Michael White weighs into the debate...

[muzzer]

[a]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/10607639/Why-Radio-3-is-out-of-tune-with-its-listeners.html[/a]

Apols if already posted.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

muzzer this is an active link to this excellent piece by Michael White

the phrase 'active listener' is apt; the recent discussion on the Jazz Threads about the lack of playlist information in advance of programmes ... this was the usual practice but it is now replaced by a computer system that lists tracks after they are played ... designed so the casual or passive listener can find out the answer to the 'what was that track i have just heard?' [a feature of CFM i believe]

it does seem to me that R3 is after a casual and passive audience ... wallpaper on air

[Gordon]

Ohh!! Mother!! The torygruff wading in, must be bad. I was with him all the way till he picked on Accrington. Stanley will not be happy.

Anyway I suppose it far too soon to hear the creaks in the barricade but, to switch metaphors, perhaps the insistent erosion of raindrops might wear away the mortar? One can but hope that this will not be a journalistic fad.

[Flay]

I like this:

To know just how disgruntled [the listeners] are, look no further than the so-called Friends of Radio 3: a lobby-group whose name ought really to be Former Friends. Insiders at the BBC tend to dismiss this group as cranky and inconsequential, but it’s not. It’s made up of ordinary, loyal listeners who have had enough of My First Moonlight nonsense and are now seizing the opportunity afforded them by the CMS Select Committee to step forward and be counted.

[Tevot]

Hello there,

I think Hornspieler alerted us to the article earlier on today. Thanks btw HS

I must admit to liking this section from the article...

The BBC, in some respects, may function as a business enterprise, but it is essentially a non-commercial body that receives public funding to allow it freedom from commercial pressures. Accordingly, it doesn’t need recourse to advertising or to the ratings success that advertisers demand. And although ratings are not irrelevant, because they indicate that the Beeb is giving licence-payers due return, they shouldn’t determine the entire output. Quality is a requirement, too; and there should be ring-fenced, sacred spaces in the schedules where serious, quality content is the sole consideration, regardless of how few are tuning in.

Radio 3 is chief among those sacred spaces

This has been said for years - and this was ignored. I wonder whether the tide has now turned? I dearly hope so

Best Wishes,

Tevot

[Gordon]

....it does seem to me that R3 is after a casual and passive audience ... wallpaper on air

Listeners!! What do they know, just a bunch of wingers!

[ardcarp]

Brilliant. I just hope some people don't think the opposite of 'dumbed-down' is 'highbrow'. It isn't.

[gurnemanz]

"It’s made up of ordinary, loyal listeners who have had enough of My First Moonlight nonsense and are now seizing the opportunity afforded them by the CMS Select Committee to step forward and be counted."
I'm slightly fed up with Telegraph, Spectator etc claiming that members on here are a dreary load of old codgers like them, who spend all their time moaning and harking back misty-eyed to an imaginary Golden Age. I am not in tune with a fair bit of Radio Three's output. Neither was I in tune with everything it (and Third Programme) did in previous supposed halcyon decades. I hope I am not "ordinary" and I am certainly not "loyal" - I take what I want from where I want and do not expect any radio station's output to conform precisely to my individual requirements. People have a multiplicity of individual preferences: e.g. I loved the Schubert bonanza that many on here hated. I suspect that there are quite a few listeners, unlike me, who actually like Radio Three's lighter morning stuff and prefer it to CFM's ad-and-jingle-interspersed blandness. CDs, books and other radio stations are available at those times, and indeed this board which always gives me a good dose of enlightenment and entertainment (even if the bargains thread does drain my bank balance.)

[muzzer]

here here. or hear hear, as you wish.

[ardcarp]

unlike me, who actually like Radio Three's lighter morning stuff and prefer it to CFM's ad-and-jingle-interspersed blandness.

Chaq'un. etc. It occurred to me that R3's lighter morning stuff is no different from the local BBC radio station which our kids wake up to. Repetition of a small core of music. Requests. Tweets. News. Excess bonhommie. In other words it's a pop DJ station without the pop.

I'm not an old codger either.

[Serial_Apologist]

"It’s made up of ordinary, loyal listeners who have had enough of My First Moonlight nonsense and are now seizing the opportunity afforded them by the CMS Select Committee to step forward and be counted."
I'm slightly fed up with Telegraph, Spectator etc claiming that members on here are a dreary load of old codgers like them, who spend all their time moaning and harking back misty-eyed to an imaginary Golden Age. I am not in tune with a fair bit of Radio Three's output. Neither was I in tune with everything it (and Third Programme) did in previous supposed halcyon decades. I hope I am not "ordinary" and I am certainly not "loyal" - I take what I want from where I want and do not expect any radio station's output to conform precisely to my individual requirements. People have a multiplicity of individual preferences: e.g. I loved the Schubert bonanza that many on here hated. I suspect that there are quite a few listeners, unlike me, who actually like Radio Three's lighter morning stuff and prefer it to CFM's ad-and-jingle-interspersed blandness. CDs, books and other radio stations are available at those times, and indeed this board which always gives me a good dose of enlightenment and entertainment (even if the bargains thread does drain my bank balance.)

Nothing was ever perfect for everyone on Radio 3, and I don't think anyone on here is arguing that it could have been for the obvious reasons you state; but one takes it then that you prefer the time-wasting tweets, the phone-ins, and patronisingly fatuous remarks from presenters formerly known as knowledgeable?

[Don Petter]

Chaq'un. etc. It occurred to me that R3's lighter morning stuff is no different from the local BBC radio station which our kids wake up to. Repetition of a small core of music. Requests. Tweets. News. Excess bonhommie. In other words it's a pop DJ station without the pop.

I'm not an old codger either.

The depressing thing is that, whatever variety of content there may (still) be at other times, there is now a whole swathe of R3, from 6.30am to noon every day, which is all of this saccharine nature. For those who would prefer something more savoury, this is a great imbalance and a great loss.

[doversoul1]

gurnemanz

…that members on here are a dreary load of old codgers

The article is referring to Friends of Radio3 and not to this Forum.

People have a multiplicity of individual preferences

Current Radio3 seems to very keen on accommodating the preference of one particular group/type of listeners.

CDs, books and other radio stations are available at those times,

That is no reason for Radio 3 not to do what it was set up to do.

[kernelbogey]

This section caught my attention and to me reflected a past glory of the station that has become tarnished:

As for Radio 3, that was a university in its own right, and not so small. Radio 3 was like an open door to possibilities beyond the comprehension of an East End schoolboy. And the fact that it wasn’t wide open, that you had to push it a bit to find out what was on the other side, made it all the more attractive.
The announcers never tried to make things seem so easy that it wasn’t worth paying attention. They imparted information in half-whispers like the giving of a precious gift, or the sharing of a secret. And I felt as though I’d been admitted to a rather special club: a club that anyone could join – you only had to find the waveband – but it was, none the less, a privilege. With fabulous returns.

That captures for me (teenages in West Cornwall, though, not the East End) the educative quality of Radio Three of yore: it required effort, and engagement, to learn from the music and its presentation.

I don't look back misty-eyed at a Golden Age, but at excellence!

[subcontrabass]

Current Radio3 seems to very keen on accommodating the preference of one particular group/type of listeners.

Isn't it trying to accommodate a group of NON-listeners?