Solid classical music ... more of this, please. Photo: Chris Christodoulou/BBC.
February 17 2007. The date is in my diary already. The date when Radio 3's new schedule comes into operation.
Sad? Maybe. But there are a lot of us out here, people who turn to Radio 3 every morning and every evening of the working week - and throughout the day at the weekends - hoping to hear the full range of classical music. We love Radio 3. We care about it. We will never abandon it. But my God it taxes our loyalty sometimes.
For too long now we feel it has been letting us down. It has been growing away from us. Everyone will have their personal take on this. My own complaints can be summed up under three headings: too much talk, too much other music, and too much specialism.
Too much talk means not just too many talks but too much talking. I don't want to hear the presenter talking to the performers about the music. I just want the music.
Too much other music means too much jazz on Saturdays. And it means too much world music in the weekday evenings. I'm not hostile to jazz or world music, though in the latter case I think a very little goes a very long way, but Radio 3 is a classical music station. I surely can't be the only person who works during the day from Monday to Friday who comes home in the evening, or who switches on on Saturday hoping for some solid classical music at such times.
Too much specialism is my private beef against the tone of some, not all, of Radio 3's presenters and editors. Too many of them are in league with the specialist mafias that have too much influence over the station. I'm thinking in particular of the early music mafia (to which I am much more sympathetic than some people I know) and in particular to the English music mafia, who wage a sleepless campaign to inflict English pastoralism on us as though it was on a par with Strauss, Stravinsky or Sibelius, when it's just not. There are some people on Radio 3 who clearly hate the mainstream classical music audience on which the station depends.
It's hard to tell from the press reports whether controller Roger Wright's new scheduling will tackle these problems. The press release makes it all sound promising, but all journalists know that the press release is rarely the full or the real story. So the test for me will come after February 17. And it will be a simple one. Less talk. Less other music. Less specialism. If that's Wright's recipe then it's the right one.
