BBC - fifty ways to leave your listener

I spend little time tuned in to the BBC these days for obvious reasons. But regular readers who do still tune in tell me things aren't getting any better, in fact they are getting worse.

At least in the past the mistakes were made with style.
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BBC Radio 3 - how do you spell schadenfreude?

'According to official listening figures released yesterday ... BBC Radio 3, controversially overhauled last year to loud complaints from some listeners, saw its share of listening slump to a record low. The classical music, arts and culture station sank to its lowest share of listening, 0.9%, and saw weekly reach fall to 1.795m, a drop of 155,000 on the previous quarter and just above its all-time worst figure of 1.78m.

The shakeup in November 2006 saw Performance on 3 moved to 7pm, Late Junction moved to a late night slot and controller Roger Wright having to deny charges that he had reduced the amount of live music. Wright, who also took charge of the Proms last year, argued at the time that while there was less "live as live" performance, there was more "as live" recorded pieces and that listeners tended not to differentiate. A Radio 3 spokesman said it was "disappointing to see that classical music listening figures are down generally".'

There can be little surprise about today's Guardian report on RAJAR audience data for quarter ending March 2008 from which the quote above is taken. And it is typically disingeneous of the BBC to use the excuse that "classical music listening figures are down generally." Time and time again I have reported here how intelligent, imaginative and challenging programmes - the very qualities dumbed-out of today's Radio 3 - have boosted classical music audiences.

On Sunday May 4 you can listen to In Memory of the Six Million on Future Radio at 5.00pm (repeat at 00.50am on May 5) featuring this music:

Richard Strauss - Metamorphosen, realisation for string septet played by supplemented Brandis Quartet

Benjamin Frankel - Violin Concerto ‘In Memory of the Six Million’ played by Ulf Hoelscher with Queensland Symphony Orchestra conducted by Werner Andreas Albert.

Or listen to BBC 'Radio 2.5's' week long Composer of the Week featuring music by Noel Coward and Warsaw Concerto composer Richard Addinsell.

On May 17-18 you can wallow in Radio 3's wall-to-wall Chopin Experience, or reflect on Future Radio's Inner Cities webcast and anticipate their upcoming complete webcasts of Kaikhosru Sorabji's Opus Clavicembalisticum and of a lilas, an authentic Morrocan gnawa trance ritual in a world premiere broadcast.

BBC Radio 3 has a lot in common with today's big banks. They both blame market conditions for problems that are, in fact, caused by their own incompetence. And like banks the management rewards for failure at the BBC are not very different to those for success.
Image credit of BBC Radio 3 'photo opportunity' from TimesOnline. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

No classical - no radio

A familiar theme appears in Toronto's Globe and Mail - 'I am almost too depressed about the planned "overhaul" of CBC's Radio 2 to even write about it. What's the point? We've all seen the writing on the wall for some time now, and resistance is futile: The CBC no longer feels there is any point to devoting an entire radio station to the more musically and intellectually complex style of music colloquially, though entirely inappropriately, known as "classical" (more on that tendentious terminology in a moment), because, according to its mysterious studies, no one is interested in that any more.

So, come September, there will only be "classical" music (God, I hate that term!) at midday on weekdays; the rest of the air time will be taken up with light pop and jazz. Yes, that's right, explicitly light: In an interview with The Globe and Mail last week, the executive director of radio explained that the station will be playing even more Joni Mitchell and Diana Krall. The executives have also proudly expressed their interest in playing more middle-of-the-road pop such as Feist and Serena Ryder. Yes, they are proud, proud to be brave purveyors of Serena Ryder and Diana Krall, the very best culture our country has to offer.

In other words, Radio 2 will become essentially an easy-listening station. It will play, aside from four hours a day when everybody is at work, the kind of verse-chorus-verse popular music that is likely to win awards at industry-created ceremonies - the Junos, the Grammys, the Smushies, the Great Mall Music Prize.

Sometimes there will be jazz; I'm guessing it will continue to be the Holiday Inn lounge jazz they already so adore. It's also pretty safe to say there will be no underground pop music, nothing noisy or electronic - unless they keep Laurie Brown's The Signal (surely they must, they must at least keep The Signal?) - and of course that will be only late at night so it doesn't disturb the imagined audience, an audience of the mousiest, nicest, middlest of middle Canadians.

