ian: he seems to have remained his own man.
                          It isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world.

                          Comment

                          • kernelbogey
                            Full Member
                            • Nov 2010
                            • 5746

                            Originally posted by french frank View Post
                            Biased I may be, but based on experience: there's something about BBC people that exudes the self-satisfaction of having 'arrived' at the gates and been allowed in, accepted into the group. Not Ian: he seems to have remained his own man.
                            What I was thinking of, stimulated by Baxy's #208, was that he seems to me to really engage with his listeners, rather than treating them as providers of interesting selections.

                            Comment

                            • gurnemanz
                              Full Member
                              • Nov 2010
                              • 7387

                              We attended one of those pre-Prom talks in Imperial College Union next to the Hall. I remember him as a genial and enthusiastic chairman of the discussion.

                              Comment

                              • Ein Heldenleben
                                Full Member
                                • Apr 2014
                                • 6783

                                Ian is doing a very good job presenting this Moscow Synodal Choir relay on at the moment . The singing in it is extraordinary... absolutely wonderful in fact. That mezzo just now - what a voice ..

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