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Last week Nicholas Kenyon accused the BBC Trust of "undermining the BBC’s historic commitment to use every enlightened means to make great music available to all." This prompted a reader to email saying it would be an enlightened step to restore minimum levels of professionalism within Radio 3. Supporting this are a many examples of sloppy radio, one of which occured on April 3 2007, and has already entered into broadcasting folklore.
The lunchtime concert on that day was listed as a Mozart quartet followed by a Haydn quartet. That was the order that presenter Louise Fryer introduced the quartets, but the trouble was that the recordings was reversed. The on-air announcement introducing the Mozart quartet was followed by a performance of the Haydn quartet, and vice versa, and even the back announcements referred to the wrong item. No-one in the studio spotted the errors, and the recording of the concert available on Radio Player perpetuated the error. An apology was broadcast later in the afternoon, presumably after listener phone calls.
A comment on the BBC Radio 3 messageboard says it all - 'I recall it happening more often on Classic FM, where a broadcast of 'Beethoven's Emperor Concerto' consisted of the finale of a Mozart piano concerto followed by the first two movements of the Beethoven, with no sign afterwards that the presenter or producer had noticed the error. '
Fixed programme lengths are also causing very sloppy radio. A central concept of the original Third Programme was that the schedule should be the servant of the music, rather than vice versa. This concept has been abandoned in recent years, and I have already written here about the bizarre concert programmes resulting from attempts to fix Promenade Concerts to a ninety minute length plus interval.
The weekday evening concert on Radio 3 is now pre-recorded and fixed at a one hundred and five minute duration. This policy has truly made the music the servant of the schedule. On June 5 the Philharmonia's Elgar anniversary concert was shorn of its opening item to fit the time slot. The broadcast launched straight into the Violin Concerto, and the Serenade for Strings which opened the concert was broadcast separately eight hours before. On June 13 the stupidity ran the other way. The encore of Ravel's Bolero from the recorded Royal Festival Hall re-opening concert was broadcast two hours after the rest of the programme.
The general feeling of despair is echoed in this email from another reader ~ Hi, I've just come across your blog while looking for comments on the recent changes in Radio 3 and noticed that you have links to various radio stations. The main cultural and classical radio station in Poland is called Dwojka (Two) or Radio 2 and is really good. It somehow managed not to give in to any commercial pressures and serves well so-called high culture. You can also listen to it through internet. It is depressing to see how things have changed. About 6 years ago when I came to Britain the Polish station was about to be closed down (lack of funds) and I started listening to Radio 3. Now Radio 3 has transformed itself into something I simply cannot accept, while the Polish one is thriving. The link is: www.radio.com.pl/dwojka/ .
Regards, Dorota
Emails like this, and the huge interest in my postings about the Radeo internet player, are clear evidence that Radio 3 listeners are voting with their feet. Thankfully there does seem to be an awareness of this at a senior level within the BBC. Here is the very qualified comment about the network made by the BBC Trust in the BBC Annual Report 2006/7 published this week: Radio 3 has seen a decline in reach over the last few years although share remains stable ... In early 2007 a number of schedule changes were made and we await with interest the impact of these on the network’s overall performance.
The problem with Radio 3 is not high culture versus dumbing-down. The problem is that to serious listeners it is now a popular station pretending to be serious. For less serious listeners it is a serious station pretending to be popular. And both audiences have spotted the lie. Radio 3 has irreversibly lost the serious music high ground. This has been taken by internet stations using the very technology that the BBC so arrogantly tried, and still tries, to claim its own. But giving in to commercial pressures and relinquishing the high ground has resulted in no audience gains against Classic FM. So the impact on the network's overall performance so eagerly awaited by the BBC Trust can only be negative.
Radio 3 today is like a wounded animal, and the BBC Trust needs to put it out of its agony. Sadly, the damage has been done, and the only way to end the agony is to complete the work of making the network a lavishly funded clone of Classic FM. The BBC can then stop pretending that the evening broadcasts are concerts, start hiring disc jockeys instead of knowledgeable presenters, present more commercial records as BBC recordings, make Petroc Trelawney network controller, give Norman Lebrecht free rein, and have Michael Ball singing Die schöne Müllerin at the BBC Proms. For the rest of us there is always internet radio.