Notice how the CBC has already won half the public-relations battle through its choice of language. It is wise, if it wants to dismiss exciting and abstract music that doesn't have a 4/4 beat, to call such music "classical." That word instantly relegates it to the past. "Classical" connotes that which is established, respected, stuffy - another word for "old favourites."

"Classical" is wholly inadequate in describing an intellectual tradition that has always thrived on innovation, on radical new interpretations, on defiance of previous traditions, indeed, of iconoclasm. When Arthur Honegger sat down to write Pacific 231, when Olivier Messiaen began Quartet for the End of Time, when Edgard Varèse ordered his orchestra to play along to tape recordings from sawmills, do you think they wanted to write something "classical?"

But even this conversation is pointless; it isn't even happening. It belongs to another world. I feel, when talking about these things, like a visitor to an isolated country where everybody believes the Earth is flat and the moon is made of cheese: No one is going to listen to me because every single one of my premises, my fundamental assumptions, is different from theirs.

I assume, for example, that the point of having a government-funded radio station is not to garner the largest possible audience; if that were the goal, and that goal were attained, such a station would be commercially viable and no longer in need of government support. I also assume that art and intellectual inquiry can sometimes be challenging and demanding of intense concentration, and that they are naturally not always going to attract lucrative audiences, and that this does not make them any less valuable, which is why governments in enlightened countries support them and provide access to them.

I guess I assume, too, something even more fundamental and even more fundamentally unpopular, which is that not all art is of equal value. Art that does not tend to follow strict generic conventions (such as, for example, the verse-chorus-verse structure of 90 per cent of pop music) is deserving of extra attention. Art unbound by formula tends to indicate the area where the best, the most original talents are working.

And this is not, I assure you, about the past; it is about the future. Art unbound by formula - music that does not have to accompany words, for example - is the art that will be remembered by cultural historians and will come to define our era.

A country with no public forum for such art, with nowhere for the less privileged to gain access to it and to intelligent analysis of it, is an unsophisticated one.

And furthermore, a radio station that is indistinguishable from commercial stations - other than by its fanatical niceness - will have no reason to receive government support. Why not just shut it down already?' - byline Russell Smith

And CBC did so many great things.
Header image is CBC Radio 2 website. With thanks to Canadian reader David Cavlovic for the heads-up. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

An Overgrown Path just got longer

Due largely to requests from transatlantic listeners Future Radio's new schedule includes a repeat of my Overgrown Path programme at 12.50am UK time on Monday mornings. This translates approximately to Sunday afternoon and evening on the North American East and West Coasts, find the exact time locally here and connect to the audio stream here.

The repeats start today (Feb 3) with a programme of early and contemporary music from the Santiago Pilgrimage. Do catch the excerpts from Jody Talbot's new Path of Miracles if you can, they are well worth hearing. More details here.

It may be a small step, but this repeat is recognition that classical music is far from dead, and that adventuous programming produces results. Thank you Overgrown Path readers and listeners for making this possible.

Overgrown Path forward programme schedule - all works are played complete:
* Feb 10 - John Cage Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra and Frescobaldi Canzoni
* Feb 17 - Vaughan Willimas Symphony No 8 (part of a cycle of all his symphonies in 2008) and Thomas Tallis' choral music
* Feb 24 - Elliott Carter Pastoral for Clarinet and Piano and Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello and Harpsichord, and J.S. Bach Trio Sonatas transcribed by Robert King
* March 2 - Michael Tippett Second Symphony (composer conducting) and Corelli Concerti Grossi No 8, 'Christmas Concerto'
* March 9 - Lou Harrison Concerto for Violin with Percussion Orchestra (new recording) and early music from the eastern Sephardic communities, plus a Ghanaian circumcision dance!
* March 16 - Angela Hewitt plays Messiaen and Bach.

Listen on Future Radio at 5.00pm every Sunday and 12.50am every Monday UK time in real time here (convert to local time zones here). Windows Media Player doesn't like the audio stream very much and takes ages to buffer. WinAmp or iTunes handle it best. Unfortunately the royalty license doesn't permit on-demand replay, so you have to listen in real time. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

If I had a hammer ...

