'Classic FM-ification'

[Nick Armstrong]

No idea, ok... but talking about sameness:

I switched off the radio last night to sleep, and this was playing:

12:47 AM
Elgar, Edward
Serenade for Strings (Op.20)
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, James Ehnes (director)

I switched on the radio on awaking to hear this at about 09:05 AM

Sir Edward Elgar
Serenade for Strings
Sinfonia of London, John Barbirolli (conductor)

For a few confused moments I thought I'd forgotten to switch off the radio and had just dozed off for a couple of minutes...

But no.

It was Radio Elgar

I love Elgar (though I do think the S for S is one of his drippier pieces)... but still...

[Bax-of-Delights]

Here at B-o-D Towers we tend to leave the radio on in the kitchen full-time in what, I am sure, is a misguided belief that any prowlers intent on entering the premises on nefarious business might hesitate if a radio is playing and assume that someone is in. I work elsewhere in the house and normally plunder my CD collection for the 5 hour slot until noon but just occasionally I write in silence with the faint sound of R3's "Essential Classics" wafting through the corridors. I cannot believe how R3 has become such a mirror image of Classic FM with its constant regurgitation of the same material over and over.
Albinoni's Adagio
Mozart's Horn Concerto
Resphigi's: Birds
Elgar: Serenade for Strings
this morning and looking back at earlier this week I see the same old warhorses:
Stravinsky: Firebird
Prokofiev: Lt.Kije
Rodrigo: Concerto de Aranjuez

etc etc etc.

[french frank]

Just back from my visit to R3's facebook, and from the In Tune producer:

"And there's good stuff on the show today too: early Sondheim (and I mean early - he was 22) performed by RADA students. We've the folk singer-songwriter-guitarist Martin Simpson. And the conductor/composer Carl Davis who's about to conduct a concert of music by John Williams. I want to ask Carl about his score for the 1927 silent movie 'Napoleon' ..."

and I'm like, and? and? and? But that seems to be it in terms of advance info.

[old khayyam]

encyclopedia moronica

Well i would like to reiterate my view that, without intending any offence to individual persons, the so-called 'Classic FM-ification' is much more understandable as 'Americanisation'. I've heard an American being interviewed every evening for the past week (apart from one other accent to throw us off the scent).

I remember the R4 forum carrying many similar complaints and have stopped listening to R4 for the same reason.

Every nation has its high culture and low culture. Had R3 simply lowered its intellectual content, we would have only that to contend with. But they have given the game away by filling the programming with Americans and their music as often as they can get away with.

[Bax-of-Delights]

Just back from my visit to R3's facebook, and from the In Tune producer:

"And there's good stuff on the show today too: early Sondheim (and I mean early - he was 22) performed by RADA students. We've the folk singer-songwriter-guitarist Martin Simpson. And the conductor/composer Carl Davis who's about to conduct a concert of music by John Williams. I want to ask Carl about his score for the 1927 silent movie 'Napoleon' ..."

and I'm like, and? and? and? But that seems to be it in terms of advance info.

You missed out the really interesting information though FF: the saga of the chocolate Babkas and how everyone but everyone in the In Tune office was tearing them to bits and yadda yadda yaddda....

As if I cared.

[Anna]

You missed out the really interesting information though FF: the saga of the chocolate Babkas and how everyone but everyone in the In Tune office was tearing them to bits

That prompted me to look on R3 Facebook and I found "Well, we have a distinctly Friday state of mind in the office (I mean the In Tune production hub) today. I brought in 2 Chocolate Babkas from my local Jewish bakery and all decorum went to nothing as a mob of Producers and Broadcast Assistants stampeded and started tearing the ruddy things to bits. One (nameless) individual broke away with h...alf a Babka and shot off to a quiet place to consume it. I hardly got a look-in. Now all's quiet, presumably due to intensive Babka digestion. Good stuff.SEGUE TO SOMETHING ABOUT THE PROGRAMME"

What, exactly, is the point of the R3 Facebook page?

[Suffolkcoastal]

There isn't exactly much American music on R3 at all these days except for endless repeats of the same handful of 'popular' and American light music, serious American composers and works seem to be confined to very occasional broadcast hidden away in the corners of some schedules.

[Bax-of-Delights]

[/I]
What, exactly, is the point of the R3 Facebook page?

I wonder myself. At present it is a platform almost exclusively for the In Tune programme. One presumes (from the saga of the Babkas given above) that it is staffed with those who see it as their mission to bring a touch of the "street" to the perceived "stuffy old world" of classical music. Perhaps it is revealiing that none of the other producers of the R3 output touches Facebook with a bargepole. (Breakfast popped its head above the parapet for a while but got mown down by serial criticism of the bland nature of its output that it hasn't been seen or heard from in many weeks.)

