Essential Classics - The Continuing Debate

[kernelbogey]

Both Ian Skelly (standing in for Georgia on Breakfast today) and Suzy Klein (possibly in their pre-EC chat) referred to evidence that more and more people are listening to Essential Classics.....

Evidence?

Anyone know more?

[french frank]

Both Ian Skelly (standing in for Georgia on Breakfast today) and Suzy Klein (possibly in their pre-EC chat) referred to evidence that more and more people are listening to Essential Classics.....

Evidence?

Anyone know more?

We do know that Essential Classics has the biggest audience of any R3 programme, though this is mainly due to the combination of length (3 hours) and its prime listening slot. The 'Listening Through The Day' charts which I've seen show invariably that the R3 weekday peak is at about 8.30 and holds up quite well until noon (i.e. it declines gradually, but nothing like R4's audience which drops off abruptly after the Today programme.

So there are 3 factors:

1. It is 3 hours long - the longest any later morning programme on R3 has ever been. (Divide the morning up into 3 separate hour-long programmes, and each programme will have a much lower reach because only a minority listen for the entire 3 hours. If one programme lasts for the whole 3 hours, every listener who tunes in and out for a minimum of 5 minutes during those 3 hours is counted as 1 listener.)

2. It is at a very favoured time for radio listening.

3. It was conceived as a rival for John Suchet's (then) new morning programme on Classic FM and is targeted on the 'broad audience' rather than the smaller core R3 audience.

One might also wonder what is happening to the rest of Radio 3's programmes if Essential Classic's audience is growing but Radio 3's isn't. As I said, the year 2018/19 which ended with this last quarter was Radio 3's lowest reach since comparable records began in 1999.

As last quarter was R3's best of pretty terrible figures, it may be that Essential Classic's reach perked up a bit - hence plugging the fact that the programme is doing reeelly well, honest.

[antongould]

We do know that Essential Classics has the biggest audience of any R3 programme, though this is mainly due to the combination of length (3 hours) and its prime listening slot. The 'Listening Through The Day' charts which I've seen show invariably that the R3 weekday peak is at about 8.30 and holds up quite well until noon (i.e. it declines gradually, but nothing like R4's audience which drops off abruptly after the Today programme.

So there are 3 factors:

1. It is 3 hours long - the longest any later morning programme on R3 has ever been. (Divide the morning up into 3 separate hour-long programmes, and each programme will have a much lower reach because only a minority listen for the entire 3 hours. If one programme lasts for the whole 3 hours, every listener who tunes in and out for a minimum of 5 minutes during those 3 hours is counted as 1 listener.)

2. It is at a very favoured time for radio listening.

3. It was conceived as a rival for John Suchet's (then) new morning programme on Classic FM and is targeted on the 'broad audience' rather than the smaller core R3 audience.

One might also wonder what is happening to the rest of Radio 3's programmes if Essential Classic's audience is growing but Radio 3's isn't. As I said, the year 2018/19 which ended with this last quarter was Radio 3's lowest reach since comparable records began in 1999.

As last quarter was R3's best of pretty terrible figures, it may be that Essential Classic's reach perked up a bit - hence plugging the fact that the programme is doing reeelly well, honest.

4. It has 60% Skellers .......

The Great Man has IIRC also tweeted that more people are listening so it must be true ........

[kernelbogey]

Thanks FF. I kind of thought you would have the/an answer.

I'm not by any stretch of the imagination (or of anything else ) a regular EC listener, but I tip my hat to Anton's analysis.

[oddoneout]

4. It has 60% Skellers .......

The Great Man has IIRC also tweeted that more people are listening so it must be true ........

Perhaps he's getting messages from folks saying they are new listeners - I think he implied that this morning with one message that he read out following the comment about attracting new listeners.

[LMcD]

Perhaps he's getting messages from folks saying they are new listeners - I think he implied that this morning with one message that he read out following the comment about attracting new listeners.

That may well be the case, but is he getting messages from former regulars who've stopped listening?

[french frank]

The Great Man has IIRC also tweeted that more people are listening so it must be true ........

More? More than what? More than ever before? More than last quarter? More than last year?

If I have to guess, Mr Skelly is not given the key to the RAJAR information chest, and repeats what he's told in the genuine belief that it (or something like it) is correct. If he's briefed, directly or indirectly, by BBC PR he's probably being misled because they're paid to put the best complexion on everything.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I NEVER listen to EC when Suzy-Anne Klein-Robinson is presenting.

