The crazy world of music blogs...


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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Pliable said…
Simon Jenkins points out in today's Guardian that 302 BBC employees earn more than £100,000 ($197,000) a year.
8:15 am
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