Controller, BBC Radio 3

[HighlandDougie]

I see Alan Davey is tipped (by the S. Times) as being announced this week as the new Controller. He'll need to be a strong character

Not, in my numerous dealings with AD, a characteristic I immediately associate with him. He's very personable, for sure, and knows about the arts but .....

[Zucchini]

A bit off topic but these FoR3 comments need a reply:

In 2009/10 the Proms cost Radio 3 £4.3m, out of its service budget of £36.6m. I make that 11.7% of budget. If that 303 hours is roughly similar each year (concerts + repeats), that's 3.5% of broadcast time. Proportionately, that makes the Proms quite a drain on R3's budget. Especially since it also spent £7.9m supporting the Performing Groups - more than 20% of its budget, but filling only 7% of broadcast hours.

I make that about a third of its total budget going on supporting the two BBC flagships which only account for just over 10% of the hours it has to fill.

Hmm, I see he thinks the Proms are cheap for television. Not sure that I agree that they're cheap for Radio 3. It starts out with a service budget about the same size as Radio 1's and then has to subsidise the Proms and PGs in the way I said. Though they are probably better value than the vast sums paid out to R1 & R2 presenters ...

But that’s fine. Coverage of live concerts is mandatory and is expensive. Playlist and simple studio programmes are cheap. Radio 3 is not a philanthropist and is not 'supporting' the Proms or the Performing Groups. It is buying goods - live music.

A portion of R3s budget is ring-fenced' for purchase of transmission rights for live and recorded Proms concerts on radio and TV. The NAO report investigating BBC sports and music events stated that the Proms 2008 budget was £3.74m and the actual was £3.71m. For that money the BBC 'bought' 67hrs of TV airtime and 303hrs of radio. Two thirds of the £3.71m was spent on outside broadcast costs and paid to the sub-contractor, SIS (£2.48m). I really can't see that your 'tip-off' that the next year's budget (2009) was £4.3m is right - to authorise an increase of over £500k seems inconceivable.

It's easy to see that the cost per hour of TV & Radio coverage of the Proms averages £10,000. The cost to R3 after reimbursement of thee more expensive TV costs will be significantly lower.

The NAO investigation into BBC radio production costs quoted £340 - £1200 per hr for playlist / music programmes, drama at £16500 - £24500. Somewhere within Ofcom there’s an old document giving overall R3 production costs at £4000 per hour and R4 £11000 per hour.

Classic FM runs on gross costs of the order £15m compared with R3's £40m (about £1700 per hour). This is of course due to a much higher proportion of playlist and low cost programming.

The Proms are not a drain on R3's budget because replacements for every one of these concerts would have to found to meet its live music obligations - and the piecemeal approach would quite likely cost more. The above cost guidelines make it absolutely clear that it’s easy to work within an annual budget of £40m or so.

I don’t know where your figure of £7.9m ‘support for PGs comes from so will assume it’s right. The PGs were funded by £26.9m from the BBC in 2010/11 and the investigation by Myerscough found that the 6 PGs gave over 400 concerts for radio, of which R3 took 364. I can’t see how the funding works. But assuming the costs are right R3 is paying just over £20,000 per concert, which (assuming 2 hrs or so) neatly matches the Proms payment of £10000 per hour. A big plus for the PGs is that they will learn new works and play rarities pretty much as R3 wants.

So neither do I think the PGs are a drain on R3's budget because they conveniently. cooperatively and cost effectively enhance R3s resources and help it meet its live and new music obligations. Again, the cost guidelines make it absolutely clear that it’s easy to work within an annual budget of £40m or so.

(treat figures as guide prices – they are for different times – though there has been next to no inflation in the arts industry in recent years)

[french frank]

Too much detail for the present, still a few points: Yes, Radio 3 is 'buying goods'. That's not the point. The point is that it is buying goods that work out very expensive from a limited budget and that's why much of the routine schedule is felt to be unimaginative: it's cheap.

The 'ring-fencing' I was talking about was based on the fact that DQF demanded 'reinvestment' in the Proms to 'maintain quality', so the point was that, although Radio 3 had a nice £1m increase in budget for 2014/15, the possibility was that all of it was swallowed up by Proms reinvestment rather than, again, anything for the routine schedule.

The £4.3m was not a 'tip-off'. It came from the Trust who enquired of Radio 3. It was not a figure that is normally published. The television coverage is irrelevant since those costs would not come out of R3's budget.

A point that concerns me is how much money is left to pay for the day-to-day programming to make that better. The Proms provide one, or sometimes two, concerts per day for 8 weeks out of the 52, so even doubling that for repeats still leaves an awful lot of daytime hours to fill. Three hours of Essential Classics, for example, is a lot cheaper than the three separate programmes (Masterworks 9-10.30, Artist of the Week 10.30-11, Sound Stories 11-12) which RW inherited when he took over in 1998. Or even RW's 1999 schedule (Work in Progress, Masterworks, Morning Performance - e.g. Lufthansa Festival). In the document you quoted, it's clear that R3's CD-based programmes are a lot cheaper than those on other stations. And in general a 3-hour programme will be cheaper than three one-hour programmes.

It is the fact that 'live' [sic] concerts are expensive that they take up a disproportionate amount of the budget (and the, really live, Proms on their own must provide all the concerts Radio 3 is 'mandated' to provide while only filling two months of the year and only a small proportion of each day. Repeats don't alter that dramatically. [In 2009/10 live music accounted for 57% of the music output, whereas the current SL condition is to provide only 40%.]

