Not on Radio 3 - Bloomsday

[amateur51]

It's not a "'thon", though, is it? Five-and-a-half hours on a single work? About the time needed for a performance of Les Troyens with "features" on Berlioz and the writing and performance history of the work in the intervals. Classic Radio 3, IMO.

I've got to the stage where I don't give a tinker's cuss where it is as long as it IS!

Not sure about the Mark Lawson bit - isn't David Norris (not David Owen Norris) the man for the job? I just wish that Mark would listen to the answers to his well-made questions and respond to them instead of ploughing on 'and ninthly' style

Looking forward to it wherever it is

I haven't read it all either

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I've got to the stage where I don't give a tinker's cuss where it is as long as it IS!

[Lateralthinking1]

And the arts will have shifted to Radio 4...

So is the formal FoR3 line - not necessarily the majority view on this forum but it might be - that things like this should be on R3, as implied in Austin's post and more explicitly stated by ferney in his first post?

I agree with them but what do we drop from the daytime Sunday schedule? It would cut into the classical music.

[french frank]

So is the formal FoR3 line - not necessarily the majority view on this forum but it might be - that things like this should be on R3, as implied in Austin's post and more explicitly stated by ferney in his first post?.

It absolutely is because Radio 4 has its schedule and it won't drop regular programming to make way for extra - serious - arts programmes or regular full length drama. There will just be, overall, less of it.

It was like the argument that a programme like 'Brian Kay's Light Programme' should be on Radio 2, not Radio 3. As a principle, I might agree with that, but I hesitated to endorse it because the reality was that if it was dropped by Radio 3 it wouldn't be taken up by Radio 2. Far from it - R2 was trying to drop light orchestral music, and has dropped most of it.

R4 is a mass audience station and it won't do too much that is going to bore or upset its middle-of-the-road 'core' audience.

[amateur51]

May I send you the detailed brochure for Grumpy If Roused But Essentially Chilled Old Men, ferney?

You may be too young now but file it away until the time comes

[aeolium]

It absolutely is because Radio 4 has its schedule and it won't drop regular programming to make way for extra - serious - arts programmes or regular full length drama. There will just be, overall, less of it.

But all the evidence is that R3 does not drop regular programming to make way for extra, serious, arts programmes or regular full length drama (apart from its normal drama slots) and has not done for some time now. It does sometimes rejig its schedules for special music events, e.g. total immersions though it's questionable how serious the 'thons' really are, but when was the last occasion on which R3 did something like that for the spoken arts?

I'm with am51 - if R3 isn't going to do it (and it isn't) and R4 is prepared to do it, albeit occasionally, then something is better than nothing.

[Lateralthinking1]

But all the evidence is that R3 does not drop regular programming to make way for extra, serious, arts programmes or regular full length drama (apart from its normal drama slots) and has not done for some time now. It does sometimes rejig its schedules for special music events, e.g. total immersions though it's questionable how serious the 'thons' really are, but when was the last occasion on which R3 did something like that for the spoken arts?

I'm with am51 - if R3 isn't going to do it (and it isn't) and R4 is prepared to do it, albeit occasionally, then something is better than nothing.

Which leads us on nicely to the fact that 7 February 2012 was the bicentenary of Charles Dickens's birth. Some forum members might recall him. In 2002, he came fourth in the BBC Great Britons poll, one place below Princess Diana and one above a guy called Shakespeare. What did R3 or R4 do to mark the occasion?

I wonder whether the BBC managers' submission to the licence consultation had anything to say about being controversial. That idea about controversy being needed in order to capture the imaginations of a wider audience.....well it is one of the unspoken givens. The Molly Bloom speech is controversial for elements of a R4 audience but not for most listeners to R3.

The play earlier this season on R3 by Alice Nutter had a fair amount of robust language too but that wasn't the controversial aspect of it. The content included a significant section on the 1980s rave scene. Being of little interest to many lovers of, say, Charpentier, that enabled it to tick all the "controversial as possible" boxes. What it did for the listening figures I don't know.

[Russ]

Sounds like good news:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012...s-arts-culture
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio4/20...l_program.html

Russ

[Russ]

Sorry. The substance of this thread has already been introduced in a earlier one.

Russ

[DracoM]

JG Ballard - excellent. Radio will / could do him much better justice than TV.