Now read about a truly great BBC Radio 3 presenter.The Popular Wireless cover is from December 1922. 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 story behind this picture may amuse regular readers. It was taken this afternoon, and shows me being filmed in front of the Royal Albert Hall, where the BBC Proms start in a few weeks. I was being interviewed about my views on the future of radio. The interview was arranged by the BBC, and it is being used at a major radio conference in Cambridge in July. As part of my contribution I was asked to record the following extract from a recent post:
All this doomsaying about BBC Radio 3 gives me no pleasure at all. I once worked for the BBC, and Radio 3 and the Proms were a central part of my music education. Radio 3 can still do great radio, and I have praised here the work of Michael Berkeley and Iain Burnside and others, and this week there are live evening concerts from the Bath Festival including a recital by oud virtuoso Dhafer Youssef - albeit presented by the ubiquitous and egregious Petroc Trelawny.
But Radio 3 is now between a rock and a hard place. Classic FM is the rock against which ratings are judged, and new media is emerging as a hardplace on the other side of the network. The BBC bet the farm on new technology and lost. But the very new media which the BBC failed to leverage may well be the undoing of its classical music network. Webcasting, podcasting and the new third-tier of low power community stations in the UK will bring a new generation of boutique broadcasters that can ignore ratings and focus on being distinctive, inclusive and personal. Where does that then leave Radio 3?
Go figure ...
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Xfm, a UK alternative music station broadcasting in London, Scotland and Manchester to an audience of more than one million, is axing its daytime presenters in a radical move to a computerised playlist decided by listeners. The six-hour DJ-free "all music" daytime schedule is being marketed as "Radio to the Power of U", and will play songs programmed by listeners via text, phone and the Xfm website.
Human presenters are the latest casualty of the inexorable rise of the computerised playlist, and it is a trend that is affecting classical broadcasting as well as rock. In the UK computerised playlists were pioneered for classical stations by Classic FM who use GSelector playlist software originally developed for rock stations, and seen in my header image. The working of this software was described in a 1988 copyright court action:
"A detailed categorisation of each track of music in [Classic FM's] library fed as a data base into Selector enabled Selector to select the individual track for any hour of the day in accordance with any choice of programme made by reference to a combination of categories by a programme director. The particular advantage of the Selector system was that it enabled [Classic FM] to provide a balanced rotation of music, composers and performers and to reflect in the frequency of choice of track and in the choice of time when it was played its popularity and mood, and to avoid repetition or the personal preference of the presenter influencing the selection of the music played on the air." (Robin Ray v Classic FM Plc [1998] FSR 622)
Classic FM's use of the computerised playlist has been devastatingly successful in the ratings war. In the first three months of 2007 Classic FM reached an audience of 6.03m listeners, up from 5.71m the previous year, while during the same period BBC Radio 3's audience dropped below the important 2.0 million threshold, declining from 2.1m to 1.9m (source Rajar via BBC).
Ratings, and not quality, are now the primary focus of BBC management, and the success of Classic FM has been the driver for successive changes in Radio 3 in recent years. One of many knee-jerk reactions was the recruitment of Classic FM presenter Petroc Trelawny who has contributed to the BBC station's 9.5% audience decline by alienating most of Radio 3's core audience with his folky presentation style. Trelawny has been joined by a swathe of similar primetime presenters such as Sara Mohr-Pietsch and Sean Rafferty (photo below) whose role is simply to provide the aural laxative that maintains the flow of ratings-friendly programmes.
Radio 3's attempts to counter Classic FM have become increasingly desperate, ranging from 24/7 'Diana moments' such as the Beethoven Experience and Bach Christmas to giving away unrestricted downloads of complete symphonies to the horror of the music industry. But as the ratings show none of these worked, and the biggest blow to the BBC has been that its massive investment in new technology has failed to translate into increased audiences. As reported here the BBC Trust recently blocked on-demand replaying of classical music, and questions are now being asked about the lack of return on the BBC's massive investment in new technologies .
The core problem is that the Radio 3 can't do ratings, and now very rarely does great radio. The ratings war is lost because Classic FM is a commercial station and can do ratings better than a public broadcaster. To do great radio you need to be distinctive, inclusive and personal, and Radio 3's strategy of chasing down Classic FM means it has lost its distinctiveness. Its bland ratings-driven schedules have no place for diverse music so it is no longer inclusive, and the challenging output created by visionary personalities such as William Glock and John Drummond has been replaced by ratings-chasing mediocrity devised by BBC apparatchik's such as Roger Wright and Nicholas Kenyon.
All this doomsaying about BBC Radio 3 gives me no pleasure at all. I once worked for the BBC, and Radio 3 and the Proms were a central part of my music education. Radio 3 can still do great radio, and I have praised here the work of Michael Berkeley and Iain Burnside and others, and this week there are live evening concerts from the Bath Festival including a recital by oud virtuoso Dhafer Youssef - albeit presented by the ubiquitous and egregious Petroc Trelawny.
