Skelly leaving Essential Classics

[french frank]

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.

[DracoM]

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

[Serial_Apologist]

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.

[oddoneout]

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.

[french frank]

3. On broadening the audience, he asks: "Is classical music, culture and ideas only for a privileged few?"

"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.

[antongould]

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 .....

[eighthobstruction]

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 .....

[cloughie]

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’

[kernelbogey]

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.

[Bax-of-Delights]

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?”

[kernelbogey]

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.

[french frank]

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.

[kernelbogey]

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.

[gurnemanz]

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.

[Ein Heldenleben]

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 ..