[LMcD]

I NEVER listen to EC when Suzy-Anne Klein-Robinson is presenting.

Ni moi non plus!

[peterthekeys]

I NEVER listen to EC when Suzy-Anne Klein-Robinson is presenting.

I never listen to anything that SK is presenting - I just can't bear her. There just always seems to be something patronising and condescending about what she says, and the tone of voice which she uses to say it. (And - I still haven't forgiven her for (in a programme on BBC4) damning "Carmina Burana" as Fascist music, on the sole basis of the mechanical violence of "O Fortuna". Of course, it didn't seem to have occurred to her that the section is about the grinding rotation of the wheel of fortune, which isn't the sort of thing which a regime intending to rule for a thousand years might be inclined to celebrate, and she also didn't seem to have bothered to listen to "Veris Leta Facies" with its exquisitely fragile suggestion of spring.)

[cloughie]

I never listen to anything that SK is presenting - I just can't bear her. There just always seems to be something patronising and condescending about what she says, and the tone of voice which she uses to say it. (And - I still haven't forgiven her for (in a programme on BBC4) damning "Carmina Burana" as Fascist music, on the sole basis of the mechanical violence of "O Fortuna". Of course, it didn't seem to have occurred to her that the section is about the grinding rotation of the wheel of fortune, which isn't the sort of thing which a regime intending to rule for a thousand years might be inclined to celebrate, and she also didn't seem to have bothered to listen to "Veris Leta Facies" with its exquisitely fragile suggestion of spring.)

Carmina Burana seems to be a ‘marmite factor’ work - I think there are contibutors to these threads who really dislike it but I have liked it since I first heard it many years ago - and given the opportunity I would love to sing it!

[Serial_Apologist]

I never listen to anything that SK is presenting - I just can't bear her. There just always seems to be something patronising and condescending about what she says, and the tone of voice which she uses to say it. (And - I still haven't forgiven her for (in a programme on BBC4) damning "Carmina Burana" as Fascist music, on the sole basis of the mechanical violence of "O Fortuna". Of course, it didn't seem to have occurred to her that the section is about the grinding rotation of the wheel of fortune, which isn't the sort of thing which a regime intending to rule for a thousand years might be inclined to celebrate, and she also didn't seem to have bothered to listen to "Veris Leta Facies" with its exquisitely fragile suggestion of spring.)

Humm - I've always assocated the work with a reductionist masculinist "Rite of Spring" primitivism, appealing to the Nazis. Do you suppose then that they must have passed it for reasons of stupidity?

[edashtav]

Carmina Burana seems to be a ‘marmite factor’ work - I think there are contibutors to these threads who really dislike it but I have liked it since I first heard it many years ago - and given the opportunity I would love to sing it!

I've sung it twice, once a Parson, who was a good tenor and a Classicist, went bright red as he sang one rude word... the poor man rushed out of the rehearsal never to return. In the second performance, I was dressed as a monk. Golly did I get hot and bothered.

[visualnickmos]

I never listen to anything that SK is presenting - I just can't bear her. There just always seems to be something patronising and condescending about what she says, and the tone of voice which she uses to say it. (And - I still haven't forgiven her for (in a programme on BBC4) damning "Carmina Burana" as Fascist music, on the sole basis of the mechanical violence of "O Fortuna". Of course, it didn't seem to have occurred to her that the section is about the grinding rotation of the wheel of fortune, which isn't the sort of thing which a regime intending to rule for a thousand years might be inclined to celebrate, and she also didn't seem to have bothered to listen to "Veris Leta Facies" with its exquisitely fragile suggestion of spring.)

I agree with your points - although I didn't hear that particular programme. The inane 'sound-bite style' inaccuracies are laughable. That said, I very much enjoy Carmina Burana. OK - some deride and/or ridicule, it ..... so be it.

[Master Jacques]

That said, I very much enjoy Carmina Burana. OK - some deride and/or ridicule, it ..... so be it.

Only fools deride and/or ridicule Carmina Burana, which will long stand as one of the key choral works of the 20th c. Orff is a classic example of a great composer on whom some totally unwarranted mud has stuck. We needn't like his work, but we do need to respect it for doing something uniquely communicative in a very different manner from his contemporaries. His later operas, such as Die Bernauerin and Antigone, are astonishingly powerful: but Carmina Burana simply reaches parts of the soul which other pieces don't!