Radio 3's watershed moment

Do you fancy being controller of Radio 3? Interviews are currently under way, so get your application in pronto if you are. On the surface, it’s a marvellous job – the centre of classical music in the UK – but beware: with the BBC seeking cuts everywhere it is going to be extremely “challenging”, to use a much-loved BBC euphemism.

The current controller Alan Davey announced in September that he was stepping down after eight years. Davey, former head of the Arts Council England, was not everyone’s cup of tea. Critic Norman Lebrecht was characteristically stinging in his send-off, complaining that he had overseen “eight years of dumbing down”. Others are more charitable. “He’s always had a bad rap,” says one long-time Radio 3 contributor. “It’s an impossible job really and whoever takes it on is a brave soul. Radio 3 has so many balls to juggle these days, and it seems to be completely hobbled by whatever it does.”

Past controllers used to be pursued by an organisation called the Friends of Radio 3, who fought for the preservation of old-school standards. But chief friend Sarah Spilsbury says they have given up the fight. “Too much of the classical programming is not presented in such a way as to stimulate my interest,” says Spilsbury. “I just don’t listen.”

The below-the-line comments about Davey’s departure on Lebrecht’s Slipped Disc website are extraordinary in the way they dismiss any attempt to broaden the classical canon – the African-American composer Florence Price comes in for special vilification – and to make the pool of presenters younger and more diverse. Radio 3 is evidently a key battleground in the culture war. One insider at the station responds to accusations of “wokeness” with a single word: “bollocks – we are not playing any less Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert or Stravinsky than we did before.”

Recent audience figures showing a 21% decline in the station’s listenership year on year and a fall of 15.5% compared with the previous quarter have given ammunition to those who believe that a small, elderly, up-market, mainly white audience concentrated in the south of England is indeed being “superserved”.

Insiders at the station question research agency Rajar’s methodology, which requires a 20,000-strong group of radio listeners to note down what they tune in to in a given week. They also suggest a hot summer tempted people away from their radios. “There is no sense of panic about the latest figures,” says a Radio 3 source, “ though if the next quarter was the same that would be a different matter.” The fact that these figures only reflect live listening rather than catch-up (which is measured separately) may also be a factor: Radio 3, with its formidable array of concerts, offers unique catch-up opportunities.

Despite the caveats, however, the latest figures do present a problem for the station. In the most recent quarter, the station’s average weekly reach was 1.7 million – just 3% of the UK population over the age of 15. That compares with 15% for Radio 1, 26% for Radio 2 and 18% for Radio 4. Listeners tune in for a solid 7.9 hours a week, though even that is lower than Radio 2 and Radio 4.

Radio 3 is expensive in relation to the size of its audience. The budget for the station is £35m and the performing groups – five orchestras, two choruses and a professional choir – cost another £25m. Radio 6 Music reaches 2.5 million listeners with a fraction of Radio 3’s budget, and spend per listener on Radio 3 is also far higher than on Radios 1, 2 and 4. Defenders of the station argue this does not compare like with like, because Radio 3 has a cultural role far beyond that of any other station. But will that broad role survive? All the evidence points to the BBC wanting to separate the station from the performing groups and make the latter fend for themselves to a greater extent.

The controller’s role had already been circumscribed by the appointment in May of a new BBC director of music – Lorna Clarke, the former commissioner of pop. There are suggestions Davey was not best pleased to have a new layer of management between him and the bosses at the top. Now the BBC has also created the role of head of orchestras and choirs, and announced that Simon Webb, currently director of the BBC Philharmonic, will take the post.

Nicholas Kenyon, controller of Radio 3 from 1992 to 1998 and director of the Proms from 1996 to 2007, believes the appointment of a head of orchestras shows the BBC is downsizing the role of controller. “The job is not what it was,” he says. “It doesn’t have the national role that John Drummond [controller of Radio 3 from 1987–92 and of the Proms until 1995] grabbed for himself of representing the BBC culturally.”

The decision to separate the management of the station and the performing groups, which was made on a basis of a recent review of the BBC’s role in classical music across the UK, suggests the BBC will look for more commercial funding for its orchestras and choruses. As the Musicians’ Union is all too well aware, with redundancies happening everywhere else at the corporation, at some point there is likely to be an almighty battle over the salaried status of the players in the BBC orchestras.

“Any cuts to the orchestras would be extremely bad news,” says Guardian critic Tim Ashley. “It would affect musical life right round the country. The other thing you have to remember about the BBC orchestras is that because they are radio orchestras they can afford to be much more experimental with their repertoire than symphony orchestras elsewhere.” There is a further fear that, if the BBC orchestras become more commercial, it will make life harder for all the other orchestras. Musical patronage is finite.

The new controller will face especially testing decisions because of likely budget cuts. “The BBC is desperately trying to continue doing everything it’s done but with much less money,” says a source at Radio 3. “The political ramifications of closing a service are so impossible that you are forced into endless salami slicing. That’s worked for quite a long time, but there’s a limit to how long you can do that.”

The real questions for the station, though, are the timeless ones: how to innovate and attract a younger audience (the average age of listeners is currently around 60); and what should the tone and type of programming be? The potential nightmare for Radio 3 was succinctly put by one listener recently: “I get the feeling that, in an attempt to appeal to a wider audience, the station has ended up appealing to no one.” An exaggeration, certainly, but also always a danger.

Radio 3 just can’t win: it is never going to please everyone. Many listeners would be happy with a classical jukebox playing endless Bach, Beethoven and Brahms; a few want cutting-edge repertoire and high-level musicology; others would like more drama and informed talk – whatever the modern equivalent is of Isaiah Berlin giving a lecture on the old Third Programme.

When he took over, Davey talked about creating a station that thrived on ideas and debate – a very Third Programme notion – but it is arguable whether he really followed through on that. A former senior manager at Radio 3 says he faced pushback from those who wanted him to dilute the broader cultural offering. “They said ‘shouldn’t it just be classical music and offer an alternative to Classic FM?’ “ This ex-colleague of Davey’s supports his multi-genre conception of Radio 3 and worries it will now be undermined at a BBC obsessed with numbers and younger audiences. The question always asked, says the source, is “How can we be more like Netflix?”

Kenyon says the new controller should be “someone who has a real broadcasting instinct for maintaining the quality of Radio 3 but at the same time will push its boundaries a bit”. But pushing its boundaries where? The former Friends – “with friends like these, who needs enemies?” says Kenyon tartly – already dislike the drift away from core classical repertoire. How much further should Radio 3 go?

Not too far, says music critic Jessica Duchen. “Radio 3 needs to have confidence in its central mission, which is to broadcast classical music. Just because it’s not the most popular thing out there doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile. I don’t want to live in a world that doesn’t have things in it that make you feel glad to be alive.”

Musician and broadcaster Mahan Esfahani would agree with that sentiment, but believes Radio 3 does need to be less inward-looking and more open to change. “There is a producer class that’s been there for a very long time and outlived several controllers,” he says, “and maybe that’s where the buck stops in terms of innovation. There’s a lot of talk about getting younger people listening, but as far as I can tell the people making the decisions haven’t met a person under the age of 50 in their life.”

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