BBC Radio 3 'dumbing down'

[vandermolen]

This may ( like most of my threads  ) be of minority interest. There have been some recent newspaper articles saying that BBC Radio 3 (the classical music station) is losing much of its audience due to 'dumbing down'. In other words by trying to copy the more populist Classic FM, encouraging audience participation, phone-ins, playing more single movements rather than complete works, more film (movie) music etc. I do have some sympathy with this view although I often listed to Radio 3 on my long car journey to work.

Any views on this! Apologies if it is completely irrelevant to you.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2041810/BRIAN-SEWELL-Why-Radio-3-longer-music-ears.html

I wonder how classical music is catered for on the radio stations of other countries.

[not edward]

When I lived in Britain, Radio 3 was by a long way the radio station I listened most to. Even then there was some utter trash on it, but there was also some very high-quality programming and live concerts. Many of the artists and composers I've ended up enjoying were ones I first encountered on Radio 3, both through specialist programming and live performances.

I don't mind a bit more audience participation and phone-ins (after all, they used to have people writing in to request recordings), but if they are going the "let's only play the famous bits" route I would be sad.

[Ken B]

I notice the byline.
I wonder how many people here know Sewell. Reactions to him are very strong I find. I watched his Grand Tour. After being shell shocked by the accent I found him entirely engaging  and liked him immensely- he's an arch, "provocative  "old queen" , a very British type --  but I suspect that's a minority reaction. Sounds like a sad loss.

[Bogey]

This may ( like most of my threads  ) be of minority interest. There have been some recent newspaper articles saying that BBC Radio 3 (the classical music station) is losing much of its audience due to 'dumbing down'. In other words by trying to copy the more populist Classic FM, encouraging audience participation, phone-ins, playing more single movements rather than complete works, more film (movie) music etc. I do have some sympathy with this view although I often listed to Radio 3 on my long car journey to work.

Any views on this! Apologies if it is completely irrelevant to you.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2041810/BRIAN-SEWELL-Why-Radio-3-longer-music-ears.html

I wonder how classical music is catered for on the radio stations of other countries.

Ours went to an almost all single movement format.  In short, I stopped listening. 

[Mirror Image]

Ours went to an almost all single movement format.  In short, I stopped listening.

I stopped listening to radio 15 year ago.

[DaveF]

Alan Davey's remarks are interesting, but there seems to be a lot of emphasis placed on continuing as we are - R3 will not dumb down (but for most of us, it's done that already, drastically), it will not become more like Classic FM (but no promise to become "less like"), it will continue to offer "complex culture" (but not replace the inane chatter).

And how dare he say what the original Third Programme didn't do was offer people context?  I'm too young for the Third Programme, but Radio 3 in the 1970s, when I started listening, offered lots of (cringes while typing it) "context".  Programming was much more varied - to the extent sometimes that one wonders what the planning department did, or whether it even existed.  Take 3 consecutive days from 1971, roughly when I started listening:

http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/radio3/1971-01-10
http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/radio3/1971-01-11
http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/radio3/1971-01-12

which offered everything from an opera by Alan Bush to a German learners' course, via Alun Hoddinott previewing the week's music, a programme on current management methods, an Englishman on modern Scottish poetry, Music Magazine on Lawes, Janáček and Gyorgy Pauk - not forgetting Test Match Special.  What the planners of the exquisitely timed and packaged modern Radio 3 seem to be missing is that this is all "context" - sadly, the best way to appreciate an opera by Stockhausen is the way that takes time - to spend a few years acquainting yourself with movements in modern music and literature, which listening to the old Radio 3 was very good at doing.  I don't know quite what Mr Davey has in mind for the context he wants to offer in order to help us understand complex culture - of course I wish him well in any attempt - but if it follows the current trend it will be some bright and bushy, easily-digested sound-bitten presentation by some ill-informed and musically illiterate presenter.