Is there too much hammering of the BBC On An Overgrown Path?

A reader in an interesting position inside the walls doesn't seem to think so.

Neither do posters on the BBC Radio 3 messageboard.

Now find the hidden hammers here and here.
Sweet picture from Creative Chocolates of Vermont. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

The sound of silence

Tip to contemporary composers. If you want your music broadcast beware of the sound of silence. I've been running into problems with extended low level passages on my Future Radio programme. The culprit is the station's silence detector which monitors the studio output. If it senses silence the smart circuitry assumes there is a fault somewhere between studio and the transmitter/web stream, and reroutes the output to a secondary distribution circuit. This then drops the internet stream, and if the silence continues the whole process repeats itself in a loop. In a word - problems.

The silence detector is standard issue in the new breed of automated radio stations which operate with minimal staffing. While I was presenting my programme last week I was the only person in the studio complex, and the previous programme was pre-recorded and played by automation. And this kind of automation will become the norm as the long tail of radio grows longer.

The silence detector thresholds are variables set by the station staff. The team at Future Radio have tweaked the settings to a generous 30 second threshold. But even with this I was very surprised to find it kicking in last week in the not very silent Duruflé Requiem, despite judicous manual compression. The real problem is that the technology that runs these stations is specified for heavily compressed rock music, and contemporary music is way outside the standard deviations. I'm trying not to let this problem influence future programmes. But I have put Paul Hillier's new Stimmung on hold until I'm satisfied it won't be censored by the silence police.

Tomorrow's programme comprises forgotten cello concertos from the baroque composer Leonardo Leo and the late-romantic Gerald Finzi. The graphic plot of the two recordings (from BIS and Chandos respectively) shows very different energy levels. The Leo should be fine, but the Finzi, with its beautiful thirteen minute Andante quieto movement, is likely to cause problems. These will be compounded by the programme being pre-recorded, as I will be listening to some reassuringly quiet live music at Snape while the programme is on-air. The Snape concert has Masaaki Suzuki conducting the Academy of Ancient Music in Handel and Bach (Lauchzet Gott in allen Landen). Thank heavens that the Maltings doesn't have a silence detector.

So apologies if the audio stream plays up on tomorrow's Overgrown Path radio programme. And if you are a contemporary composer, not too much Andante quieto please. Or, perhaps, you should just follow a very good example, and ignore the dictats of technology.

* Listen to the Finzi and Leo cello concertos, uninterrupted I hope, via the audio stream here on Sunday Oct 28 at 5.00pm UK time. Convert Overgrown Path radio on-air times to your local time zone using this link. Windows Media Player doesn't like the audio stream very much and takes ages to buffer. WinAmp or iTunes handle it best. Unfortunately the royalty license doesn't permit on-demand replay, so you have to listen in real time. If you are in the Norwich, UK area tune to 96.9FM.

Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Building communities of new listeners

Email received from the developers of the Radeo internet player (above) in response to my post The day the music died:

Thanks Bob! A large part of our motivation to create Radeo comes from the belief that there a many important and significant audiences that are not being served by traditional radio. Terrestrial radio, due to costs and the requirement of geographic audience density, are economically driven to serve the mass market. But there are large audiences, geographically dispersed, that are looking for "more". Perhaps more focused on a style of music, perhaps more musically challenging pieces -- the personal motivations will vary.

We hope that Radeo can play a role in aiding the individual find and listen to radio that is meaningful to him/her. We also believe that a part of the historical success of conventional radio is that it gives shape and definition to "communities" of listeners -- that the radio listening experience, while an individual experience, is also an important link for listeners to a larger group that they identify with. Radio, in a very real sense, has always been a key component of social networks.

We hope that Radeo can help create and support new forms of communities or social networks around radio/audio content. Personally, we're not into the social networking in the style of MySpace with its millions of personal pages and probably 100's of millions of uninteresting stream-of-consciousness messages.

We value that which has historically always been of value -- quality content, matched to (and shaping) personal interests via thoughtful and informed "programmers". While Radeo will not get into the "programming" of specific content inside a stream, we are exploring ways that we might add more capabilities for "meta programming" that link/gather/repackage streams to help listeners find stations and listener communities that enhance their listening experience.

