"Radio 3 matters because it represents most clearly the BBC's mandate to do what commercial broadcasters never could. When Radio 3's confidence slips, it's a sign of something wrong at the BBC: and that matters to all of us"  

"Radio 3 Controller Roger Wright has brought about a massive revolution in what his network broadcasts, but it has largely gone unchallenged because he has done it so stealthily"  

"A spot of encouragement wouldn't come amiss just now at Radio 3, plunged into gloom yet again by news of ever-falling listening figures… Radio 3's publicity office has been trotting out all sorts of excuses, largely to do with interpreting statistics. But the worry remains. Attempts by Radio 3 controller Roger Wright to win new audiences are looking misguided, with no evidence of success and the hard core of listeners feeling patronised and alienated by what they see as 'dumbing down'"

"One of the mysteries of radio is how much people really concentrate. Do they ever stop pottering and focus completely on a programme? Does broadcast music ever get the same degree of attention as music at concerts, or is it always in a losing battle with the ironing? For most networks, this is not a burning issue. They presume half an ear rather than two. For Radio 3, it is something of an excruciation. If people don't listen seriously, why broadcast whole pieces of music at all, and run orchestras to play them, and Prom seasons to boot?… While the Third's elevated approach may have been unrealistic, Radio 3's daily systole-diastole of chatty music sequences and more formal presentations, something for quarter-listeners, something for whole, is too obliging. A truly cultural radio station? Now that would be something to pin down"

"We've lost so much: serious literary content has disappeared almost entirely; music and presentation standards have deteriorated beyond belief. Is there any defensible reason for the distorted vowels, dropped consonants, inept syntax and vapid silliness… for the Proms trailers apparently spoken by a Glaswegian junkie, or the yob-voiced exhortation to 'Listen up', a phrase I've never heard uttered by an actual human being?"

"What is this 'world music'? With very few exceptions, the groups favoured by Radio 3 offer street-smart fusions – local styles with an internationalised electronic top-dressing, reflecting a universal aspiration to make it big in the West. We're talking, by and large, about global pop… We might expect the BBC to do more than merely collude in the manufacture of second-rate stars."

"When listening to the radio station that used to be the envy of the educated world, I keep it on so low I can't hear the exchange of inanities, but can tell when the music begins. The dim talking to the dull – the hallmark of today's BBC Radio 3 – makes me sweat with loathing."

"Once again the old assurance has gone, the fear of being called highbrow and elitist. In a recent conversation on air, the channel controller uttered the usual reductive defence; that no distinction of worth can automatically be made between pop music and Mozart. Each can be excellent in its own way and has its place. We are back with Beethoven and the Beatles. From the controller of Radio 3 that sounds ominous."

"After four years of what controller Roger Wright calls 'exciting new developments' – BBCspeak for stealthy dumbing-down – devotees of what the station used to stand for have turned themselves into the Friends of Radio 3… they spotted recently that the BBC's expensively packaged and spectacularly pointless new programme policy had quietly changed the wording of Radio 3's mission statement so that it no longer guarantees to keep classical music 'at the heart of the schedules…"

"The policy statement is a dog's breakfast, and only serves to underline the deep insecurity at the heart of the corporation … Can I make a plea for Radio 3 to retain its unique distinctiveness … In order to reach everyone, you have to go up-market as well as down."

"Late Junction may be immensely popular, but 105 minutes, four nights a week, still seems excessive. The slab of jazz and world music on Saturday afternoons is also an ordeal. … I hate to sound so critical. It is, after all, much easier to write a pithy music review than it is to fill an hour of dead air. Still, I am sure Wright's pursuit of the trendies who turn out to munch canapés at the Radio 3 Awards for World Music is doomed."

"Intellectual it isn't. Every presenter is continually begging you to email in your thoughts and ideas about this and that or to take part in competitions – and looking at the website seems to be de rigueur. It sometimes feels as if more time is spent pestering you to be 'interactive' than in playing you the music you tuned in for… Dumbing down is cliché but the cap certainly fits where Radio 3 is concerned."

"…one looks in vain for the rationale. Where is the Wright vision? How much further can classical music shrink as a percentage of the whole output? How many listeners want that, how many want the opposite, and to what extent are his changes driven either by ratings (Radio 3's audience is becalmed at 2m, less than he inherited) or the BBC's fetish for "diversity"?

"Roger Wright with an anxious eye on Classic FM's listening figures and a corresponding tendency towards programmes that relax rather than stimulate … Radio 3's embrace of the banal …"

"Radio 3 has gone down the pan again recently … Every time I switch on there is a lot of patronising talk. Everything has to be discussed in the the simplest terms but in the past listeners were able to cope with a good talk. The audience should be made to work a bit harder."

"What everyone should be worrying about, however, is the loss of that old drip-feed of expert, uncondescending talk about music with which the BBC created and educated an audience in the first place. Will an informed audience even exist by 2030? A question for [FoR3], perhaps."

"A year ago I would have said that Radio Three was going through a strong phase. Increasingly now I feel sick of it. … It's like being suddenly treated in a false manner by an old and familiar friend … And one can only expect that there is worse to come."

"With three or four exceptions, the general level of presenting is terrible. The attitude is to jolly along the audience and tell them, 'Don't worry, this music isn't so frightening'."

"Yet there is no evidence that this new, buzzy, funky Radio 3 is catching on. Since Wright took over in 1998, the network's audience has actually fallen, from 2.28m in the first quarter of 1999 to 2.10m in the first quarter of this year. Radio 4, Radio 2 and Classic FM have all gone up over the same period. Yet Radio 3's audience goes up every summer, suggesting that listeners love the glorious classical music Proms …"

"The BBC in general and Radio 3 in particular are under fire on all sides for ducking their responsibilities to classical music, which used to be the very stuff of Radio 3 until controller Roger Wright got rattled by competition from Classic FM.

"BBC radio is a national treasure, something to be cosseted, a friend in need, a companion in the lonely hours or in the car on the way to work. And if Roger Wright, Radio 3's controller, wishes to fall flat on his face with interactive requests and a weekly show presented by a cabaret duo, why not? The young must be given their head and new presenters their hour. Only don't, please, strain our indulgence with misleading explanations."

"The [FoR3] website's most distinguished predecessor was the Third Programme Defence Society, set up in 1957… There's a marvellous photograph of the society's first press conference, in which its founder, Peter Laslett, is flanked by Michael Tippett, Laurence Olivier and Ralph Vaughan Williams, ear-trumpet at the ready. [TS] Eliot was also on the committee but missed the photocall. Where are the modern equivalents?"

"It's all a matter of balance – and that's where I think the current regime, led by controller Roger Wright, may be getting it wrong … although I'd like to hear less Aphex Twin and Mongolian humming on Radio 3, I don't want more 'classical' music. Instead, I wonder if the truly challenging adventure would be to send some of the jazz and world music back to Radio 2 and revive the original mission of the Third Programme, increasing the amount of drama, poetry, talks and discussion, especially in the later evening schedule."

"While dedicated listeners, the ones who are devoting their whole attention to the radio, will always be a minority it is a minority that most of us belong to at least some of the time; and shouldn't broadcasters be aiming to please that minority rather than cultivating the majority's benevolent indifference? It is dispiriting to hear how far Radio 3's new schedules have set aside that principle, how far they are determined to stop us switching off rather than encouraging us to switch on."

"…to avoid charges of arrogance, caprice and irrationality, programme bosses should explain their reasoning"