Because that's my real complaint about R3 as it is today - the staggering lack of knowledge of the presenters.  I had a spell, a few years ago, of compiling all the factual errors I heard during a day's listening and putting them in a daily e-mail to Radio 3 customer service or whatever it was - before I realised I was turning into a bit of a nut-case and would probably soon be writing to the station instead in green ball-point pen in shaky capital letters.  I had a few acknowledgements back, but nothing else (although, to be fair to them, what could they say?) - but a typical daily e-mail mentions the following on-air errors: Brahms's violin concerto described as being in D minor, Dvořák's E major serenade described as being "arranged" for string orchestra, Byrd's year of birth given as 1543 (we've known for at least 20 years it was 1540), a rather good intro to Stravinsky's Symphony in 3 movements (Chinese peasants dying in the snow etc.) being followed by a broadcast of the Symphony in C (and no-one at the station noticing).  And so on.  Wouldn't have happened in the good old days.

Having said all of which, I gather we're still fairly fortunate compared with the rest of the world, and that Radio 3 is better than much of the international competition.

[vandermolen]

Many thanks for the interesting replies. Yes, there are quite a lot of mistakes - a recent one, for example, claimed that Ivor Gurney was killed in the First World War which is untrue although he was mentally destroyed by the experience.

[Ken B]

Alan Davey's remarks are interesting, but there seems to be a lot of emphasis placed on continuing as we are - R3 will not dumb down (but for most of us, it's done that already, drastically), it will not become more like Classic FM (but no promise to become "less like"), it will continue to offer "complex culture" (but not replace the inane chatter).

And how dare he say what the original Third Programme didn't do was offer people context?  I'm too young for the Third Programme, but Radio 3 in the 1970s, when I started listening, offered lots of (cringes while typing it) "context".  Programming was much more varied - to the extent sometimes that one wonders what the planning department did, or whether it even existed.  Take 3 consecutive days from 1971, roughly when I started listening:

http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/radio3/1971-01-10
http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/radio3/1971-01-11
http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/radio3/1971-01-12

which offered everything from an opera by Alan Bush to a German learners' course, via Alun Hoddinott previewing the week's music, a programme on current management methods, an Englishman on modern Scottish poetry, Music Magazine on Lawes, Janáček and Gyorgy Pauk - not forgetting Test Match Special.  What the planners of the exquisitely timed and packaged modern Radio 3 seem to be missing is that this is all "context" - sadly, the best way to appreciate an opera by Stockhausen is the way that takes time - to spend a few years acquainting yourself with movements in modern music and literature, which listening to the old Radio 3 was very good at doing.  I don't know quite what Mr Davey has in mind for the context he wants to offer in order to help us understand complex culture - of course I wish him well in any attempt - but if it follows the current trend it will be some bright and bushy, easily-digested sound-bitten presentation by some ill-informed and musically illiterate presenter.

Because that's my real complaint about R3 as it is today - the staggering lack of knowledge of the presenters.  I had a spell, a few years ago, of compiling all the factual errors I heard during a day's listening and putting them in a daily e-mail to Radio 3 customer service or whatever it was - before I realised I was turning into a bit of a nut-case and would probably soon be writing to the station instead in green ball-point pen in shaky capital letters.  I had a few acknowledgements back, but nothing else (although, to be fair to them, what could they say?) - but a typical daily e-mail mentions the following on-air errors: Brahms's violin concerto described as being in D minor, Dvořák's E major serenade described as being "arranged" for string orchestra, Byrd's year of birth given as 1543 (we've known for at least 20 years it was 1540), a rather good intro to Stravinsky's Symphony in 3 movements (Chinese peasants dying in the snow etc.) being followed by a broadcast of the Symphony in C (and no-one at the station noticing).  And so on.  Wouldn't have happened in the good old days.

Having said all of which, I gather we're still fairly fortunate compared with the rest of the world, and that Radio 3 is better than much of the international competition.

Sounds like heaven compared to what we get over here nonetheless.