Best regards, Paul Cosway



Now click on the image above and listen to Bayern 4 and other fine classical stations while you read about those moments that are rare in radio.
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Classical music's long tail reaches out

Joshua Nemith's blog explores the long tail of new classical radio -
Bob Shingleton (whose contemporary classical radio program was the subject of a recent post here) wrote to me the other day:

"The kind words in your post are very much appreciated - as you realise I'm simply trying to leverage new media to create a radio 'long tail' that reaches music currently being neglected by the ratings driven high profile stations.The very positive response from you, and many others, is prompting me tog o further down the 'tail'.On this week's programme (Sunday Sept 30) I will be playing two full length pieces from young European composers, Rebecca Saunders (England) and Bernard Schweitzer (German) commissioned by the period instrument Freiburg Baroque Orchestra with funding from the Siemens Arts Program. This will probably be the first broadcast of these two works, and they will bookend Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No 6."

I think it is always helpful to place newer music into some kind of stylistic context alongside older works with similar instrumentation, common approaches to sound, etc. This can often serve to help listeners identify how composers interact with the past in the present. Bob is taking some very good cues from the programming talents of forward-looking music directors who program adventurously but with an ear for thematic continuity.

Pitting two new pieces involving period instruments against a Bach work that would have used much of the same kinds of instrumental colors in Bach's time is a fascinating idea. (For anyone who might not understand this, period instruments are those that would have been used during a certain historical time period. Many ensembles (here's an example) are attempting more historically informed performances of older works through the use of such instruments as sackbuts, basset horns, recorders, baroque violins, etc.)

It is this kind of creative and audience-obliging approach that will help revitalize the newly restructured classical music industry. Yes, that's right: this business is beginning to form multiple "long tails" (like Bob's radio program and others like it) that will eventually replace some of the outmoded and ineffective models of classical music presentation. What other long tails are there, you ask? Read this post by Jason Heath to learn about the surging long tail in classical music downloads.

Once again if you missed it before: Listen to Bob Shingleton's show on Sundays at Future Radio; it is available for online listening.

Now read more about creative tension in programme planning. Listen to Overgrown Path radio at 5.00pm UK time every Sunday, and many more stations in the classical long tail, by opening the Radeo internet player via this link, or listen to the audio stream. Read Joshua Nemith's blog here.

Convert Overgrown Path radio on-air times to your local time zone using this link. Windows Media Player doesn't like the audio stream very much and takes ages to buffer. WinAmp or iTunes handle it best. Unfortunately the royalty license doesn't permit on-demand replay, so you have to listen in real time. If you are in the Norwich, UK area tune to 96.9FM. All photos (c) On An Overgrown Path 2007. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Ingratiating schmaltzy and patronising

Tomorrow night West End star Michael Ball sings an evening of show tunes at the BBC Proms. Outgoing Proms director Nicholas Kenyon justified his appearance with these words: 'I think he is one of the great, intelligent singing artists alive today. He deserves a place at the Proms just as much as performers in the great classical tradition. Our job is to cover the whole waterfront.'

Which resonates with a story from 1995, when Nicholas Kenyon was controller of BBC Radio 3. Here is the story from the late Humphrey Carpenter's excellent official history of the network. And the words in the headline are not mine, they come from that very same official history.

Radio 3's new 9-10 am programme would be called Morning Collection, and would be presented by Paul Gambaccini [photo above], the transatlantic-born disc jockey whose 'music for lovers' programme on Classic FM had been a target of some mockery in the statuion's early days ... He would now join Radio 3.

Kenyon emphasised that Gambaccini had worked for BBC Radio 'long before Classic FM was in rompers', and was chosen because 'his connection with film and pop music makes him unintimidating to people who want to try classical music but are unsure about it'. A BBC publicity handout headed From Puccini to Gambaccini stated that Gambaccini's programme would consist of 'classical greats ... from Brahms to Britten, from Strauss to Stravinsky ... Paul brings his relaxed but knowledgeable style to programmes full of complete works by all the major composes ... Morning Collection takes you on a stimulating journey through 500 years of the classics.'

