Review of Radio 3

[french frank]

incidentally, the text information that gets shown on DAB on the car radio, (not sure if this is the same as shown on a household DAB set) is frequently useless, EG just the name of the composer of the piece currently (and not always currently)being played.

That seems to be what you see on the freeview screen.

[kernelbogey]

incidentally, the text information that gets shown on DAB on the car radio, (not sure if this is the same as shown on a household DAB set) is frequently useless, EG just the name of the composer of the piece currently (and not always currently)being played.

If you are going to bother providing this service, what on earth is the point of doing it so badly?

I don't make much use of this. I listen to a PURE DAB/FM set, usually in FM because that location in the house has poor(!) DAB reception. But it does exhibit the scrolling text information which varies considerably in its level of detail, from one day/programme to the next. I, too, have wondered about this.

[DracoM]

Ref concert intervals.
Tonight: Sunday, Nov 2nd. Beethopven / Emperor Concerto - very fine piece.
BUT what followed it in the interval? RVW's bloomin' Lark Ascending. Yes, the whole piece.
WHY???
Sally Beamish's big piece followed, so why not have some really interesting detailed stuff about the piece, about her, about what she was trying to do with it? Instead, we get as CFM a filler as you could ask for. I'll tell you why, because the Beeb are terrified that as it's 'new music' coming up, they'll lose a potentially frightened audience, so they keep them listening with something cosy.

What a totally crass way to prepare an audience for a world première! And the BBC Management wonder why their ratings are falling? Does it ever occur to them that their audience might be BORED with re-cycling of warhorses?? I KNOW it's a lovely piece, but as a concert interval filler????

Bah!

[VodkaDilc]

Ref concert intervals.
Tonight: Sunday, Nov 2nd. Beethopven / Emperor Concerto - very fine piece.
BUT what followed it in the interval? RVW's bloomin' Lark Ascending. Yes, the whole piece.
WHY???
Sally Beamish's big piece followed, so why not have some really interesting detailed stuff about the piece, about her, about what she was trying to do with it? Instead, we get as CFM a filler as you could ask for. I'll tell you why, because the Beeb are terrified that as it's 'new music' coming up, they'll lose a potentially frightened audience, so they keep them listening with something cosy.

What a totally crass way to prepare an audience for a world première! And the BBC Management wonder why their ratings are falling? Does it ever occur to them that their audience might be BORED with re-cycling of warhorses?? I KNOW it's a lovely piece, but as a concert interval filler????

Bah!

I didn't hear the concert, but have just looked up the programme on the Barbican website. So much scope for a traditional R3 interval feature, such as:

1 Introduction to the Beamish piece, including interview with her.
2 Feature on Freire, who has just had his 70th birthday.
3 Something about the background to the Elgar piece, especially in its context of the 1914 commemorations.

It's astonishing, as DracoM has said, that option 4 was chosen - music (irrelevant to the rest of the programme) in the interval of a concert. I hope the scheduler is forced to live on bread sandwiches for the rest of the week. Or perhaps s/he would come out of the first half of a concert and pop next door to hear another piece of music in the interval.

Crass indeed - and further proof that R3 is now seen as a series of background pieces, rather than the chance to bring a live event to the listener at home.

[Frances_iom]

there was a short interview with Sally Beamish prior to the piece (maybe 5mins?) which outlined the source and her response to it - however the days of intelligent R3 interval fillers went long ago to help funding tobring pop to the Proms. R3 has lost its way and I suspect is living on borrowed time - unlikely to survive the next Tory government

[VodkaDilc]

R3 has lost its way and I suspect is living on borrowed time - unlikely to survive the next Tory government

..........among many other things!

[french frank]

As some nay-sayer might come up with a retort, the exact facts are:

At the beginning of the interval there were about 2-3 minutes of comment by LS chorus members about singing this/new piece(s).
It has a pastoral section called 'A distant lark'.
The rest of the interval was filled with 16 minutes of The Lark Ascending, composed c 1914 though without evidence (says Wikipedia) of the, sometimes claimed, close connection with the impending war.
The Beamish piece, words by Andrew Motion, commemorated the centenary of the outbreak of WWI.
The Elgar work was inspired by the then ongoing war.
There was a short feature with Sally Beamish before the piece was played.