The 347 review itself pointed out that the PGs cost about 20% of the R3 budget while only filling 7% of broadcast hours. That doesn't sound too cost effective.

Add:

I really can't see that your 'tip-off' that the next year's budget (2009) was £4.3m is right - to authorise an increase of over £500k seems inconceivable.

Btw, what it costs Radio 3 can't be 'budgeted' for with precision, because no one knows in advance what the Proms revenue will amount to. All one knows is that the revenue will be less than the expenditure.

[Honoured Guest]

Tittle tattle has it that a preferred candidate has been selected after first interviews but that no offer has yet been made.

I suppose that the BBC didn't wish to divert attention from the exemplary celebratory 90th anniversary concert of the BBC Singers.

[french frank]

Tittle tattle has it that a preferred candidate has been selected after first interviews but that no offer has yet been made.

Indeed, as in an election - we'll know when they announce the result.

I suppose that the BBC didn't wish to divert attention from the exemplary celebratory 90th anniversary concert of the BBC Singers.

excellent, HG!

[mercia]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2014/r3-controller

[french frank]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/lat.../r3-controller

Sharp works, mercs.

I'm sure we're all stunned

"I stumbled upon Radio 3 when I was a teenager, and it opened a door to an endlessly fascinating world of sound and thought that has nourished me ever since. I want everyone to have that chance and am proud to be able to make sure they will."

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

"I stumbled upon Radio 3 when I was a teenager, and it opened a door to an endlessly fascinating world of sound and thought that has nourished me ever since. I want everyone to have that chance and am proud to be able to make sure they will."

Could be me talking. (It isn't, by the way - another of those "landmarks": for the first time in my life I'm older (just!) than the Controller of R3.


Hopes! Hopes! Hopes! That AD (?or should that be "CE"?) can face up to the post-Birtian suits and and restore at least something of the higher standards of quality that attracted him (and many listeners) to R3 in the first place.

[Quarky]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/lat.../r3-controller

Some insight into Alan Davey: http://www.theguardian.com/music/201...rlotte-higgins

A punk rock enthusiast! Bodes well for us off-centre Classical types!

Many more questions yet to be answered. Tom Service in charge of Proms?

[HighlandDougie]

"Not rock the boat", as Charlotte Higgins puts it. No, definitely not. What a depressing appointment. I hope that I am proved wrong. Clemmy as Proms Supremo, sans doute.

[french frank]

A punk rock enthusiast! Bodes well for us off-centre Classical types!

The headline is some ignorant sub-editor's angle. The story is clear that it was 'as a kid' that he was smitten by punk.

This is the Higgins' take that I found interesting: "Davey is a serious-minded lover of music. I would be surprised if he took the station downmarket or strayed (further?) into Classic FM territory."

As for it being peculiar that he has no broadcasting experience, don't forget that Thompson appointed TIM Davie as Director of Radio - the rank higher than controller - with no broadcasting experience. Now that was peculiar.

[Zucchini]

Richard Morrison wa not very happy in The Times this morning.

He points out that a career bureaucrat who has specialised in the management of decline doesn't really sends the right signal about Radio 3. He thinks classical music is enjoying "a radical renaissance" and that creative havoc needs to be wrought at Radio 3. And amongst the BBC's "staid stable of identical orchestras" which are doing what they've done for 80 years.

He's not sure that AD "the epitome of Whitehall urbanity" has it in him to wreak the necessary havoc.

[Bryn]

Richard Morrison wa not very happy in The Times this morning.

He points out that a career bureaucrat who has specialised in the management of decline doesn't really sends the right signal about Radio 3. He thinks classical music is enjoying "a radical renaissance" and that creative havoc needs to be wrought at Radio 3. And amongst the BBC's "staid stable of identical orchestras" which are doing what they've done for 80 years.

He's not sure that AD "the epitome of Whitehall urbanity" has it in him to wreak the necessary havoc.

"staid stable of identical orchestras"? Has Morrison actually had a glance at the BBCSSOs range of programming?

[french frank]

"staid stable of identical orchestras"? Has Morrison actually had a glance at the BBCSSOs range of programming?

Well, I go to foot of our stairs! And I won't link to Ivan the Terrible in the Telegraph:

"What Radio 3 needs more than ever is a guiding vision for both content and “tone”, which underlies all the local decisions about whether to cut this Outside Broadcast strand or (God forbid) that orchestra. To deserve the name, that vision can’t fit snugly into the philosophy of management-driven pragmatism, where the only criterion for success is maximising “customer throughput” (i.e. listeners), while minimising costs.

This is the instrumentalist ethos that now prevails everywhere in the public sphere, whether it’s universities, or the health service, or the arts. If that’s the criterion that really counts, the only rational course of action for Radio 3 would be to close it down, and parcel out the resources amongs other, more popular networks. If it’s to survive and flourish Mr Davey must tell us loud and clear why it needs to exist, and why the country as a whole would be the poorer without it. "

Is that even rational?

[MrGongGong]

A punk rock enthusiast! Bodes well for us off-centre Classical types!

I have a very good friend who plays in a very well known orchestra in London who mostly listens to Punk rock but plays a mean Trombone in Mahler