The music critic [and composer] Bayan Northcott noted that Gambaccini's presentation style on Classic FM was characterised by 'refraining from any information commentary or judgement of the slightest musical interest whatever'. After Morning Collection had begun on Radio 3, listeners' reactions to it were aired on Radio 4's Feedback. 'The outrage was instant,' reported the Daily Telegraph.

Comments on [Gambaccini's] velvet voice and sugary commentary ... ranged from 'unctuous', 'totally inane', 'ingratiating', 'schmaltzy', to 'egregious and patronising'. One listener complained that he sounds as if he's selling raspberry ripple'. Another said listening to him was like wallowing in warm blancmange' ...

Kenyon appeared on Feedback and described Gambaccini as 'a knowlegeable and informed presenter of classical music'. He admitted that the programme was 'a big change of culture and it's meant to be, because we're trying to open up a potential new audience to classical music'.

Paul Gambaccini's place on Radio 3 did not last long. In May 1996, after sustained attacks from listeners and critics, he announced that he would not continue to present Morning Collection when his contract expired later in the year. Kenyon said that the programme's format had been welcomed by listeners but its presentation had been criticised strongly.

Bayan Northcott is a respected contemporary composer as well as music critic. Hear his Salve Regina on my Overgrown Path radio programme on September 16 at 5.00pm British Summer Time on Future Radio.
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Youth and the comb-over compulsion

The more profound problem is really about demographics. The audience is getting older and we don't know what to do about it, so we have the spectacle of a bunch of middle-aged people in the grip of some comb-over compulsion. Youth. Where is it? Why doesn't it watch us? How do we get hold of it? This is the great motive force in contemporary television. Why do they want to find it? The motive is the same everywhere. Money.

Jeremy Paxman (above) tells it like it is in television - and classical music. Essential reading in today's Guardian, and an essential reminder that youth is not a time of life, it is a state of mind.

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Other minds on internet radio

rchrd has left a new comment on your post "A title given by the Gods":

Congratulations on your radio program. I've been doing Music From Other Minds on local KALW in San Francisco nearly 3 years now. The 115th weekly program will be broadcast on Sept 7 after a summer's break.

Doing radio programs like these are like inviting friends over for a listen .. "here's something I found recently that I want you to hear"

I got my musical education by listening to the radio back in the 50's in New York City. Those days with significant classical music programming on the air are long gone. So I figure now it's all we can do to put interesting things on the radio.

Good luck with the project. Richard Friedman

Listen to the music of Sir Malcolm Arnold on Sunday 26 August at 5.00pm British Summer Time on Overgrown Path radio. More classical webcasts here, and tune in to the long tail of radio here.
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There's no such thing as the music audience

There's no such thing as 'the music audience'. They like the organ, or they like chamber music, or they like symphony concerts, or they like opera, or the nineteenth century, or new music. But they don't like each other. There is a mass of different audiences. So any (radio) schedule you put together is going to displease more people than it pleases. - said former BBC Proms director and BBC Radio 3 controller John Drummond.

Will a 'long tail' of Bach orchestrated by Webern and au naturelle, and Boulez displease more people than it pleases? Listen here at 5.00pm British Summer Time this afternoon (August 19). And now read John Drummond describing how Simon Rattle, literally, revived a great contemporary composer.
Convert webcast time to your local time zone using this link. Windows Media Player doesn't like the stream very much and takes ages to buffer, WinAmp or iTunes handle it best. Unfortunately the royalty license doesn't permit on-demand replay, so you have to listen in real time. If you happen to be in the Norwich, UK area tune to 96.9FM. Photograph (c) On An Overgrown Path. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

The future of radio is confirmed

Six million people are listening to the radio digitally in the UK - a massive rise since 2003, new figures have revealed. Twelve per cent of listeners tune in regularly using digital radio, TV and the internet, while 25% of regular analogue users have also tried digital.

In 2003, only 900,000 people were regular digital listeners, according to radio industry analysts RAJAR in figures revealed today. Overall radio listening figures have also risen, with 91% of the UK population accessing radio broadcasts.

