var delay=23000 var message=new Array() message[0]='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. Robert Hanks, radio critic, Independent on Sunday, 24 September 2003' message[1]='…it\'s the Alps and it really ought to be the Himalayas. Radio 3 remains an admirable station, but it could be an extraordinary, no-holds-barred station that is so ambitious and demanding it gives you a headache. That\'s the sort of station I want… Stephen Moss, arts critic, The Guardian TV & radio blog, 27 February 2007' message[2]='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. Paul Driver, music critic, Sunday Times, 17 July 2005' message[3]='A constant anxiety across Radio 3\'s 60 years, expressed in many voices, was what the network was for, what it was supposed to be doing, whether it should be a creator, a pacemaker, a \"great aesthetic endeavour", offering \"something larger to cling to\". That argument persists. These days, I long for something larger to cling to in the way of philosophic and aesthetic discourse. Gillian Reynolds, radio critic, Daily Telegraph, 3 October 2006' message[4]='In order to reach everyone, you have to go up-market as well as down. Janet Street-Porter, The Independent, 6 May 2004' message[5]='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? Richard Osborne, music critic, The Oldie, January 2004' message[6]='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? Robert Hanks, radio critic, The Independent Review, 24 September 2003' message[7]='As a member of that part of the audience which wants undiluted, high-quality music and arts broadcasting I know that, at bottom, I have no right to demand it of Radio 3 or the BBC. Yet if the public broadcasting ethos is to continue to exist, then surely out of all the now 18 digital outlets which the BBC has, one reasonably small and cheap channel could be devoted to maintaining the not-necessarily popular or saleable high ground of culture. Listener, Ayrshire' message [8]='Most music stations consist largely of a succession of two- or three-hour programmes each presided over by a familiar presenter with lovable — or maddening — idiosyncrasies playing a musical miscellany designed to meet as many tastes as possible. For R3 a more ambitious concept would be the return of subject-focused series and one-offs presented by an appropriate expert. Is the BBC no longer willing to pay for this level of quality? Listener, Gloucestershire' message [9]='There is nothing more interesting and inspiring than to hear a knowledgeable and enthusiastic person talking about his or her own area of expertise; the most extraordinarily abstruse subjects can suddenly be opened up and rendered fascinating. Seriousness does not demand solemnity; wit, whether in the renaissance or the modern sense is to be welcomed; R3 should be the place where the difficult things can be done. Listener, Yorkshire' message[10]='Some thirty years ago my musical taste in the sixth form and at university was formed by listening to R3 (and its predecessor) in the evenings. I am convinced that a lifetime of pleasure would have been denied me if I had not had that opportunity. I am equally convinced that that opportunity has now been withheld from my sons who are just entering that same critical stage of their development. Listener, Hampshire' message[11]='They tell us we are an ageing \'audience profile\', and no doubt we are. But they never ask themselves how we all came to that ultimate nirvana which used to be Radio 3. We were either introduced to it in our infancy, or perhaps stumbled on it when channel hopping… whatever, we came to it through choice. For most of us, part of its attraction was assuredly because it seemed a secret garden of delight, a parallel world almost. And one comes to it when the time is right. Listener, Dorset' message[12]='The old Third is still pretty green in my memory. I was about 15 when it started and thus of that generation (working class, grammar school boy in Nottingham in my case) for whom it was a revelation. A series I especially remember was \'The Ideas and Beliefs of the Victorians\', in 48 parts. Can you credit it? And all reprinted in The Listener too. Since we can\'t have the original Third Programme back, at least let R3 be as good as possible. Listener, Hertfordshire' message[13]='My earliest acquaintance with almost all the great plays of the past was owing to broadcasts on the Third Programme. During my years of \'O\' and \'A\' levels I had such a valuable resource in that programme. So many performances have stayed with me all through my life: Wolfit in John Gabriel Borkman and The Dance of Death, Richardson as Shotover, partnered by Edith Evans, Patrick Wymark as Coriolanus, Gielgud as Hamlet, so many, many. What is there now for a young person, as I was then? Listener, Shropshire' message[14]='As a teenager in the 1980s I discovered classical music through R3 and I find it difficult now not to regard that period as a golden age. Its tone was classless, ageless and uncondescending — a radio station aimed at intelligent adults. Listener, Cambridge' message[15]='The whole point of art and culture is that it is not entertainment, doesn\'t aspire to be, and has good reason not to become so. That may mean it reaches a smaller number of people; but then, comparing the numbers attending the latest blockbuster film with the numbers visiting a remote provincial art gallery doesn\'t tell us anything about the artistic integrity of a nation\'s artists (or musicians): it merely informs us that most people sometimes want to be entertained. Listener, Outer Hebrides' message[16]='One problem the BBC seems to have is that it does not realise that scheduling and variety are also important…There are some who are beginning to think that it is possible to have too much of a good thing. While a yearly programme of classical hits selected by Rambling Syd Rumpo might be very entertaining, if this were put out every day from 10am to 1pm this could get monotonous. Listener, London' var openingtag='' var closingtag='' var scrollwidth="" var scrollheight="" var hoffset=-10