3beebies aka Breakfast

[doversoul1]

Originally posted by antongould

I see the target audience as anyone with an ear for good serious music - ideally the younger the better

I see the target audience as anyone with a mind for listening to music seriously: anyone who is attracted to music and who does not need to be enticed by additives. The point of this argument is that Radio3 already has the audience that is unique to the station but the current management is working very hard to replace this audience with more general, larger audience. If you don’t believe that Radio3 is a unique radio station and are happy with the new direction, I suppose the argument is a non-starter.

And I don’t believe age has anything to do with it. Listening to music is not a skill you have to develop by practising. Yes, you learn as you listen more but for that, you don’t need to be young.

I see Radio3 as a small island in the middle of a river which had always been kept safe by a fence because it was thought to be valuable. Not necessarily more valuable than anything else but it was valuable just being what it was. But obviously someone must have decided that maintaining a place like that is not cost effective, so the fence has been gradually removed and now only a few odd places are visible above the water that is the current flow of the world…

[antongould]

If you don’t believe that Radio3 is a unique radio station and are happy with the new direction, I suppose the argument is a non-starter.

I very much believe Radio 3 is a unique station and really must be preserved in this scary world. I may be niave but what is the new direction and when did it start? - Are we talking Paul Gambaccini or Petroc Trelawny or somewhere in between?

[french frank]

I may be niave but what is the new direction and when did it start? - Are we talking Paul Gambaccini or Petroc Trelawny or somewhere in between?

This particular new direction started between 2004 and 2007. From 1999 to 2004 there was a different direction: the range of music was widened, presumably with the aim of attracting audiences to those different kinds of music. Then the audience began to fall off quite seriously so they changed tack.

First change of direction:
Raising the profile of jazz, with the Jazz Zone on Sat afternoons (JL-U, JRR, JF), replacing two hours of late night jazz.
Late Junction, 1h 15m then expanded to 1h 45m, 4 nights a week
Jazz Legends on Friday afternoons
World Routes on Sat afternoons
Stage & Screen on Mon afternoons
Brian Kay's Light Programme, Thursday afternoons
Making Tracks, 20 mins Mon-Fri in term time
Mixing It extended from 45 mins to 1h 5mins and then to 1h 15 mins
Andy Kershaw (World on 3)

Non-classical dominated the evening schedules, Saturday afternoons and Bank Holidays. As you can see, the only progs to survive until now unscathed are JRR and Wo3. The rest have been dropped, shortened or given a graveyard slot.

So this new direction began in earnest in 2007 and was ratcheted up to a new height this autumn. No longer the broader musical audience, but the broader audience for classical music, especially those 'with little knowledge of classical music'.

The Gambaccini ploy (1995) was a different era, different controller, same idea but not so aggressive.

[antongould]

Cheers but mildly puzzled by what do you see as the "ratcheting this autumn"?

[doversoul1]

I very much believe Radio 3 is a unique station and really must be preserved in this scary world. I may be niave but what is the new direction and when did it start? - Are we talking Paul Gambaccini or Petroc Trelawny or somewhere in between?

I really cannot say when it first started but I think the defining sign was the bringing in the Chart along with the Nation’s Favourite Opera Arias. I’d say that was the no-return point.

[ed] because finding out what is the most popular is of no major interest to the original Radio3 audience.

[french frank]

Cheers but mildly puzzled by what do you see as the "ratcheting this autumn"?

Innovations to Breakfast like the phone-in and snippets of news at 15-min intervals (there were protests when the 30 min headlines started in 2003), Essential Classics with celebrity guests and brain teasers, Saturday Classics with celebrity guests, and are we promised Sue Perkins soon, did I hear? - the focus on people talking about themselves and their memories and the lack of musical discussion. The axeing of Discovering Music.

That sort of thing.

[antongould]

So you preferred Classical Collection to Essential Classics?

[Roehre]

So you preferred Classical Collection to Essential Classics?

With Classical Collection -how much middle of the road and rather uninspiring that became- I could make the decision to listen or not to listen based on the listing. Essential Classics will never be listened to by me as I don't know what's scheduled to be broadcast and therefore I don't know whether I am spilling time on music I don't want to listen to (which I guess will be the case most of the time), as the time I am able to spend to listening to music is limited, unfortunately.

[doversoul1]

So you preferred Classical Collection to Essential Classics?

(I know it’s not me you are asking) I prefer Radio3’s programmes to be about music and not about someone’s taste and memories, whoever the someone is. Occasional, spontaneous ‘brain teaser’ may be fun but not as part of a programme. The question of the music played is slightly different issue.

[Roslynmuse]

The brain-teaser is a super-budget version of what was, some decades ago, an excellent occasional programme in its own right. The Innocent Ear was presented, I think, by Robert Simpson (maybe others too?) and quite literally teased out the identity of a mystery piece, inviting us to examine the musical ancestry of the piece in an informed and entertaining (ie stimulating) manner. Discovering Music had much in common with it, except that of course we knew the topic in advance there.

Writing that paragraph has made me feel very sad (again) about what we have lost over the decades, and reminds me tangentially of the indignation I felt both on Friday (Suzy Klein) and Saturday (Alison Balsom) at hearing both presenters talking about 'kicking off' a programme with such and such a piece. Where has the use of language appropriate to the music being presented disappeared to? That might seem a petty remark for me to make but there's something insidious and offensive about that sort of linguistic 'hyping up' that grates on my ear like a stream of consecutive fifths in a chorale harmonisation.

[Norfolk Born]

So you preferred Classical Collection to Essential Classics?

Er...yes...should I seek help, do you think?
(As I've said before, if it hadn't been for the fragmentation of much of Radio 3's output, I would never have become the regular Radio 4 listener that I now am, so in a way I'm grateful to RW, I guess.)

[mercia]

couldn't help thinking, whilst Spiegel im Spiegel was playing this morning - what would Bach / Beethoven etc. have thought of this?

RC currently playing Alborado del Gracioso, I think he has a bit of an obsession with this piece

oops - off topic

[Frances_iom]

couldn't help thinking,...- what would Bach / Beethoven etc. have thought of this?

go on please tell us as you appear to have a better connection than I do.

[mercia]

tell us

well I feel they might be surprised that music hadn't "progressed" further and had in fact appeared to have "regressed"

are you a fan of the piece?

what I should have said is that I couldn't help wondering, not thinking

[doversoul1]

One of the CDs Jeremy Summerly discussed with AM was this. I couldn’t quite make out what JS and AM really though about it but it was an interesting discussion. Just before the Disc of the Week

PALESTRINA: Missa Papae Marcelli
PÄRT: The Woman With The Alabaster Box; Tribute to Caesar; I am the true vine; Most Holy Mother of God
NB - The Palestrina is performed twice, first interspersed with the Pärt works and then straight through.
Netherlands Chamber Choir, Risto Joost (conductor)
Globe GLO 5240 (CD)

(oops. More off the topic)