BBC Radio 3's reach is 1.78 million – down on the year (1.83m) and the quarter (1.90m). Listener share for Radio 3 of 1.1% is the same as last year, and slightly down on the quarter (1.2%).

These new figures simply confirm what has already been said here. Specialist internet stations broadcasting over the internet and other new media are the future, and the BBC's repositioning of Radio 3 to appeal to Classic FM listeners is not working.

The continuing decline in the reach of Radio 3 shows that it is failing to win new listeners, but instead it is losing its established audience as standards reduce. In the same period Classic FM's reach was 5.70m and share was 4.0%. Average hours listened per head were 0.20 for BBC Radio 3 and 0.80 for Classic FM. Source BBC and RAJAR.

Now read more about the long tail of radio, and become part of it by clicking here between 5.00pm and 6.00pm British Summer Time on Sunday August 19 to hear Bach and Boulez on Overgrown Path radio.

Picture credit Robert Opie Collection. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Internet radio - the perfect storm

Jørgen Falck has left a new comment on the post "The political dimension of the artist":

Thank you Pliable. Your Greek birthday-concert for Mikis Theodorakis sounded beautiful here on my iTunes player, and I look forward to your next broadcasts on Future Radio (header photo). Like you I'm interested in the classical music life in general and in the radio. And yes, I am looking for alternatives.

Unfortunately we are facing a grotesque situation here in Denmark because of incompetent government policy: The Danish BBC, DR, are building a great new media house for radio and TV, including a new concert hall for the National SO by the architect Jean Nouvel. However, the financial costs of this house are so overwhelming that the government has forced DR to sack a lot of their best employee's, and to make sharp cuts in the programs as well.

The results are all to clear: Repeat broadcasts and common repertoire in huge quantities, Mozart, Beethoven and Mozart again and again.

Therefore, instead of this misery me and other Danish music lovers are tuning in to the Internet's radio world. That's how I found your Overgrown Path and the Radeo site. And thats how I became a daily listener to the excellent Norwegian station Alltid (Always) Klassisk. If not a Danish, I must have a Scandinavian favourite, after all.

Thank you Jørgen, glad you enjoyed the Skalcottas and Theodorakis. Overgrown Path radio will broadcast every Sunday at 17.00h British Summer Time. As I have said before - this is the future of radio. And the perfect storm gathers strength.
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Bring me cellos. And some cannons ...

* Media Guardian reports - 'Classic FM has signed Blur bass player Alex James to present a show looking at how classical music has influenced pop. The Britpop star turned newspaper columnist and organic farmer will front When Classic Meets Pop, a three-part series beginning on the GCap music station on August 4.

It is the latest addition to the When Classic Meets ... series, which has previously featured Rick Wakeman and Courtney Pine looking at the influence of classical music on rock and jazz music. "Why would I want to listen to Hard-Fi piffling around when there is Rossini?" said James. "Bring me cellos. Bring me French horns. Bring me a choir. And some cannons, maybe, for the end."

Classic FM, which was named station of the year at this year's Sony awards, attracted an audience of 5.71 million in the first three months of the year, according to the latest Rajars. The Classic FM managing director, Darren Henley, said: "As a founder member of one of Britain's foremost pop groups, Alex is uniquely placed to chart the influence classical music has had on the genre." When Classic Meets Pop will feature classically inspired songs such as Barry Manilow's Could It Be Magic, Eric Carmen's All By Myself and The Farm's Altogether Now.'

* BBC presenter Libby Purves writes - 'To run radio you must be like an old-fashioned publisher, a 1930s Gollancz or Faber and Faber, working on faith and idealism and wanting to share what you yourself love. All that you can do is make - and publicize - the best and most passionately well-crafted programmes you can think of. Ratings have to be watched, but calmly and with a sense of proportion. You have to believe that if even one person is swayed, or inspired, or changed, or comforted, by a programme, then that programme has been worthwhile.'