To sum up: a connection exists between the interval piece and the new piece, but the question of whether any music should be used to fill a concert interval remains.
The Lark was contemporary with the war and the new piece mentions a lark.
The opportunity, however, to introduce the piece more thoroughly for the audience was missed. This is the one special advantage that a radio broadcast can have over the concert.

My feeling is that the interval was more unimaginative as a choice than crass. Against that, I recall that a Radio 3 manager said that the station did not have the budget to commission new interval features, so a commercial CD of Classic FM's Hall of Fame 2014 chart topper was probably the best they could manage. The IT drawer probably contains bits of string and some bent paperclips.

[DracoM]

The 'let's pick up all these pieces of jigsaw off the floor and collected round the whole house and see if we can make them into a picture' school of R3 planning? Hmm.

See how R3 'planners' get to it, yes, of course, BUT this was a world première, by a celebrated UK composer, and I would have welcomes a real, in depth set-up by Beamish talking with Martin Handley instead of the fragments we got.

After all, if the Beeb bought into the concert in the first place, they might want to big up that decision by the quality of back-up they give the audience. I bet there was stuff about the new piece in the programme in the hall? So why not on radio?

[french frank]

As I'm sure you know - I don't disagree with what you say!

The 'let's pick up all these pieces of jigsaw off the floor and collected round the whole house and see if we can make them into a picture' school of R3 planning? Hmm.

See how R3 'planners' get to it, yes, of course, BUT this was a world première, by a celebrated UK composer, and I would have welcomes a real, in depth set-up by Beamish talking with Martin Handley instead of the fragments we got.

After all, if the Beeb bought into the concert in the first place, they might want to big up that decision by the quality of back-up they give the audience. I bet there was stuff about the new piece in the programme in the hall? So why not on radio?

[Bax-of-Delights]

R3 has lost its way and I suspect is living on borrowed time - unlikely to survive the next Tory government

I would argue that R3 is the prime mover in its own demise and is unlikely to survive much beyond 2020 - irrespective of the colour of the next government. If it (R3) had the guts to actually believe in its own remit rather than attempting to blindly follow the quick-fix, "popular", mainstream broadcasting of its rival CFM then it might have a chance of arguing its corner against the political cutters of whatever cloth.

[Honoured Guest]

I would argue that R3 ... is unlikely to survive much beyond 2020 - irrespective of the colour of the next government.

Why are you so sure that there will be a BBC radio service called "Radio 3" in 2019?

[DracoM]

I would argue that R3 is the prime mover in its own demise and is unlikely to survive much beyond 2020 - irrespective of the colour of the next government. If it (R3) had the guts to actually believe in its own remit rather than attempting to blindly follow the quick-fix, "popular", mainstream broadcasting of its rival CFM then it might have a chance of arguing its corner against the political cutters of whatever cloth.

Indeed.

R3 seems intent-on slowly expunging it's own USP, and if you do that, you're down under the table fighting off the rest of the pack for the food. No kind of contest.

[french frank]

Why are you so sure that there will be a BBC radio service called "Radio 3" in 2019?

I assume that the incoming controller will have been given a five-year contract, starting in January 2015?

[Richard Tarleton]

Curious item on page 13 of the new Private Eye. Apparently the BBC pays Google (using Google AdWords) to come top of Google searches for "BBC Radio 3", even though this would come top of any free search for the same terms anyway. None of the BBC's other radio or TV channels do this. The Beeb would not divulge how much this costs.

[french frank]

Curious item on page 13 of the new Private Eye. Apparently the BBC pays Google (using Google AdWords) to come top of Google searches for "BBC Radio 3", even though this would come top of any free search for the same terms anyway. None of the BBC's other radio or TV channels do this. The Beeb would not divulge how much this costs.

Quick, quick - click on Friends of Radio 3 before we drop off the front page. We're obviously not paying enough

Bizarre story.