[french frank]

I wonder myself. At present it is a platform almost exclusively for the In Tune programme. One presumes (from the saga of the Babkas given above) that it is staffed with those who see it as their mission to bring a touch of the "street" to the perceived "stuffy old world" of classical music. Perhaps it is revealiing that none of the other producers of the R3 output touches Facebook with a bargepole. (Breakfast popped its head above the parapet for a while but got mown down by serial criticism of the bland nature of its output that it hasn't been seen or heard from in many weeks.)

Breakfast tweets (vb). But quite a bit of it seems to be media luvvies chatting away, promising to meet, wishing happy birthdays, exchanging banter. I assume the ones who aren't R3 already are angling for work in the future ... . Not all of them, of course . But you can't see journos writing anything critical about their Twitter friends at R3. Don't like that

I think I spotted my name on Facebook yesterday but the author (not unknown to me) must have thought the better and removed it

[Frances_iom]

That prompted me to look on R3 Facebook and I found "Well, we have a distinctly Friday state of mind in the office (I mean the In Tune production hub) today. I brought in 2 Chocolate Babkas from my local Jewish bakery and all decorum went to nothing as a mob of Producers and Broadcast Assistants stampeded and started tearing the ruddy things to bits. One (nameless) individual broke away with h...alf a Babka and shot off to a quiet place to consume it. I hardly got a look-in. Now all's quiet, presumably due to intensive Babka digestion. Good stuff.SEGUE TO SOMETHING ABOUT THE PROGRAMME"

What, exactly, is the point of the R3 Facebook page?

to make the whole staff behind that programme appear to be idiots - saves the bother of listening. Presumeably the same staff switch over at 6.30 for R4's attempt at comic humour - the only funny thing I can see is that the licence payer provides them with a salary.

[old khayyam]

There isn't exactly much American music on R3 at all these days except...

At 17:20 just now they were playing a blues (American folk) tune of some kind. I've heard an American interviewee every evening for the past week. Everytime i hear the jazz programmes (not often) they only play American jazz, and i think we all know about the obligatory morning Copland/Bernstein/etc. The programming shown to us by FF upthread contains 3 American composers and one British who married an American and went to live there.

[Suffolkcoastal]

As I said there isn't much American music EXCEPT the same handful of pieces. From a classical perspective American music counted for less than 2-3% of the total last year and is about the same so far this year. Copland & Bernstein combined so far this year total 20 pieces/extracts in 40 days when there has been nearly 3500 pieces/extracts played over the same period isn't by any stretch of the imagination excessive. The problem with playing the same select group of pieces makes it seem like they appear more often than they actually do. I cannot comment on Jazz as I have no real interest in the genre and don't monitor this.

[Panjandrum]

A certain Facebook poster, who might be remembered by members of this forum under a bewildering array of soubriquets, appears to have taken on a one personcrusade to clean up Facebook of the naysayers. Interesting that they seem to think that abuse of other posters is the best way achieve this goal, presumably in order to allow the pap to go uncriticised.

[Don Petter]

A strange crusade.

Where did their figure of Breakfast listeners increasing by 27% since September come from? It didn't seem to be mentioned in the other thread on the latest RAJAR figures?

[french frank]

A strange crusade.

Where did their figure of Breakfast listeners increasing by 27% since September come from? It didn't seem to be mentioned in the other thread on the latest RAJAR figures?

Breakfast figures can be quite volatile because very few people in the RAJAR sample listen to R3 (about 4% of the total) and even fewer listen to Breakfast. Last quarter they identified, on average, about 26 listeners each week. You can see that for example the difference between 20 listeners one quarter and 30 listeners the next would create a huge percentage change. The previous quarter, the time-slot 6.30am-9am was rather low, so a bounce-up can be quite impressive without it necessarily indicating any permanent change in audience size. Added to that, no direct comparison can be made between the latest quarter and earlier ones because Breakfast has shifted its timeslot (on the whole the pattern of listening in the mornings reflects the time of day rather than the programme) so they had to recalculate what the size of the Breakfast audience would probably have been if Breakfast had been on at the same time. The official figure for Breakfast in the summer quarter was actually 749,000 and in the latest was 'down' to 703,000. But it is a real 'increase', nevertheless.

RAJAR figures are used by the broadcast media for reporting the good news and burying the bad. There was no comment the previous quarter about Breakfast's quarter on quarter fall from 897,000 to 749,000, for example.