Now read about the circus opera from another member of Blur
Libby Purves quote from Radio, A true Love Story (Coronet Books ISBN 0340822422). Aa well as talking a lot of common sense this book is a wonderful chronicle of a career in broadcasting. Libby was one BBC training course ahead of me in the early 1970s. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Read the blog? - now watch the movie

Who are the bloggers? Who are the podcasters? Why do they do it? Do they think radio is obsolete or alive and well? Are they partners or competitors? With broadband take up increasing and the rise and rise of Facebook, My Space and Twitter, social networking effects and personalised media have become mainstream. But what does it mean for radio when everyone is a publisher? Those were the questions asked at the Radio Academy Conference in Cambridge last week, and the video above was made by Nick Reynolds from the BBC to help answer them.

All three videos of bloggers shown at the Radio Festival are now available on You Tube. Radio Five Live’s Pods and Blogs did a special programme on the Radio Festival which can be heard here. Rory Cellan Jones posted some photos of backstage activity on Facebook, as did Matt Hall, while Jemima Kiss gave her thoughts afterwards on Media Guardian.

I must say it is great to see someone in the BBC encouraging debate about the future of radio. Well done Nick Reynolds and his colleagues.

Antony Pitts resources via this path, Jonathan Harvey via this one. And this path will take you to more than seventy other composers well worth investigating.
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It doesn't just happen to the Queen

Following last week's royal documentary fiasco today's Observer reports that - "BBC director-general Mark Thompson, fearing that more skeletons might tumble out of the cupboard, is this weekend undertaking a purge of 'fast practice' by programme makers, offering an amnesty by which producers who offer information about past mistakes are unlikely to face a reprimand.

At 3pm on Friday he sent a memo to staff insisting: 'Nothing matters more for us than honesty, accuracy and fair dealing with the audience. We must now put our house in order. We cannot allow even a small number of lapses, whether intentional or as a result of sloppiness, to undermine our reputation and the confidence of the public.'

This followed an email from BBC executives, in the wake of the phone-in disaster, urging staff to identify programmes 'where you feel there may be a risk that in some way audiences could have been misled'.

This blog would like to identify the BBC Radio 3 choral evensong broadcast of October 25th 2006 as a programme where " in some way audiences could have been misled". During that programme two commercial recordings were quite deliberately passed off as historic BBC broadcasts. On An Overgrown Path broke the story exclusively here.

It doesn't just happen to the Queen.

And then, of course, there was the day when listeners were misled into thinking a Haydn quartet was a Mozart quartet, and vice versa. It's enough to make one storm off in a huff.
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BBC - another catastrophic management failure

"The BBC has launched a wide-ranging internal investigation into the mistakes that led the controller of BBC1 to claim that the Queen had walked out of a photoshoot "in a huff". Peter Fincham was forced to apologise after wrongly claiming, while unveiling the BBC's autumn schedules, that a fly-on-the-wall documentary to be screened later in the year showed the Queen storming out of a photoshoot with Annie Leibovitz (see image above) ...

"Last night a senior BBC figure said the whole episode revealed a "catastrophic" failure of management. "If you are going to show footage of the Queen having a hissy fit to the press then you have got to make sure of what you are showing," the source
said...

"BBC Vision director Jana Bennett is understood to be overseeing the internal review of procedures. On Thursday she called Mr Fincham to a meeting with Grant Mansfield and Stephen Lambert - two executives from the independent production company, RDF, which made the documentary...

"RDF is one of the country's leading independent production houses, making shows such as Channel 4's Wife Swap. The company, which has a staff of around 700, was founded by chief executive David Frank, 48, in 1993 after he had spent four years as a business journalist with the BBC. It is led by creative director Stephen Lambert, a former editor of BBC2's documentary strand Modern Times, who was responsible for inventing the "life swap" genre with shows such as the award-winning Faking It and Wife Swap. The company is renowned within the television industry as having a firm eye on the bottom line, with its biggest hit to date, Wife Swap, generating revenues of more than £30m since it first aired in 2004."

Extract above from today's Guardian. This kind of report seems to be almost a daily occurence, and includes BBC Radio 3.
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Procrustean bed scheduling and the BBC Proms

This post is on 'Links and things' ~ 'On an Overgrown Path' has the reports of the opera Edelat Square winnning an award. Proms coming up next week, but I'm finding it difficult to find enthusiasm with Radio 3's current Procrustean bed scheduling.

My thoughts entirely.
Image sample of the myth of Procrustes from Utexas.edu. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk