BBC Radio 3's message board is closing...

[Thumper]

In its wisdom, the BBC has decided to close Radio 3's message board:

"In the ten years since the Radio 3 message boards were launched, the internet has changed dramatically. There are now many different ways to talk about Radio 3 and talk to each other. We have some big financial challenges ahead and so we're intensifying our efforts to find the most effective ways to use our resources.

As you may know, apart from Radio 4 and the Archers, all the other radio message boards have closed and we have now taken the decision to close the Radio 3 message boards. The boards will close at midday on Tuesday 30th November 2010."

There are lots of things one could say in response to this announcement, particularly with regard to bankers and politicians, though I will mention that the BBC's senior management is guilty of earning high salaries while giving ridiculously plush contracts to their "star performers", e.g. an alleged £6m per year to Jonathan Ross, a chat show host. To keep my blood pressure at a safe level, I'll add that the closure is A Very Bad Thing and leave it at that.

Meanwhile, there will be many lovers of classical music left without an electronic home. If any of the CMG members reading this are also members of the R3 board, it might be an idea to pop over there with an invitation.

[John F]

Sorry to hear that. I suppose the BBC will be able to lay off one or two board moderators, a trivial savings. But if Radio 3 and Radio 4 (plus the Beeb's most popular radio show, "The Archers") were really the only remaining message boards devoted to radio programming, I suppose it was only a matter of time.

I see that Brits no longer have to pay a license fee for radio sets, only for TVs, and radio gets only about 15% of the BBC's budget. So I don't suppose the radio people have nearly as much leverage as they used to.

[absinthe]

I suppose we should be grateful that worse hasn't happened to Radio 3. It looks like they've been dumbing down a bit (thinking of some of their "Composers of the Week" recently) and the ratio of performances tipping toward the tired old German/Austrian and Baroque repertoire. (For their recent survey I pleaded they didn't even think of trying to compete with Classic FM*.) Maybe it's just my perception or if not, a phase the programme is going through, but ten years ago it seemed far more adventurous.

But... we still have Hear and Now and (increasingly rarely) latter-day compositions; the Composer Competition and so on.

When the polly-ticians started talking about the BBC having to cut (and dangerous nonentities like Hazel Blears pontificating on the Proms becoming "more inclusive"....well, the rot started this year and we'll have to see how that goes) I feared the worst....but it hasn't happened yet.

Let's just hope.

*My dentist is a classics fan and has classic FM bubbling away in the background while I suffer PAIN - not from treatment I might say, rather his price-list - so I get to hear what shampoos I should be using and where I ought to be going on holiday.... with a bit of music between....

[John F]

Radio 3 could be considered a "dumbed down" version of the Third Programme, the most extraordinarily intellectual radio channel I know or have heard of. Back in the '60s, the American radio stations KDKA (Berkeley) and WBAI (New York) of the Pacifica Foundation were something like the Third Programme, with not a little help from the BBC Transcription Service, but that went away with WBAI's radicalization by the Vietnam War. I was a studio announcer/engineer at WBAI during those good old days, and I miss them.