Controller, BBC Radio 3

[Honoured Guest]

Radio 3 could find alternative live concerts for two months,

Yes, but the Controller, Radio 3 is required by the Trust to deliver the Proms, and will appoint and manage a Director of the Proms to do that. So, although you may lobby the Trust to curtail the Proms and to reinvest the savings in Radio 3, that isn't currently a permissible option for the Controller. However, the Controller does have scope to vary the Proms programme's repertoire, performers, presentation formats and venues, and so the change of Controller is potentially a point of very significant change for the Proms, and is worthy of advance speculation imo.

[french frank]

Yes, but the Controller, Radio 3 is required by the Trust to deliver the Proms, and will appoint and manage a Director of the Proms to do that. So, although you may lobby the Trust to curtail the Proms and to reinvest the savings in Radio 3, that isn't currently a permissible option for the Controller. However, the Controller does have scope to vary the Proms programme's repertoire, performers, presentation formats and venues, and so the change of Controller is potentially a point of very significant change for the Proms, and is worthy of advance speculation imo.

No one is doing anything of the kind ('although you may lobby the Trust to curtail the Proms and to reinvest the savings in Radio 3'). I was merely responding to your assertion that the Proms is a 'keystone' of Radio 3, which suggests (if your architectural metaphor is pursued) that Radio 3 would somehow collapse without them. It wouldn't: it could find excellent cheaper options.

[Honoured Guest]

The Proms, as an eight-week concert season programmed by a Director managed by the station Controller, has far greater scope for coherent programme planning than would a hotchpotch of alternative options. I consider it a keystone because it's a programming entity of two months' duration, occupying every Live in Concert and Afternoon slot and spilling into some lunchtimes and later evenings.

You've commented several times that the cost to Radio 3 of the Proms is disproportionate to the cost of other Radio 3 programming, and if you don't mean "to lobby the Trust to curtail the Proms and to reinvest the savings in Radio 3" perhaps you might expand on the purpose of that line of comment.

[VodkaDilc]

I would view it differently: the Proms are a keystone of the BBC, a prestige/high profile 'brand' to show that the BBC is a serious, 'distinctive' publc service broadcaster. Radio 3 could find alternative live concerts for two months, at a much lower cost to its budget, especially now that the evening concert is publicised as including chamber music as well as orchestral concerts.

They don't publish the exact (net) cost of the Proms, but a member of the Trust Unit revealed that, in 2009/10, £4.3m came out of Radio 3's £40.8m service licence expenditure - over 10% of the annual total for 8 weeks Proms broadcasts (plus some repeats). And the rest of routine daily schedules still have to be paid for, 52 weeks a year.

I'm not sure if anyone knows the definitive answer to this, but, sitting in the RAH and waiting the The Kingdom to begin, I did some mental arithmetic to try to work out the income from ticket sales for an average, fairly near capacity concert. Is £100,000+ near to the mark?

[french frank]

I'm not sure if anyone knows the definitive answer to this, but, sitting in the RAH and waiting the The Kingdom to begin, I did some mental arithmetic to try to work out the income from ticket sales for an average, fairly near capacity concert. Is £100,000+ near to the mark?

No idea. I only know that expenditure over the season is in the region of £9m and ticket revenue about £5m. The shortfall is paid by "the BBC", which actually means via Radio 3's allocated service spend, which is already the lowest of any of the five BBC network radio stations (in descending order: Radio 4, Radio 5 Live, Radio 2, Radio 1, Radio 3).

[Flosshilde]

and the degree of refreshment,

Heavens, they have to look after the bars as well?

[Flosshilde]

Radio 3 could find alternative live concerts for two months,

The Edinburgh International Festival concerts, for example; many - most - of the foreign orchestras appearing there are also at the Proms, so it wouldn't be that much difference. And re HG's - I think - comment about planning the Proms, don't most of the visiting orchestras decide their own programmee, which they tend to play at most of the venues they are visiting? I think the fiction that they are here just to play at the Proms can be dismissed - it's just a stop on their European tour.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Heavens, they have to look after the bars as well?

I have a degree of refreshment - a Two/One.

[french frank]

You've commented several times that the cost to Radio 3 of the Proms is disproportionate to the cost of other Radio 3 programming, and if you don't mean "to lobby the Trust to curtail the Proms and to reinvest the savings in Radio 3" perhaps you might expand on the purpose of that line of comment.

The purpose is one that has been repeated many times: that Radio 3 should have a larger budget, if the BBC requires it to spend on expensive concerts (which includes the BBC orchestras' concerts). But, on the contrary, the station's budget has been cut back much more savagely than any of the other network stations. The result is that the budget for the routine year-round schedule has been much diminished. I wouldn't have thought, though, that the Proms need to continue to expand, nearly every year - 57 in 1982, 66 in 1992? 76 in 2012, plus many PCMs and fringe events? Out of a budget which hasn't kept up with the rate of inflation for years?

[Flosshilde]

Radio 3 could find alternative live concerts for two months,

The Edinburgh International Festival concerts, for example; many - most - of the foreign orchestras appearing there are also at the Proms, so it wouldn't be that much difference. And re HG's - I think - comment about planning the Proms, don't most of the visiting orchestras decide their own programmee, which they tend to play at most of the venues they are visiting? I think the fiction that they are here just to play at the Proms can be dismissed - it's just a stop on their European tour.

[french frank]

And re HG's - I think - comment about planning the Proms, don't most of the visiting orchestras decide their own programmee, which they tend to play at most of the venues they are visiting?

I would imagine it would be: first pencil in a date for the orchestra and then there might be a consultation with the Director as to what the orchestra is able to offer from a fairly limited repertoire. It's only really the BBC's Performing Groups that can be asked to accommodate any sort of 'request' e.g. Proms commissions - with enough time for the necessary rehearsals.

[Richard Tarleton]

Acc. to today's "Times", the chief exec of the Arts Council Alan Davey leads the field. The piece also repeats CFM's submission to the Parl. enquiry last year complaining about R3's shift down market i.e. towards them.

[french frank]

Acc. to today's "Times", the chief exec of the Arts Council Alan Davey leads the field. The piece also repeats CFM's submission to the Parl. enquiry last year complaining about R3's shift down market i.e. towards them.

Not sure what CFM meant by saying Radio 3 had an obligation to use its funding to create "bold, distinctive, brave programming" [okay so far] that champions a wide range of new music, not just classical music ..."

What wide range of new music does it have to champion? Or is it just clumsily expressed, and mean 'not just Mozart but the wide range of new music from Birtwistle to Adès, PMD to Benedict Mason'? Or new jazz and new World?

[MrGongGong]

Birtwistle to Adès, PMD to Benedict Mason'?

I guess some folks have a different understanding of the meaning of the word "wide"

[french frank]

I guess some folks have a different understanding of the meaning of the word "wide"

But I'm querying what the Times writer might have meant by talking of Radio 3's 'obligation' to champion a wide range of new music. How wide?