But Radio 3 is now between a rock and a hard place. Classic FM is the rock against which ratings are judged, and new media is emerging as a hardplace on the other side of the network. The BBC bet the farm on new technology and lost. But the very new media which the BBC failed to leverage may well be the undoing of its classical music network. Webcasting, podcasting and the new third-tier of low power community stations in the UK will bring a new generation of boutique broadcasters that can ignore ratings and focus on being distinctive, inclusive and personal. Where does that then leave Radio 3?
* A great example of the new wave of boutique radio is Amsterdam based Radio MonaLisa, which I have written about previously. Each Thursday from 6.00 to 7.00pm Central European time presenter Patricia Werner Leanse proves that radio can be distinctive, inclusive and personal. Tomorrow (May 24) she broadcasts sixty minutes of vocal music from a composer featured here recently, Elisabeth Lutyens. On May 31 Patricia showcases Out of the Dark (1998) by Texan born Pauline Oliveros, who has already made one appearance on the path this week. Follow this link for Radio Monalisa. Across the Atlantic San Francisco based Other Minds also does great boutique radio via radiOM.org, their current podcasts include John Cage and David Tudor in concert in 1965, and Stravinsky in rehearsal in 1947.
Now read about what happens when BBC Radio 3 gets it right
Picture credits - header rcscz.com, mid BBC, footer 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
Nice that my article Classical music - revolutionary, elitist, popular supplied the closing moments for this morning's BBC Radio 3 programme on the French presidential elections. Even nicer that presenter Iain Burnside name checked On An Overgrown Path twice, and credited, my translation of Nicolas Sarkozy's comment. You can hear the programme here until 29th April; you need to listen at 1 hour 54 minutes, and there is a fast-forward facility.
As I've written here before Iain Burnside's Sunday morning programme is a shining example of intelligent radio, together with Michael Berkeley's Private Passions. It is surrounded by a rising tide of mediocrity, and is one of the few Radio 3 time-slots not yet infiltrated by 'classical joc' of the moment, the dreadful Petroc Trelawny. But for Iain's sake I hope BBC Radio 3 Controller Roger Wright didn't catch the mentions of On An Overgrown Path.
Not only is Iain Burnside an uncommonly intelligent radio presenter. He is also a very fine pianist who plays on one of my all time favourite CDs, Copland's The Gift to be Free, sung by the late-lamented Susan Chilcott - read the full story here.
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
Those that I stand in awe of are leaving me. First, Bernard Levin left us last autumn (see my post And so to Wagner ). And today comes the sad news that author, broadcaster and sometime jazz musician Humphrey Carpenter (left) has left us at 58 after losing the fight with Parkinson's.
Humphrey Carpenter was a true renaissance man. Author of remarkable biographies including Tolkien, Spike Milligan and W.H.Auden, and of course the wonderfully 'politically incorrect' biography of Benjamin Britten. Plus (my favourite) the definitive biography of BBC Radio 3, The Envy of the World. As if that wasn't enough he was a successful children's author. And he was an erudite yet accessible broadcaster on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4 .
Humphrey was a graduate of Oxford, and although his research was meticulous he wore his scholarship lightly. He would have been amused, not annoyed, at the irony of Radio 3's 'new generation' presenter Petroc Trelawny managing to get both the key signature and opus number wrong of the Beethoven String Quartet movement played in his memory this evening. (It was in fact the Cavatina from the Op. 130 Quartet in B flat major).
Humphrey Carpenter and Bernard Levin are a disappearing breed. Humphrey would have chuckled at today's Guardian report on the disclosure of the entertainment list at Prime Minister Tony Blair's country residence Chequers.
Those who have dined in the company of our leader at the taxpayer expense...Des O'Connor and Geri Halliwell, Michael Ball, and Lord Lloyd Webber, Esther Rantzen and Jenny Seagrove are all there. The Blairs don't watch Saturday-night television at Chequers; they live it. Jackie Kennedy's White House had Stravinsky, Vidal and Gielgud; we have Geri, Des and Esther. Careful analysis of the list exposes Blair's desire to surround himself with semi-famous people who wear too much make-up and have massive teeth.
Norfolk County Council Library's database holds sixty-six records of books by Humphrey Carpenter, and that is to me quite remarkable. Humphrey Burton was someone I could admire and will miss, and that is more than can be said for Tony Blair, Des O'Connor or Geri Haliwell.
Come to the edge...
It's too high they said...
We shall fall they said..
But they came..
He pushed them and they flew.
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
