Listening to Breakfast this morning just after 7am I very much enjoyed the two songs by Clara Schumann; not to everyone's taste of course but it shows that even when several of us remain critical of the programme, its format and content, there still remains within the programme a large body of music that we continue to enjoy (not the same parts in every case I hope!).
It occurs to me that with The Radio 3 Controller and editor claiming that their only desire is to make the programme more accessible, less "elitist", more democratic and so on, it would not be difficult to introduce feedback on individual pieces played on the programme to ascertain what listeners actually enjoy most. The playlist is produced on the breakfast website daily so it would not be too difficult to allow listeners to indicate whether or not they enjoyed a piece or feature via a tickbox against each piece. Simple IP controls mean it is relatively easy to prevent large scale voting fraud! :-) . This method also allows listeners time to reflect on their enjoyment or otherwise before voting unlike the realtime froth of tweets.
This might be the best way to determine for certain whether the programmes have become too populist. If listeners really are happy to "Like" familiar overtures, fanfares and arias in preference to rarer pieces or composers this would surely indicate it once and for all.
Now that the majority of people are computer literate I would be far more inclined to accept the findings of a large representative body of listeners via the Radio 3 programme hompepage than the possibility that "those who tweet" who are dictating playlist policy (which I suspect is what is happening).
It occurs to me that with The Radio 3 Controller and editor claiming that their only desire is to make the programme more accessible, less "elitist", more democratic and so on, it would not be difficult to introduce feedback on individual pieces played on the programme to ascertain what listeners actually enjoy most. The playlist is produced on the breakfast website daily so it would not be too difficult to allow listeners to indicate whether or not they enjoyed a piece or feature via a tickbox against each piece. Simple IP controls mean it is relatively easy to prevent large scale voting fraud! :-) . This method also allows listeners time to reflect on their enjoyment or otherwise before voting unlike the realtime froth of tweets.
This might be the best way to determine for certain whether the programmes have become too populist. If listeners really are happy to "Like" familiar overtures, fanfares and arias in preference to rarer pieces or composers this would surely indicate it once and for all.
Now that the majority of people are computer literate I would be far more inclined to accept the findings of a large representative body of listeners via the Radio 3 programme hompepage than the possibility that "those who tweet" who are dictating playlist policy (which I suspect is what is happening).
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